tikistitch

OK, so, if you're watching for wildlife at Denali - which seems to be in its own way as big a passtime as collecting little plastic Star Wars figures among a certain set - you're told to watch for 4 or 5 of the park's big aminals. Like, the majestic moose, or the grizzly barrrr. One of the top , which we'd never heard of before, are the Dall sheep.

Maybe the reason we'd never heard of them is they're so damnably hard to see. Honestly, in this park, a bear wil practically wander onto the tour bus and pose for a closeup. Dall sheep OTOH are inevitably 90,000 miles away on a hilltop on the opposite side of the valley. They look like white dots. UNLESS you have a powerful telephoto lens. In which case ... They are BIGGER white dots.

You gotta understand, this is after like 16 hours rumbling around on a schoolbus, where we'd seen moose prancing and even such shy critters as wolf and fox and lynx. But Dall sheep? White damn dots.

And THEN ... The bus driver pulled up short in wonder. Dall sheep, just sunning themselves, right below the road. Of course , crack out the camera equipment and clickity click.

Wasn't 'till we got back to the cabin and looked at the pix that we noticed: look at these guys. We mean, have you ever seen such SMUG expressions in your life? They're all like WE'RE Dall sheep, and we're just fucking with you, bwa ha ha!!!

Posted via LiveJournal.app.