It's Dangerous Out There

I'm lucky enough to have some of the best hiking, running, and mountain biking forest trails right out my front door. Earlier this morning about a mile into my run, I met up with neighbors Steve and Barbara. Steve handed me a big stick and they both said in unison "the owl is out".

Hovering over the trails was the local "attack owl". Last year my boss David had a bloody encounter with this owl during an afternoon run, leaving his scalp with cuts and bruises and sending him to the ER.

I think it's a barred owl, as I believe they are common in this area. I've seen him before, and he's quite large, at least 18", a grandaddy for sure. At night, we can often hear owls fighting in the woods, it's a very violent and frightening sound.

While quickly deciding whether to keep going or turn back, I was remembering the dog attack the Capt'n blogged about earlier in the week, when his partner Laura went for a run. Being such a beautiful morning, I decided to keep going, but I did trade in the gifted stick for an even bigger one, and keeping a wary eye out.

I'm off to the lake soon to see if there is enough water to paddle. I'll take the sea kayak, Alan borrowed my Kruger Dreamcatcher for the weekend. He's on fall break, and off on a paddling/camping trip to Hammocks Beach on Bear Island (where I was last weekend). He called last night and told us they were having a great time swimming, kayak surfing (with my Kruger??) and fishing.

Lucky guy, he won't be around to help us clean the basement for the boat building (shhh, it's still a secret).