Stalked by a fawn

Staff

Published Saturday, August 23, 2008

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Things aren’t far from copacetic. The Ed Twins were over yesterday. You know their mother named them both Ed because she believed that two Eds were better than one. I remember when the Ed Twins and I were boys. Their mother told their old man that he should be a good fellow and take us all to the zoo. Their father spit out a stream of chewing tobacco and said that if the zoo wanted the Eds, it should come and get them.”

“The Ed Twins dad is still a character,” I admit.  

“That’s for sure. Yesterday morning, he told me that it’s always colder in Minnesota than it is on Wednesdays. That’s why I should eat a baloney sandwich each week.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Who knows? His mind is like a steel trap — rusty and illegal in 37 states. I’ve got my Speedo ready. It’s a great day in Hartland when each year, everyone dons a Speedo and flip-flops while we all eat sweet corn drenched in butter until we can eat no more. Once we’ve had an ample sufficiency, the volunteer fire department hoses us all down. Life is good.”

Nature lessons

Bobolinks, sometimes called “skunkbirds” because of the white-and-black markings on their backs, leave our prairies and grasslands by the end of August and migrate as far as the wetlands of southwestern Brazil and northern Argentina. Bobolinks travel as many as 12,400 miles each year on their round-trip migration.

Fawn tales

I walked to the end of my driveway to take some letters to the mailbox. 

It’s a walk I make regularly, but there was something different about this particular walk.

I was being stalked by a fawn.

I have never been a deer hunter. I watched Bambi in the movie theater when I was a small boy and I read the book, “The Yearling” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Those two things conspired to dispel any thought I may have had of hunting deer.

The baby deer was an endearing (endeering?) combination of beauty and innocence. Covered with camouflage-aiding spots, it came with five feet of me, not yet aware that I am something it should avoid.

Its twin made itself visible, too. It was larger. I assumed my stalker was a female and that its bigger sibling was a buck. He paced back and forth, flashing his white flag of a tail at a good distance from his sister. I am sure that he was giving a sibling warning that indicated danger due to stupidity.

The mother emerged from the shadows of the trees. Showing herself to me, she moved in a stiff-legged fashion meant to be an admonition to me.

A truck pulled into the end of the driveway. My new friend bleated and joined her mother and brother as they bounded away into the woods.

An oriole outing

I maintain a couple of grape jelly feeders. No, I am not feeding the grape jelly. I am feeding grape jelly to the birds.

I watched a father Baltimore oriole fly in to sample the sweet grape.

Following his flight landing, four young orioles flew in behind and crowded together at the feeder.

The young were clumsy and inept. They spilled as much jelly as they captured in their bills.

They reminded me of fishing for bullheads with my father when I was a boy.

It was sweet.

Milkweeds to the rescue

Milkweed is one of my favorite plants. They feed the caterpillars that become monarch butterflies and the flowers have a delightful scent. 

An aunt told me of collecting the seedpods of milkweeds.

Milkweed seeds have white, wispy hairs referred to as “floss.” When the seedpod opens, the seeds are distributed by the wind.

The armed services once used these in the manufacture of life preservers needed for its airmen and sailors. Life preservers were critical to the Allied success in World War II, since so much of the war was fought on or over the seas. Schoolchildren spent hours walking fencerows, roadsides and railroad right of ways looking for milkweed. Sacks were distributed to carry the collected pods and children were paid 15 cents per bag. Two bags of pods contained enough floss for one life jacket. The U.S. military called for the collection of 2 million pounds of floss nationally, enough to fill 1.2 million life jackets. The pods were picked before they opened and released their seeds. The pods doubled as handy storage units until the naturally buoyant fiber could be processed into lifejacket stuffing.

Buckthorn

Buckthorn is an invasive pest. It is a hardy, deciduous shrub or small tree that maintains its leaves into the winter. It was once sold as a landscape plant and found its way into many a hedge.

The plant reminds many of the chokecherry. Chokecherry makes a fine jam, but as a boy I was fond of eating the berries right from the tree. The berries were tart enough to produce a pucker sufficiently powerful to give me fish mouth, but I still liked them.

One year, I mistook the berries of the buckthorn for chokecherry. I ate a few. The berries had a soapy taste. The berries didn’t spend much time in my system.

For a long time, I called the buckthorn the “diarrhea bush.”

Skunked

The Arapaho had a treatment for getting sprayed by a skunk, especially in the face and eyes. It was to get a pair of stinky, old moccasins and look directly into them with the eyes wide open. The odor was said to cleanse the eyes.

If your dog is sprayed by a skunk and you have no stinky moccasins available, take 1 quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, a quarter-cup baking soda and 1 teaspoon liquid soap. Mix together and wash sprayed animal, keeping the mixture out of its eyes, nose and mouth. Leave it on for 5 minutes and rinse with tap water.

The Pelican Breeze

I’m hosting cruises on Albert Lea Lake on the Pelican Breeze on Sept. 21 and Oct. 5. Please call 383-2630 to make a reservation. 

Thanks for stopping by

“No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things.” — Channing Pollock

“A wise old owl sat on an oak. The more he saw the less he spoke. The less he spoke the more he heard. Why aren’t we like that wise old bird?” — Edward Hersey Richards

Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.

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