Besides the many birds, the first wild animal we saw on our drive was almost our last. We and another car were passing an RV, an evolution that was progressing just fine until a deer bounded across the road in front of all of us, forcing us all to slow nearly to a stop. Needless to say, I didn’t get a picture of the deer.
We also saw a coyote lope across the road. I had my camera ready, but not ready enough. He disappeared into the rolling land on the other side of the highway. But being from South Dakota, none of this was too exotic.
We expected to see a lot of eagles, but didn’t see any at all the entire time we were in Canada. What we did see were a ton of eagle-sized ravens that were a little disconcerting.
The wildlife highlight of the first day, though, came towards the end, when we saw this moose sharing our road. She was on the shoulder at first. It was a good thing we slowed to get a picture, because she suddenly turned and pranced across the highway. She’s lucky the car coming the other way (you can just see it in the picture) wasn’t going too fast, either.
The interesting thing, though, was what she was apparently running away from, or at least “sacrificing” to the oncoming danger of the road. On the right shoulder was her calf. Mother of the year, this one…
She didn’t need to worry too much, though, I suppose. The calf was fast, and I almost didn’t catch it at all.
The next day we’d see a much more exciting array of fauna. But this was a good start.
