Here I was complaining about the lack of wildlife...

...because it had been nearly a week and we hadn't seen any elk or deer up close. Got my wish today! It was so pleasant today and the elk were out and about in town. About 6:15 this evening I went to my rehearsal (for A Christmas Carol) and spotted two magnificent bull elk grazing in the grass near the bottom of my driveway.

I wasn't able to get a great picture, but you can see one of them here:

When I came home, I turned onto our road and almost drove right into the two of them! They were standing in the middle of the road just hanging out. I was too scared to try to drive through them so I sat there with my brights on for a minute and they stared back at me, a little perturbed that I was disrupting their munching time, and finally I honked my horn and it spooked them just enough that they cleared off the road and I was able to drive through. I'd heard horror stories from my dad's time living in Alaska about moose ramming cars so I was worried that I might provoke these two bull elk into the same kind of anger if I drove past them, but they were content enough to let me through.