Wednesday Walk Wildlife in New Jersey

Welcome to the wildlife edition of #WednesdayWalk in New Jersey.

It really can be pretty wild if you think about the black bears which I haven't seen except for from a very good distance while being in my car - wait not true.

I did have a pretty scary i.e. surprise encounter with one of them while being on a bicycle ride in a State park.

Hubby and I were cheerfully riding along while all of a sudden just a few yards - seriously - a few yards in front of us a black bear trotted out of the tall grass/brush area and quickly crossed the park road right in front of us. We slam-hit our brakes and - just stood there and gasped. As quick as I got my iPhone out the bear had already meandered on - as you can see.

And I'm very grateful for it!

On to my much more normal walk around my neighborhood sometimes in the morning, these days more often in the evening.

One of the animals I see pretty frequently is groundhogs, I've even seen one in our backyard. This one here is on the back of an elementary school where I like to do a little jogging when everyone has gone home.

I guess I surprised this little guy here as he quickly traversed the paved road from the grassy area on the right to the relative safety behind the fence in the wooded area. However, then he just set there sniffing and watching. Until I got closer. Then he quickly squeezed through the fence and was gone.

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A little bit further, off the schoolyard and down the road...

I was happily jiggy-jogging and walking along while listening to a podcast when I caught this sight out of the corner of my left eye.

When I stopped my jog I had to walk back a few paces to fully take in this doe, and take this picture. I was honestly in awe because this doe was only a few feet away from me. It had seen me, it stopped eating and watched me. Until - it continued munching.

Then it looked up, right at me, looking a little scrawny - it's the height of summer, and then took a step to the left.

Huh I thought okay, now you're going to bolt out of here, right?! Nope, wrong, it was just looking out for its baby, a little baby deer that I hadn't seen yet.

They both kept looking at me and then... they kept on munching.

Awww - they really, really didn't care that I was just a few feet away from them. That was quite amazing.

Look, this is how close we were. That's the sidewalk I was jogging on and you can see the brush and wood to the right - that's exactly where the deer was munching.

Anyways, so, I took these photos and then kept on jogging, hoping they wouldn't try to cross the road. But - they did.

I was jogging back and sure enough, the mother doe darted out of the brush and crossed the road - no cars in sight. I thought please, please, please - don't have the baby jump out now or a car coming, pleeeeease. But, of course, the baby jumped out onto the road to follow its mom and - I heard a car approaching.

Oh no! For a split second I considered jumping onto the road, waving frantically to make the car slow down. But - I didn't. It's a spot where cars come round the curve to go downhill into another curve and - that's where the doe crossed the road - aaarrrgh!

Thankfully, the car's driver was alert, hit the brakes, and missed the baby deer. No. 2. Yup, there were actually two babies but I had only seen one so far. In any case, the family of three made it happily to the other side of the road.

End of story my recollection of this Wednesday Walk

And everyone lived happily ever after 😄

Have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,
(Ocean)Bee

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