Day 119 / 246

Saylorville Lake – Sunny 85 Degrees

I saw a Red Fox hit on Highway 415 this morning on my way to my daughter’s house. Road kill is common around the lake. I never gave it much thought when I lived in my house. It was just part of living in Iowa with highways that are usually bordered by row crop fields or timbered river valley areas. While the news is covering  damage to buildings when flood water invades, animals that den and burrow near those same lakes and rivers are losing everything they have as well.

Two things that are really cool about the life we have chosen are; we live near water for the most part and we live in a house that we can load up and drive away in less than an hour from time of the decision. We can move our house out of the way of a flood or a hurricane. The animals leave and go build a new one.

Living here at Saylorville this summer is giving me a new perspective on the plight of the very animals they work so hard to maintain habitat for. On any given early morning you can hear the coyotes calling out to each other along the lake shoreline as they return home from their night of hunting. Those calls are decidedly closer to the camper these days as the water pushes closer to volunteer village. Deer, who are not bashful at all about wandering into the village to eat mulberries off the ground or snort at my tethered cats are more present this week, as the rising water takes away foraging acreage from their daily routines.

Every now and then you see a news piece about the plight of pets who become separated from their owners after a big event like a major hurricane or a wildfire that burns for weeks. What we so easily forget is that this displacement goes on all the time for the animals that we share our communities with we just don’t notice. As an out spoken conservation minded person who has been accused of being a tree hugger on occasion I am a bit ashamed to realize that I have never really given much thought to this. The Red Fox got my attention this morning and the 30-minute drive to Kelsy’s gave me time to ponder. You can bet I’ll be watching the woods for wildlife not usually seen this close to the campers.  I’ll think twice about letting my cats lounge behind the motor home after dark. After all, with them being tethered they are nothing more than bait to a coyote who could be nearby hunting on higher ground. I’ll never look at flooding the same again.

Until tomorrow…