One of the consequences of the "hired gun" period of my career is times of financial weakness. Mrs DT & I came to understand our life was airplane flight on a less-than-airworthy aircraft. There would be periods of soaring upward flights ... and times when the engine sputtered. Obviously from a hindsight view we came through OK but there were periods where the propeller picked up grass stains ... I'm not a pilot but I understand such is not a desirable situation.

Anyway, it was during one of these times, we ended up renting a cabin on some friends property up in the hills west of Loveland, Colorado. Our friends lived in the main house and had a couple of Great Danes. This one was "Max".

The property was at the mouth of what could be called a mini-canyon but was more a break in the hills a small creek passed through.

And elk.

This young bull lagged behind the herd and got curious about that critter on the other side of the gate. That green street sign is misleading; there's a private two-track path alongside the small stream through the hills to the right. It's a 1-foot spacing between horizontal bars on the gate.

They played together a bit - then the elk moved on to catch up with his herd.


It's not a trivial task keeping elk out of a garden ... that elk could clear that gate without thinking about it ... although he'd prefer just pushing it over.

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