Almost every morning the robin redbreast tries to break into my bedroom window.  He flies at the window, backs up, and charges it again.  I’m not sure what he is trying to do – maybe trying to get me out of bed.  If I sit up and yell at him he goes away.

My mom says they do it on the upstairs windows as well but she has no idea why.  They act like a bird trying to get out, not like a bird trying to get in.  Continuously flying at the window over and over.  Its so funny!  It reminded her of the joke about the drunk man.  There is a tree with a fence around it.  The drunk man comes and shakes the fence, yelling, “Let me out!” And then keeps circling the fence shaking it and looking for an escape.

I love how many animals there are here.  If you first drive up the driveway it doesn’t seem like you are entering a zoo.  But if you live here, particularly if you work 12 hours a day at a laptop in front of a window which overlooks the valley, you see a lot. I have seen bald eagles fly by many times in the last few months – and the last time there were two of them,  flying maybe 25 meters in front of my window.  The white on their heads and backs is so bright!  Several nights of the week I hear coyotes howling.  And once, a couple of weeks ago, we saw one run by and cross our driveway in front of us, when we were on our way to Pacific City.  I found their tracks too – wasn’t sure what animal it was but when I looked it up online I found it had to be fox or coyote.  And since I haven’t heard any foxes, I can assume its coyote.  The vultures come more frequently, and sometimes a hawk.  But they aren’t as exciting as the eagles.

In the beginning of Spring time, the bats came out.  They surprised me because at twilight they were dive-bombing (probably for mosquitoes) in front of my window.  And then gallivanting around outside the dining room windows as well during dinner.  I am glad they eat mosquitoes although I wouldn’t mind if they ate more of them.  Its hard to recognize them at first and I didn’t know what they were when I first saw them.  They looked like shadows of falling, flapping birds.  Except in this case the birds would have been falling in the same place and in the same direction, over and over.

Then there was this funny and stupid little dear.  I was coming back from my daily run/walk to the mailbox (I’m such an athlete.)  I was in the “walking” portion of my journey.  A little dear came out of the forest and started to munch at bushes about 10 meters away.  Between him and me was nothing but grass and I couldn’t believe he didn’t see me.  He kept walking closer to me, munching away, so I walked closer to him.  It didn’t effect him at all.  So finally I said, “hello.”  The little dear looked up and looked all around, searching for the sound.  But not looking at me, even though I was smack in front of him!!  So then I said “hi,” again and finally he found me.  He stared at me for about 2 seconds, and then turned away and trotted into the forest.  Stupid little dear!  So lucky for him that I wasn’t a hunter.

I haven’t seen an otter yet.  My mom says she thinks an otter ate all the fish in our pond.  She said it was so big it was almost the size of a small seal.  So now I regularly have dreams with talking seal-sized otters in them.

This post was originally written by Anna Vera Williams on Anna Vera. Original post: Alarm Clock on Wings.