View from our window #2

On Thursday morning, I got up at 5:30 AM, peeked out the window, and left for breakfast at 6 AM. Alex opened the curtains at 7 AM, just before he headed off to breakfast, to find this, a mother elk with her new calf. If only I'd opened the curtains when I left for breakfast, Alex would have seen the birth! They hung around the corner of our building all day, then wandered off in the middle of the night, reappearing for a brief period today.

This mom is actually a terror to the neighborhood, making it a tad difficult and a little scary to leave our building. This baby was born a day after one was born just outside Juniper dorm (we live in Aspen) and the same day another calf was born behind the Quest telephone building. The moms are very protective of their calves, chasing off anything that may appear to be a threat. At one point, the Quest mom had a woman trapped in between cars parked in the employee parking lot. From our front row seat, we've watched this mom chase tourists down the road and antagonize the security guards. (The poor security guards - by 7 AM Thursday morning, we'd already called them twice for elk troubles at two different locations, but there's only one security guard on duty until 8 AM.) We're very careful to chose our path back to our dorm - we have to eat and go to work at some point. Mom seems to be keeping close tabs on all of the dorm doors in that way that moms seem to be everywhere at once, so we have to be flexible and sometimes change directions abruptly, keeping in mind that this is actually one of the safest places in the park for the baby as the wolves and bears don't come into "civilization" that often.

The baby is just now sleeping on the concrete pad behind the metal storage closet, after having inspected the bicycle (see 1st picture). It's odd to think that I am likely the only person in the entire park who knows where that baby is. Mom is peacefully (for a change) eating grass.