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A deer in my camp

Taking all the kids camping in the mid 70's use to be our favorite family bonding time! Living in the beautiful Northern Sierra Nevada's camping would often be done at the last minute. I'd get home from work, throw a mattress in the back of my truck, grab the camp box, get the tents for the kids, and we would all hit the road. Gosh has camping changed! Now my husband and I get a kick out of watching people camp. They pull in with trailers of every sort, every gadget under the sun, and take hours setting up the perfect camp with all the comforts of home! Now a-days your almost forced to camp in public camp grounds 15 feet from your neighbor it's quite a bit more of a social atmosphere than it use to be, which is a nice experience, however we no longer see all the wild life that use to visit us in our more lonely camps of past.

My son and I are very early risers, we enjoyed the quiet mornings sitting together sipping our hot drinks preparing for the girls to wake up and the quiet to be gone. My son was so amazed on one of these early mornings when as we were sitting on the edge of Sly Lake a beautiful huge buck splashed into the lake and swam all the way across. We couldn't take our eyes off the magnificent beast; neither of us had ever seen such a large and dark colored buck. Later we discovered that what we were seeing was a mule deer! One of the local rangers came by and informed us that he was watching over the small herd of first time implants into our area. Now 30 years later I still spot a mule deer now and then so I guess the rangers endeavors worked.

Now please remember that living up here we see deer, raccoons, bear, and even mountain lions quite often. There was one morning however that brought roars of laughter from all the kids! As I was pondering getting up and putting on the water to boil my truck started shaking so hard I thought it was going to tip over! There was a loud grunting noise that accompanied the rocking of the truck, loud enough to wake the girls! All the kids were laughing hysterically, not even worried a little over the safety of their dear old Mom. As I sat up to see what was going on there was a huge bull scratching his rear on the corner of the bed of my truck! The squeals of the kids didn't seem to bother him, and my endeavors to shoo him away had no effects on him. When he finally got his itch taken care of he meandered away. My kids were so excited as they had never seen a bull roaming the forest. That night as we were sitting by the camp fire, they all agreed that-that was one of the strangest visitors to one of our camps that they had ever seen!

Learn more about this author, Linda Zirion.
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