I'm slightly jet-lagged after returning from Vancouver at the weekend. The Rockies were an awesome sight and wildlife abounded everywhere.
Like Pippa, I'm going to recount an anecdote from my summer holiday. I'm slightly jet-lagged after returning from Vancouver at the weekend. The Rockies were an awesome sight and wildlife abounded everywhere. One morning my 3-year-old son looked out through the windows of our log cabin (modern not rustic, and complete with TV, 2 bathrooms and air conditioning) and announced "Daddy, there's a pony on the lawn".
The pony turned out to be a large elk, one of a herd of about ten females and young that had wandered into the Alpine Village holiday complex in Jasper National Park. We'd been warned they might appear and the cabin's logbook suggested we chase them off by clapping our hands together if they started eating the herbaceous borders.
To avoid any confusion, these are not the 'elk' of Scandinavia and Siberia, Alces alces, which is called a moose in North America. These 'elk' are Cervus canadensis, also called wapiti, and are a large North American and East Asian relative of the red deer. They were all pretty impressive, certainly the biggest wildlife I've ever seen in any garden. They didn't seem to do too much damage to the annuals, but left plenty of droppings which had to be cleared up before our neighbours could play croquet later in the day.
We then spent a few days in a holiday apartment in Tofino on the Pacific Rim coast of Vancouver Island. As is usual with such lets, the garden was little more than a plot of mown grass, but there was also a Gunnera the size of a caravan to screen the house from the street. I was woken by an alarm somewhere further off up the village at 2am and peered blearily out of the front door. All was still, except for some strange lolloping creature bounding along the empty roadway. Even now I can't quite decide what it was ... a large dog? Or maybe... I still have the hand-written welcome note left by our host on the table just inside the lobby "Richard, be aware that a medium-sized unaggressive bear is in the area. He won't bother you and is just mooching about."
