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Getting to Know All Around You
Be careful of those sewing needles, Mom used to warn, or they’ll sew up your lips!
I doubt she believed that the dragonflies flitting about our
yard did such a thing. It probably was her way of keeping at least one
critter on the correct side - the outside - of the kitchen door.
Early on Dad taught us kids that few, if any, northland
creatures small enough to fit into jars are dangerous. (This lesson
nearly got me into trouble on a visit to France when I casually reached
out to catch a viper in my hostess’ garden. She stopped me with a
phrase that sounded a lot like what Mom used to cry out, but in a
foreign language.)
My siblings, my dad and I treated our yard like the setting
for a Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom episode. Remember Marlin Perkins
yelling, “You get the capture net, Jim!” or my personal
favorite, done in a whisper, “Behind me, Jim is wrestling the giant
killer anaconda in the water?”
 Mom, on the other hand, did her best to follow the Born Free model,
releasing the garter snakes, copper bellies (northern red-bellies),
fireflies, butterflies and whatevers back into the wild. If she caught
us in time at the door, she sternly warned, “Do NOT bring that into the
house.” Then we and our “capture” jars stayed on the porch.
Mom’s exception to her out-of-the-house rule was any bird that flew
into our front window. A small thump on the glass sent Mom running
outside, cooing and picking up the dizzy little winged things in apron
or dish cloth and, if injury warranted, fixing up a box for the night.
Mom had a soft spot for injured birds and neighbor kids in any state of
health. They were always welcomed into the kitchen to eat.
These days I don’t do much collecting, at least not voluntarily. We
do seem to have an explosion of chipmunk holes in the yard. Since I
can’t distinguish one chippie from another, I call them all Alvin. Last
summer, I tried to reroute Alvin’s home building from where we park the
dog. First, I pushed dirt back into the hole. When Alvin redug it, I
set a small boulder on it one morning. After work, I pulled into the
driveway to the glare of Alvin brooding on the boulder, obviously
offended. I moved the rock and the dog’s tie-out spot.
At a recent neighborhood meeting, I discovered ours is called “the
rabbit house,” - as in, “Oh, you live in the rabbit house” - due to the
Rabbit Crossing sign near the driveway and the rising hare population
that frequents the “bird” feeding platform. Deer, by the way, cannot be
fed in Duluth’s city limits. I intend to install a sign by the feeders
this year to warn: “No Deer, Please, By City Ordinance.”
While I was content to gather up interesting neighbors into jars,
others learn something about them. Sparky Stensaas,
photographer-naturalist-writer, does his Wild Kingdom thing with a
camera (Mom would approve) and really knows his stuff. His writing and photography on our pages
beautifully showcases our region’s dragonflies (or sewing needles).
He never mentions the stitching up part.
Brian and Shawn Malone, whose photo portfolio you’ll see in this
issue, find incredible Lake Superior images in their back yard. They
scoop them up with a camera, too. Again, Mom would have preferred this
method.
Writer Paul Lundgren, whose hungry mug fills this issue’s cover, is
more active than me in his neighborhood collecting. He doesn’t wait for
things to show up in his yard but goes place to place around the Twin
Ports and collects tips on where to send his friends (and our readers).
It’s a different kind of adventure and one that I’m more than eager to
sample myself. I still prefer personal involvement to living
vicariously like Marlin Perkins. You won’t hear me saying, “See Paul
wrestling a growler of Sir Duluth Oatmeal Stout,” without my own glass
in hand.
Yes, I will growler on my own. I humbly suggest that you join me in the same.
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