Early into our hike through the ravine yesterday afternoon on a dismally grey day with a roustabout wind pushing us forward, we were nearing the first of the bridges fording the stream when Jackie and Jillie began barking. Their barking at the merest hint of anything different in the landscape was not unusual. What was unusual, though, was that they were barking at a Grey Blue heron. He was stalking about in the creek and at the hullabaloo our pups  were making, lifted himself up, out and away, flying over the tree tops, to a spot, we surmised, further up the creek. Possibly looking for the very minnows we'd seen a group of children a few days back, scooping into pails.

We often see herons in the spring, passing through on their return from fall migration. This fellow should have departed already, migrating to warmer climes. What makes some birds linger is unknown to us. In the last five or six years we've seen robins out and about in the ravine during the winter months. It's a matter of great debate between us what these live-eaters can possibly find to keep them alive during our harsh winters. Berries, seeds? In competition with birds of the boreal forest that move down?

Soon afterward we met up with a woman we've known for awhile, with her miniature Apricot poodle, Max. Max is a real gad-about, he resembled a perpetual-motion machine when he was a puppy, even more action-oriented than our little Jackie. He'd had a tussle, we were informed, with a fox last week. Our acquaintance had decided on a very early morning walk with her little dog, well before more people get out, before 7:00 a.m. Max has a tendency to run ahead quite a distance, and it doesn't take much before he's out of sight. Our friend doesn't mind when he does that; it worries us for the safety and security of Jackie and Jillie, though, and we make certain to keep them in sight.

On this occasion, she heard Max up ahead, out of sight, barking and yelping. So she hurried forward and then she saw that her little dog was grappling and rolling about on one of the hillsides with a fox. When she hove into sight, the fox disentangled itself from her little dog and ran off. She manually and visually checked Max over and found nothing amiss. Two days later she noticed a few scabs had developed from puncture holes in his skin, in all likelihood a result of Max's tangle with the fox.

It's doubtful that a single fox would prey upon an animal close to its own size. She speculated that either Max or the fox or both suspected the other of charging into a food source each considered their own. Max has a tendency to take possession of apples, still littering certain places on the forest floor. He plays with them vigorously, as though each was a ball. Eventually he ends up gnawing on the apple, so they serve a double purpose for him; entertainment and food.

We no longer allow either of our two puppies to eat whatever remains of the apples, fallen to the ground. During early fall when the apples have ripened we pluck them from the handful of wild apple trees growing in certain places in the ravine, and dole out bite=sized pieces for them. Just as they love all kinds of raw vegetables, they enjoy fruit as well and it's a treat for them to be given apple pieces during a hike. Once the weather turns and the trees shed whatever fruit remains on them to litter the ground, the apples tend to rot, to acquire a patina of mould. And it was this mould that once years ago affected Jackie's neural system making him so ill we'd had to rush him to the emergency veterinarian hospital.

Later on in our walk we noticed that someone had hauled a post-Halloween pumpkin into the ravine to dump it on the forest floor, likely thinking that it might provide some nutrition for raccoons, squirrels, foxes or coyotes....