Critters and Nature

My workplace is pretty far out in the middle of nowhere, within tens of thousands of acres of nature preserve. That's pretty cool and all, but there are a few downsides.

The first one is that since it's out in the middle of nowhere, you have to drive to work. My commute is 10.5 miles each way, and I live (relatively) nearby. There are a few hard-core folks who bike in, and I admire them, but there's no way I can do that at the present time.

The second thing is both good and bad: there's a lot of nature in them there nature preserves. So you see a lot of wildlife, which is cool. But that also means you have to coexist with a lot of wildlife, so you have to be extra careful while driving, especially at dawn or dusk, and you can't just leave trash bags lying around, for example.

I'd say I see a deer at least once a week, more often during the winter mating season. I've seen a lot of turkey vultures lately. And there are an awful lot of other critters too. You can see some evidence of some wild creatures in these prints on the side of a dumpster I walk past every day:



including some raccoons (at the bottom) and a wild creature of the totally fake variety* in the center of the picture.


* I don't know who made that print but when I first walked past it and caught it out of the corner of my eye, I thought, "wow, do we have bears or something really big living here?" But once I actually looked at it I quickly realized that it was a prank.