Nighttime Neighbors

I'm going to stray from our little lives here in California to show you what's going on with my parents right now and why they had to call fish and game up to their house. To give you a little background, my parents live in the outskirts of Idaho Falls. When I say there's nothing behind their house, I'm not joking. If you go far enough out, you might end up in Wyoming before you see signs of civilization. Once in a while they'll see a couple deer or even a moose wander into the yard. No biggie. Here's how it looks in the spring. I love this picture:

Nothing for miles. And dead silent, too. Can you see why I'm going a little batty in California? (Oh, did I not tell you? Maybe you couldn't hear me over the train, or the planes, or the light rail, or my neighbors who insist on yelling in Spanish to each other all day. As far as I know, they're unit is the same size as ours. Why all the yelling?)

This is what it looks like lately, every night around dusk:

This is the best photo my dad could get. They only come at dusk and leave before dawn. Sneaky little boogers.

If you look closely you can see a couple hundred elk coming out of that gully back there. Every night for the past week or so (has it been a week, dad?) a giant herd of elk have come out of that gully and settled on to my parents' lawn and pasture out back. We're talking on the grass, right up to the front porch. My mom said there are so many that they couldn't even see the grass. They stay there, grazing on the lawn and the haystack (meant for the horses) and making an unholy mess until dawn, when they slip back over the ridge out of sight. They're quite skittish, and they scare away easily. But they always come back.

And that's why the fish and game department will be making a house call.