I’ve always been fascinated whenever I see animals out on the trail or hear about other people and their experiences with seeing animals while out riding. I guess this is because I’ve always been a city girl except for the three years that we lived on a couple acres in Lake Mathews. It took me a year to remember to watch where I walked so as to not step on a snake sunbathing, and then it took me a year after we moved back to the city to realize that I could stop watching for snakes. The first time I seen one I almost stepped on it. It was laying on the walkway from the driveway to the house. Oh, man! I didn’t know I could jump so high or scream so loud. All I kept thinking was feet don’t fail me now! In the short three years that we did live there, I saw some incredible things—or at least they were incredible to me. I seen snakes, scorpions, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats (very scary), lizards, rabbits, roadrunners, woodpeckers, vultures (very gross looking), and many strange looking insects that I don’t know what they were. I also saw a deer or an elk—I’m not sure what it was, I just know it was huge.
I’ve also come across sheep on more than one occasion while riding in the Stoddard Valley area. When I first saw them I thought they were rocks, then I thought my eyes were playing games on me because these rocks were moving. The color of their wool blends in with the desert & it is hard to tell what they are until you’re almost right on top of them.