The more time one spends in the outdoors, the more unusual sights one experiences. I was having a bag lunch with a co-worker one sunny day in remote Ladore Canyon of Northwestern Colorado. My companion was an entomology researcher and together we were searching out infestations of insect pests that damage range grasses. This beautiful canyon, frequented in its colorful past by Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall Gang, stretched to the western horizon from our lunch site at its eastern end. It was summer and the sprawling meadow was green with lush grass.

    We chose our picnic spot with no hesitation. It was under the shade of the only tree within miles. Just as we had spread our lunches, we noticed that we were sharing the shade with a rather large king snake, which lay unmoving at the far edge of the shady spot. Briefly I considered chasing the friendly fellow away, snakes not being among your typical onlookers at lunch time.

    But then I considered the facts that he was there first and there was nowhere for him to go but into the hot sun. My companion and I agreed to let the snake be. An unusual lunch ensued as I alternately munched my sandwich and eyed the big snake.

Power lunch

    Another strange happening outdoors was witnessed by a pilot friend of mine whom I know to be truthful. As he was flying a government coyote control officer around the sagebrush country of western Colorado, they spotted an antelope. This was not unusual. But this pronghorn had a large golden eagle on its back, and was quite unhappy about it. The eagle had obviously pressed its talons into the antelope’s back and was holding on and flopping its wings as the animal ran at top speed in an attempt to dislodge its attacker.

    Later in the morning the pilot circled the same area and saw that the antelope had slowed to a walk; the eagle still firmly gripping the spine of its prey. And still later in the day, my curious friend made another pass and saw that the antelope had finally fallen to the ground and the determined eagle was eating its hard won meal. We speculated that the eagle, which had perhaps a six foot wingspan, had worked one of its powerful talons between two vertebrae in the pronghorn’s spine. Quite a supply of meat for a predatory bird which usually kills jackrabbits, lambs and deer fawns for its meals.

    Another oddity happened in eastern Moffat County, Colorado while I was hunting antelope alone there years ago. I was ambling along a dry and desolate wash when I suddenly became aware that my environment had changed. I looked around and realized, very much to my surprise, that I was standing in a coral reef. Yes, a real, ocean produced, beach-side coral reef, right there in the semi-arid desert west, some 6,000 feet above the sea. There was an area the size of a gymnasium with huge shelves of petrified coral, resting perfectly level atop eroded pillars of pure ocean sand. The sand glistened as beach sand does.

Reef minus the water

    Layers of coral were interrupted by intervening channels, through which I could visualize colorful fish swimming about, as I have seen while snorkeling in Hawaii. I collected a piece of the coral from thousands of chunks lying about on the “beach”. I took it to the geologist at the Bureau of Land Management in Craig, Colorado. She was excited about the find, asserting that the site would help her age the land mass in that area. It would have been pushed up by the monumental upheaval which formed the Rocky Mountains, she told me. I marked the site on her map; some 17.2 miles from the nearest paved road.

    On a photographing trip in Kemper County I noticed a rabbit feeding on new spring grass at the distant edge of a field. Soon a crow joined the rabbit for a playful exchange enjoyed by them both. The crow would run at the rabbit, flopping its wings and the rabbit would jump aside like a bullfighter avoiding a charging bull. This went on until the crow flew away only to return soon with a fellow crow who made a threesome out of their little game until they all tired and returned to being regular rabbits and crows.         

    Unusual sights in the outdoors, hiding out there like the colorful Easter eggs of our childhood woods and churchyards, inspire us to keep searching.