Wildlife in our own backyard!

For many Alaskans some of these images might not be too strange to see (we have had many moose encounters in our yard over the years) but I thought the rest of you might find it interesting!


A young moose accidentally wandered into our fully fenced yard at our old house. The fence he jumped in the backyard was a short one but the one in the front isn't an option so he was trapped in our front yard for a short time.


It was a cold day that day and frost was on everything. It even makes chain link fences look beautiful!

Torsten loved looking at the little moose up close.

Finally the moose wandered back through our backyard and over the fence again.

This wildlife encounter was a little more unique. We had two coyotes visit us in the backyard of our new house. (I honestly didn't even know we had coyotes up here and thought they were wolves at first.)

The neighbor at the bottom of the hill (who was nowhere to be seen) has some one year old dogs/puppies that decided to investigated the coyotes and were getting themselves into trouble. When one of the coyotes acted like it was going to attack the dogs, Haakon got out his 22 and put out a warning shot just to get the coyotes to leave. He was absolutely giddy that he was able to shoot his gun from our porch. (Obviously, he won't be making a habit of it.)

Gratefully, the coyotes took off and left the dogs alone but we were sad to see them go. It was a pretty neat thing to see.

These last animals were not seen in our backyard but about 15 minutes down the road on the Seward Highway. Usually we only see these Dall Sheep at higher elevations but in the winter they will sometimes come down. It was fun to sit and watch them for a bit. I thought you non-Alaskans would appreciate these pics.