When the snow still lay six feet deep, my partner suddenly spotted something and pointed it with a surprise out of the dining room window in our apartment during lunch. In the direction of his pointing, I saw a Japanese serow on the snow-covered ground under a tree in the grove about 30 feet away from the building.

I had never seen a Japanese serow in the residential area. Or should I rather say, I had never seen it for real altogether. It had a face like a goat and its body looked rather like a calf than a serow, covered with light brown and gray fur. I wondered why just looking at a wild animal was somehow awe-inspiring. I took my binoculars and observed it closely.
The Japanese serow was standing on its hind legs and holding on to the trunk with its forelegs. It seemed to eat the tree bark or something on the trunk. Every time a car pulled into the parking lot stretched out between the grove and the apartment building, it hid behind the tree and peeked out the lot. After people were gone, it resumed eating.
In the beginning of this winter, my partner bumped into a boar for the first time on the foot of a mountain beside the street he was walking on. The boar was staring at him at a distance of 60 feet. Its size was about a calf and with black fur and a pig-like face. He was afraid and turned back. It was the right choice since I had heard about quite a few incidents that a boar rushed into and injured people or bit them in Japan this year, which hadn’t happened so often before. Considering that much more bears than before appeared in my town last autumn, wild animals have come down to the residential area around this year far more than they used to.
It’s said that has to do with climate change. Wild animals aren’t the only ones that have been sent out of the depths of mountains. Judging from the present situation, unknown viruses that are new to human beings and stay where they’re supposed to be may continue to come out as well.
Twilight drew near and the spots in the parking lot of my apartment building were being filled up as commuters’ cars came back one after another spewing out exhaust fumes. The Japanese serow started walking back slowly. It stared over here for a while one last time as if it was trying to tell something, and plodded back on the snow, up into the mountain.