“Mammal-ling” With Friends Honorable Mention
On July 2, a warm Missouri day, we loaded the van with camping gear and headed to Wyoming! While we were out there, we visited Dad’s brother.
We took the North American Wildlife book along so we could look up animals we saw.
Hiking a trail near the Medicine Bow Mountains, we saw a beaver house and freshly cut trees. Mom took the younger children on down the trail, and a couple of us boys sat on a big rock with Dad, hoping we’d get to see a beaver to add to our mammal list. A few times we thought we saw one moving under the water, but they never came up. Could they see us?
At a campground, we found a stag beetle—not a mammal, but very interesting anyhow! The book shows it’s native to southern states only. Maybe it hitched a ride up on a camper.
Pronghorn and chipmunks are the animals we saw the most. We saw 109 pronghorn!
Our cousins Eriq and Conrad went on a trip the same week, so we were delighted to have them join our team! Here are some interesting things from their week.
Before we visited my uncle in Washington, we stopped at the San Juan Islands. We had to choose between taking a ferry or flying in a small airplane. We chose the ferry because we wanted to take our vehicle with us. We spent two days on the islands, and while we were there, we saw a black-tailed deer.
On the ferry ride back to the mainland, I was looking at a buoy when I suddenly noticed a long black shape sticking out of the water before disappearing again. I was looking at the fins of an orca!
On the way to my uncle’s house, I suddenly saw something running beside the road. At first, I thought it was a dog, but then I realized it was a bear cub! We turned around so we could take a few pictures, and I was excited that I had been the first to spot it. Where we were parked along the road, there was a mountain stream beside us and a steep mountainside on the other side. All at once, a rockslide started crashing down the mountain! The bear ran off, and we decided it was a good time for us to leave too.
Finally we arrived at my uncle’s house. He works for a big farmer. The next morning, we baled square bales of mint tea stalks. That afternoon, we went sturgeon fishing on the Columbia River. Even though a sturgeon is not a mammal, I really enjoyed catching one that was about 2 feet (60 cm) long. Since we were not allowed to keep sturgeon, we took a few pictures and then released it back into the river. On the way back, we also saw some mule deer.
We traveled to Glacier National Park. While we were eating lunch, I tossed out a chocolate-drizzled mini Ritz cracker, hoping the squirrel we had seen earlier would come back. It did! It grabbed the cracker, raced up a tree, and stopped in the perfect spot for us to take a picture. A few days later, high in the mountains, I fed a chipmunk right out of my hand.
It was fun to see how many different animals we could find in one week.
Participants
Mahlon, Talmon, and Andrew Horst; Eriq and Conrad Zimmerman
Mammal List
- Bighorn sheep
- Bison
- Black bear
- Black-tailed deer
- Black-tailed prairie dog
- Bushy-tailed woodrat
- Cottontail rabbit
- Elk
- Gray squirrel
- Least chipmunk
- Moose
- Mountain goat Mule deer
- Orca (killer whale)
- Pronghorn
- Red squirrel
- Yellow-bellied marmot