G.A.S.P.

The next morning (2-15) I discovered that I was right about the river flowing backward last night.  By morning, the tide had gone back out and there was a much wider (by 12 feet or so) sandbar along the shoreline than had been there when I last looked. 

I have a vivid memory of being awakened in the middle of the night by Coyotes howling all around.  It’s vivid, but I’m not sure it’s real.  I could have asked a State Park Ranger when I left this morning if there are Coyotes in the area, but the memory hadn’t come back to me by then.  Only later in the day, when I passed a bunch of barking dogs, did I remember having heard the Coyotes.  My bet is “yes” it was real.

I saw the funniest thing today riding along US 98 near Perry.  I came upon a dozen (give or take one or two) small wild pigs feeding alongside the highway.  There seemed to be two adults (about the size of a small, chunky dog) and several juveniles (about the size of a big, chunky cat).  Obviously, the car and truck traffic wasn’t disturbing them a bit, but panic set in when they saw my bicycle.  They knew they had to run, but they had two problems.  First, they were in a grassy area between the highway and a swamp.  Second, they had grazed their way about two hundred feet down the highway from where their dirt access road intersected the highway.  So with me chasing them down the highway (at least that was their perspective), they ran as fast as chunky little pigs can run until they reached the dirt road and turned the corner.  I didn’t stay to watch, but I’ll bet they kept running a fair piece down the dirt road too.