Wildlife

Ferocious is a perfect blend of witty dialogue, quirky characters, and nightmarish horror. But what else could we expect from Jeff Strand?
When Mia’s parents die in an accident, it’s up to her reclusive, misanthropic uncle Rusty to step up and care for his baby niece. He’s in no way equipped to take on the role of parent, and it’s nothing he ever expected of his life, but he’s determined to do the best job he can.
Surprisingly enough, he manages to do a fine job, home-schooling Mia and teaching her his woodworking trade as they live a life of quiet solitude in the forest. He may not have believed it possible at first, but Rusty managed to raise her almost to adulthood, and he’s proud of how she’s grown up.
Just as Rusty begins to question whether he’s shortchanged Mia by raising her in such isolation, their world is shattered by wildlife gone mad. Squirrels, birds, deer, wolves, bears, and other creatures have become aggressive and determined to kill Rusty and Mia–but the aggression isn’t the hardest part to comprehend, it’s the fact that they’re all dead.
Strand drags us at breakneck speed through a sequence of events that would be horrible under the best of circumstances; but miles into the woods without any hope of salvation nearby, these are far from optimal conditions.
Scott Thomas’s narration captures the wry wit of the two protagonists even as they grow increasingly exhausted and violated as the narrative progresses. The quality of the narration never took away from this being a Jeff Strand story, and that’s something to be proud of.

We spent a much smaller amount of time in Seattle on our second day there. Leaving our hotel shortly before 8:30 AM on Thursday, June 27th of 2019, we headed North.

In Everett, Washington we decided to stop at the Evergreen Arboretum & Gardens shortly before 10 AM. It was a nice place to spend 40 minutes or so, walking the paths amidst the flowers and trees…as well as the numerous sculptures on the grounds. We’d made it through Seattle a bit faster than expected, and we were running early anyhow.

Photos from the Evergreen Arboretum & Gardens are below.

Continuing North from Everett, we made our way to Arlington before heading East toward our destination. We’d visited The Outback Kangaroo Farm in June of 2017, having been made aware of the place by my friend Mindy a couple of years earlier. It was such an enjoyable experience the previous time we’d been in the region that we had to visit there again.

What’s not to like about watching lemurs devour bananas, being able to hand-feed kangaroos, getting alpaca kisses, and interacting with numerous other animals? I can’t recommend this place enough, for anyone who loves wildlife of all kinds.

A nice bonus during our second visit, one of the mothers had a joey still peeking out from her pouch. Photos of the kangaroos are below.

Traveling South from Arlington until we reached the Stevens Pass Highway, we intended to hike to Lake Serene, but there were so many vehicles already at the trailhead that we opted to avoid the crowd. Instead, we took a smaller trail down to the South Fork Skykomish River and enjoyed the scenery there.

In addition to clear water and excellent views of the surrounding mountain peaks, we saw what appeared to be claw marks of river otters near the edges of some of the large stone surfaces lining the edge of the river. We stuck around for a little while, hoping that we might catch some glimpses of the otters themselves, but we had no luck. Photos from the river are below.

Shortly after 3 PM, we decided it was time to return to Seattle.

We arrived at our hotel at roughly 5:30 PM and remained there until a little after 9 PM before we decided we should find something for dinner. Options were a bit slim, and we settled on Little Caesars in Kent, since it wasn’t altogether too far from where we were…and we didn’t much feel like sitting down in a restaurant that late in the day.