NEWFOUNDLAND – LUNA AND THE SNAKE.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LIN! WE HOPE IT’S BEEN WONDERFUL!
Day 109 – We slept in again this morning; I think it was because we were interrupted during the night by the strong winds. We’d left the windows open throughout the RV, but in the bedroom we had the shades down, causing the shades to bang around every time the wind blew hard enough. Finally, shutting the window over the bed solved that issue. DUH. It was 64 degrees this morning with lots of sun & few clouds, but still windy.
While I was piddling around this morning, Rob wandered out to the trail heads and found an Eagle and lots of fishing boats. The high today was 72 degrees with heavy rain in the afternoon. We spent a good amount of time in the screened tent, a nice breeze coming through, and sunshine. Then the storm came in & we moved back into the RV. The girls really like it here, which is good because we do, too. But there’s been one issue: yesterday Luna, the normally brave cat, has been skulking around, tail down, worried look on her face, while looking outside on the passenger side of the RV. What is out there that disturbs her? She keeps staring out at the hose which connects from the water spigot to the RV. Could she have a fear of snakes? Now that is weird.
Even though they’d been rescued from a barn in the Catskills of NY at a very young age, and supposedly not exposed the the “wild” since then, could she have had an encounter with a snake at zero to two weeks of age? Anyway, we moved the water hose to an inconspicuous place & she relaxed. Weird.
Young Bald Eagle, La Scie, NF
La Scie, NF
La Scie, NF
The rain continued on and off, the wind died down. The campers next to us left, other sites filled up. The rowdy folks are still here, but the reunion is over. At 7 p.m., just as the rain began again in earnest, new neighbors arrived in a small trailer to separate us from the rowdy folkes beyond. Tomorrow is another day.
Sunset, La Scie, NF
“Cats are genetically hard-wired through instinct to avoid snakes,” Con Slobodchikoff, animal behaviorist and author of “Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals,” This instinctive fear of snakes can cause cats to panic, he added.
“If a cat sees something slithering over the ground, the cat often will jump a couple of feet up in the air, a behavior that prevents getting bitten by a snake,” Slobodchikoff said. “Anything that looks like a snake should produce the instinctive fear response.”
Luna is a definite survivor then!