A Year in the Forest

  Here is the view today.  You can see the trees turning and the leaves on the ground.  It finally got a little cooler around here.  Yesterday I foolishly decided to wait a day to harvest a big batch of honey mushrooms.  I should have known that the woodland creatures would get them if I did and sure enough, what was 2 or 3 pounds of mushrooms was almost completely wiped out.  I got maybe 1/4 of a pound.  Oh well, I guess they needed them more than I.    I did smell a pawpaw again but was unable to locate it.  I saw a few squirrels but did not see the deer again.

The most interesting thing happened before I took my walk.  I was talking to my neighbor and he was telling me how a skunk got a yellow jacket nest for him also.  He related how the skunk used to live under his shed.  When I asked him how he got rid of it, he said that he had taken a piss around the shed every night for a couple of weeks and the skunk just left.  Now he only does it about once a week to keep it away.  Haw never heard of that.  But more interestingly, he told me how he had been at the back of his property, which backs up to my woods, one evening when he heard a low growl like a big cat purring and when he turned to look saw something in the underbrush going off.  This is the same woods I had heard the large cat growl in.  There are not supposed to be any large cats in our area and we have both been told we were crazy when we told other people about what we saw/heard.  I guess its nice to have it confirmed, now it makes me wonder what is in the woods.