Wild, wild life - Motorcycle-Journal Forums

themeatmanlandry · 07-11-2005, 10:54 AM

I had a couple of interesting wildlife experiences while riding Sunday morning. First, I'm going up a hill inside Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park (Jackson Hill, if you know the area) when I see a 'hawk' fly by about 75-80' up the road. Normally, I wouldn't care, but my peripheral vision revealed something slightly odd about the way the hawk had a seat in the bough, so, as I made the corner, I looked up at the bird again: it was an owl. A friggin' nice one too! He/she was white w/brown speckles and he/she was absolutley beautiful. It was watching me too, because its head turned as I passed. I'm glad I took a second to look again. That thing was cool.

Then, I was railing down a road named "Cuba-Millington," when ALL OF A SUDDEN . . . a freaking deer pops out of the ditch and runs, oh probably 20 feet in front of the bike. It was so close that my initial though was "Dog!" and I nailed the throttle. Once the brain processed the rest of the info, I kept the throttle pinned, because they sometimes travel in groups of 2-5 and I was afraid that I'd hit the second deer in the convoy if I didn't get hte heck out of dodge. It was THAT close, I tell ya . . . THAT close.

I think it was male, but there were no horns. If that was a female, that's the biggest friggin' doe I'VE ever seen.