Author Archive

The sound was awful. After all these years I can still remember it. “Ka-CHOOK…” and suddenly there was a very damaged and very dead baby bunny. The nest had been so well concealed I had no idea I was about to run the lawnmower over it. Fortunately for the others, I...
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n spite of the deluge, our twenty plus year old tent held up fairly well. Never mind that there were little drips of water occasionally making their way onto our sleeping bags. For the previous two days we could hardly believe how nice and warm and sunny it had been, for October. Not any...
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Suddenly there it was. Right where I would never have expected it. On a window frame by the kitchen, like a little piece of jade jewelry, a chrysalis had mysteriously appeared, just hanging there, out of place, on the side of our house. Appropriately it was positioned below a model of a monarch butterfly,...
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Let’s just take a moment and talk about the birds and the bees. After all, these critters can teach us a good deal about the world. Remember, they share our need for clean air and water. You may have heard about the canary in the coal mine. Miners kept a caged bird nearby, the...
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An adult osprey was fussing with a stick, poking it very carefully into its lofty nest near the Illinois River, as fledglings looked on. It was nearly August. This late in the season it wasn’t building the nest, but rather doing a bit of housekeeping, perhaps in preparation for next year. The nest was...
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A big black insect, two inches long, with intense red eyes, landed on my hand and brazenly buzzed as I was giving a customer her change. It was the “Return To Pimiteoui Pow-wow” and I was collecting admissions. This newly arrived critter made it appear that I was actually trying to hand him to...
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