Our room at the Grand Canyon was in the Thunderbird Lodge (more about that in my next post). The room was clean & cheery - had TV, excellent cell phone reception, etc. and a whole lotta "outside staff".
We came out of the restaurant in the Bright Angel Lodge only to find the lawns of the lodge areas being grazed by deer and elk. Right there, munching on the lawn and any other tasty vegetation they could find!
Now, our friend Rascal worries about Vishus Deer and often gets concerned about Neelix and the Vishus Sheep . Well, he'd have been VERY concerned when he saw me pull out my camera - "Here, nice elk, don't attack me and push me off the edge (which was only about 35 feet away)" We got back to our room safely, and I got my (barely discernable) picture of a really big elk.
But not as REALLY BIG as this guy who is giving John the laser eye - he had plopped himself down in the middle of the driveway of the El Tovar Hotel with sort of an "As a matter of fact, I do own the road" attitude. If you click on the picture to biggify it, you'll see that his rack of horns extends waaaayyyyy up - The Shepherd figured they were at least 6 feet up from the grass - and that is on top of an elk that is standing six feet tall at the shoulder. I'm glad I was back in the room, safe from this critter!
6 comments:
That is absolutely the scariest thing I've ever seen! Tina, that was very dangerous of you to try to get pictures! They must be vishus, look at those horns! Cats aren't vishus and we don't have horns, so that means that anything with horns must be vishus.
Now I'm exhausted from all this excitment. I'm going to go take a nap.
Yup...them's "Rats-With-Antlers" alright! They look just like the ones I shoo away from my garden at midnight in my Mutts PJs, boots and a jacket waving a big white garbage bag!
Nasty, ill-tempered garden eaters!
:)
We have an occasional mule deer or antelope here - not an obvious presence. I was stunned in Estes Park by the pervasive elk. I'm not sure I'd enjoy them after a while. They rule the town!
I am soooo jealous! We would love to see elk like that. The ones we have seen are not so willing to come close. Only one has been within an arm's distance of me. Yours are huge, too! We will definitely drop by the area you mention when we are at the Grand Canyon. Did anyone there say if this is a common occurrence?
Hmmmm, very Halloweenie photos!
That is one BIG boy in the last pic!
Cool (and I agree, scary) to be so close!
Post a Comment