So this wasn’t the blog post I had originally planned to write, but I had unexpected company last night at dinner time and it sort of threw everything sideways. We had just pulled a pair of lovely steaks and were letting them rest when I looked up and realized that an elk was walking over the rise from the middle meadow.

Ten point buck. Just meanders up as we’re eating. A few minutes later, the matriarch of the herd appears. Lucky for me, I have a buffet table ready for such folks at all time.

Over the next twenty minutes, a whole bunch more arrived. All total, I counted seventeen head, including a spike buck with two single horns about 18 inches tall each, plus a couple of males with just little nubs for horns, so I presume they are a year old.

Never had that many elk standing around, to be able to tell the genders part by the color of their fur. Boys are much lighter on the flanks and top, while much darker on the belly than the women. Helps when you have that many boys bouncing around.

So they just kind of grazed for about an hour before they meandered off down the hill to the left.

Kitty, however, wasn’t too sure about all this silliness, even when she got up on her shelf to look at them. She’ll boop deer through the sliding glass door, but them elk are strange looking, like vultures with hair on the neck. She was not impressed.

At one point, one of the females was walking along, next to the box where all the fruit trees are. I wish I’d had the camera out, but it was in my pocket.

I have wires that hold the posts on the box upright. And I have covered them with duct tape to mark them so I don’t clothesline myself when I’m mowing. Because wire at a sixty degree angle, covered with a dark green rubber finish.

She walked right into the middle of the tape, right where it looks like a flag. Bounced right backwards with the most embarrassed look on her face, turning to me, standing inside the house at the slider, as it “you didn’t see that, did you?” After a few moments, she picked up her dignity and sauntered off like she meant to do that.

One other funny thing I saw. The Matriarch was standing close to the bull, between him and another mature female. Don’t know what passed between them, but the Other Female had her butt to the Matriarch, who proceeded to take a bite of the first woman’s ass and pull out a huge tuft of fur that she dropped. Other Female got her ass gone in a hurry after that.

Those are US quarters, for scale, about an inch across. The hairs are about 5-6 inches long, dirty on the end and about as heavy and stiff as straw. Put them in a bag, just because every good fish story needs a little evidence.

Who knew that elk bite fur for pecking order?

So I never did write the other blog post I had planned. And that’s okay. If you head over to Facebook, I’ll post all the rest of the pictures I took shortly, along with several short videos.

It was a silly Friday night.