When Is a Pond Not a Pond?When It's a Gravel Pit

When you hear the words "gravel pit," chances are you think of Fred Flintstone operating a brontosaurus bulldozer and excavating boulders from a dry, dusty quarry. That's what I think of, anyway.

So people probably wonder why I call the pond near our house a gravel pit. That's what Mike and his parents call it. So that's what I call it.

The Story of the Gravel Pit
The pond started out as a Flintstone-like gravel pit. In the 1980s, contractors who were rebuilding State Highway 56 asked residents if they'd be willing to sell fill in order to provide a base for the road. Mike's parents, who lived on 40 acres at the time, obliged. Gravel was dug out from a five-acre area. The excavation went below the water table, creating a spring-fed gravel pit.

The spring-fed gravel pit near our house.

If you go wading in the water off the main beach, you'll follow a long, long slope where the water gradually gets knee high, then chest high, then shoulder high. That's the driveway where the trucks entered the pit to collect gravel and sand. But at any moment, the water depth can plunge to 15 feet. One old-school fisherman says some parts of the gravel pit are 65 feet deep. But the jury is still out on that one.

If Jerry can make it to the top
of the bluff, he's in good shape.

The topsoil that was taken off the sand and gravel was bulldozed and bermed into a 25-foot-high bluff. It provides a "Rocky"-type workout for my dog Jerry. If he can make it all the way up to the top, he's in good shape. Lately he's able to make it up only halfway, as he's been out of commission for a couple of weeks. He stepped on a piece of glass on a secluded trail at the pit and cut an artery in his foot. So I confine his romps to the main beach.

The Gravel Pit Changes Owners
Locals still refer to the gravel pit as "Maricles' Pond," even though the land changed hands some 30 years ago. Mike's parents sold 25 acres of their land to the DNR for $9,000 -- a decent price back in the day. The DNR was interested in turning the land into a WMA, or  Wildlife Management Area, a place to preserve wildlife and provide public access to fishing and hunting. Mike's parents sold because the gravel pit had become a headache: loud parties, drug deals, dangerous characters. Also, the DNR pointed out that Mike's parents would be liable for any injuries.

And when you mix beer and bodies of water, an accident is waiting happen.

Shortly after the sale a guy backed his pickup to the water's edge, dove off the truck bed into the water, and hit his head on a rock. He was temporarily paralyzed. Mike's parents would have been on the hook had they still owned the land.

The Gravel Pit Gets Trashed

Members of Triton High School E.A.R.T.H.:
Environmental Awareness and Responsibility at Triton High.

Broken glass and empty cans aren't the only things partiers leave behind. Over the years, people have used the WMA as an unceremonious dumping ground for flat-screen TVs and computer monitors. In June, students from Triton High School's E.A.R.T.H. Patrol  collected 12 bags of trash and a truckload of old electronics. On a recent hot dry day, a woman who brought her dog for a swim noticed the fire pit was smoldering. She doused the fire pit, then disposed of the bag of trash I had picked up. So there is hope.

Maricles' Pond Is Minnesota's Pond
The 25 acres of land no longer belongs to our family, but technically it does. It belongs to all Minnesotans. And we all have an obligation to preserve it. If I ever win the lottery, I'll buy back the land from the DNR. Until then, when I drive on State Highway 56, I'm satisfied knowing that our gravel is providing the foundation.


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Don't Bogart that WMA, Dude!

God's Eye Is on the Sparrow -- and Also the Killdeer

My husband Mike has a penchant for bringing home orphaned or abandoned animals. When he and my son Wyatt came in with a closed cardboard box, and Wyatt asked, "Guess what's inside?," I couldn't.

Inside the box was a baby killdeer. Mike explained he and Wyatt saw the chick standing alone on the road after a hawk had swooped through. The parents weren't around so Wyatt picked it up. "Let's call him Larry," Wyatt suggested.

"Why Larry?," I asked.

"Larry Bird," my basketball enthusiast son explained.

Killdeer are plentiful here in southeast Minnesota. Mike was familiar with the breed. They wouldn't eat grain, but instead needed live insects or worms. Mike turned on the garden hose and ran water into the parched soil. No worms appeared. And the bird refused to eat the insects Mike caught for him. 

"You probably should have left him on the road," I said.

"I know. But I'm an old softie," Mike admitted. 

He persuaded Larry to swallow a few mouthfuls of water. Then Mike prepared a hot water bottle for Larry's box. The bird spent the night in my studio, away from curious cats.

The next day we contacted Oxbow Park in Olmsted County, a wildlife manager at Rice Lake State Park, and a person with the Rochester DNR. They all suggested the same thing: try to get a killdeer family to adopt the chick. 

Mike and I got into his truck and slowly drove around. After awhile we found a spot where a couple of killdeer circled. Mike took Larry and placed him on the ground, as killdeer spend most of their time there. We drove down the road a ways so we could watch if the adult killdeer accepted him. They didn't.

"I don't know if Larry could keep up if someone did adopt him," Mike said.

We went back to the cornfield to retrieve Larry.

We went back to the cornfield to retrieve Larry. I held the bird in my cupped hands to warm him. Protruding bones felt like bumps all over his body. He was as fragile as an empty walnut shell. 

“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” I said, as Mike continued driving.

We passed a barn, a cornfield, and a farmhouse with a fundamentalist warning posted above the mailbox. I read the sign.

“Jesus is coming. Are you ready?,” I asked Larry.

“His eye is on the sparrow. But not on the killdeer,” Mike remarked.

We circled the block. Usually, killdeer mates dart back and forth anywhere you care to look. Today, none could be found.

Mike and I thought about the options for Larry. A swift bullet through the heart? A quick twist of the neck? We didn't have the heart for any of them. "We'll probably end up putting him through college," I said.

Back at home, we mixed up a batch of sugar water. Mike held Larry’s beak to the cup  and he drank several mouthfuls. Larry’s lethargy gave way to a sugar high. Later in the day, Mike figured out how to feed him worms. He pureed them.

“In my blender?,” I asked warily.

“No, I used a small canning jar. The blender blades fit in the bottom of the jar.” I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
 

Despite my initial trepidation, I looked forward to sharing stories about Larry as he grew and feathered out. Releasing him in a few weeks when he could survive on his own. Singing “Born Free” as he circled the skies and came back to visit us.

The next morning was 10 degrees cooler than the previous morning. Mike opened the box. “Larry’s dead,” he said. We were both silent. 

“At least I tried. I didn’t just leave him there.  He got an extra day,” Mike said.

He got an extra day, all right. An extra day of safety and comfort, because an old softie stopped on the road and couldn’t pass by. And for Mike and me, our biggest worry for a few hours wasn't money -- but keeping a chick alive.

Maybe God’s eye was on the killdeer, after all. 

Single White Swan Desires Mate

Somebody in southeast Minnesota doesn't like swans.

There's a farm outside of Wasioja with a pond and a single white swan swimming alone on it. A few years ago someone shot and killed the swan's mate. My mother-in-law tells me the lone swan is actually half of a second pair. A previous pair of swans had also been shot, with both birds killed.

Usually, swans hide when someone approaches. This one welcomed company.

I don't know if the swan is a cob (male) or a pen (female). Cobs are larger than pens.
But it's hard to compare sizes when there's only one swan.

After a few minutes, it did what swans do.

I hope to talk to the owners to find out if they've tried to re-mate the swan,
has the killer ever been caught,  or what will happen to the swan when the pond freezes.

Someday, I hope to come back and see the swan with a mate.

Related Posts
Don't Bogart That WMA, Dude
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Don't Bogart That WMA, Dude

Minnesotans have had it drilled into their heads by the Republican-led Legislature: Tax increases are off the table. We must live within our means. That means cutting corners, eliminating wastefulness, searching under the sofa cushions. Even combing through cornfields.

It's corn harvesting time in southeastern Minnesota. On a walk with my dog, I noticed a harvested cornfield that extended beyond a sign that designated the land as a Wildlife Management Area. WMAs are land parcels with high potential for wildlife production and are held by the DNR for public use. In this particular case, about two acres of a 20-acre WMA are being used for private corn planting.

The public land between the sign and the
stand of trees is a victim of Creeping Corn Syndrome.

How widespread is that practice, I wondered. Is the state getting rent from these farmers. If not, how much money is Minnesota losing. What could the DNR be doing with those funds.

Wildlife Management Areas in Minnesota started as a Save the Wetlands program in 1951. Today there are 1,440 WMAs in the state, comprising over 1.29 million acres of wetland, brushland, forest and prairie. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? What harm could a couple of acres here and there do, right?

Why It Matters
Say 700 of those 1,440 WMAs are next to farmland. And say 10 percent of that 700 are losing two acres of land to the farmer next door. That means 140 acres of public land are being used for private farming. It costs a farmer anywhere from $100 to $200 to rent an acre of farmland; let's split the difference and say $150. That would mean Minnesota is losing out on $21,000 of revenue per year.

And if the practice has been going on for five years? Over $100,000 in lost revenue.

Feathers Get Ruffled
My husband Mike estimates that hunting lands in this area have decreased by about fifty percent in the past 20 years, for a number of reasons:

• What used to be hunting land is now privately owned farmland.
• Owners of land that sustains wildlife are less willing to let others hunt on it.
• Private owners of farmland further diminish the wildlife habitat if they mow the ditches that abut the farmland. By doing so, they're eliminating the cover for pheasants and other wildlife. 

So if two acres are bogarted from an area that has steadily been reduced, feathers get ruffled. And not just the feathers of hunters, whose license fees help pay for the preservation of WMAs. Any wildlife enthusiast who enjoys photography or nature walks is getting cheated.

What Should Be Done
There are a number of ways that offending farmers can make this right with Minnesota:

• Stop planting on public land.
• Continue planting on public land but leave the crops standing for wildlife to enjoy.
• Continue planting on public land but pay Minnesota rent for what they use.

With the added revenue, the DNR could do a number of things. Mike would like to see pheasants restocked. Or incentives offered to thin predators like coyotes that prey on livestock and pets. I'd like to see an Adopt a WMA program, similar to the Adopt a Highway program. Citizens would be responsible for picking up the beer bottles and cans and small appliances that others feel compelled to leave behind.

If there's another side to this story, I'd love to hear it. "Live within your means" should also mean "Farm within your means." In other words, don't bogart that WMA, dude.

Encountering Bears, Overcoming Obstacles

My friend Suerae Stein blogged about how an encounter with a bear on the road helped her face up to a medical challenge. Her post is funny, moving and powerful reading. It makes you think about how you meet challenges that are out of your control. And it hit home with me on a number of levels.

This summer a sow, or a female bear, and her two cubs chose the woods along Shady Pine Road for their home. My husband Mike gave me a crash course on bears:

• It's hard to believe, but bears don't want to see people any more than people want to see bears. Make noise when you're walking and bears will stay away. Ring a loud handbell, belt out a show tune. (That was my idea, not Mike's.)
• If you see a bear in the distance, turn around and walk away.
• The riskiest time for bear encounters is when cubs are just beginning to venture out. They haven't yet learned to stay away from noise. A mother bear who thinks her cub is threatened is serious business. 
• To ward off an aggressive bear -- a bear reared up on its hind legs and roaring -- be loud and make yourself big. Then get away, fast. 

Along with my antique brass sheep's bell and my library of show tunes, I often carried bear repellent, a type of ursine pepper spray:

Remove the safety cap. (It looks like an orange checkmark.)
With one hand, steady the can and with the other hand slip your finger through the ring. Aim for the bear's eyes and spray by pressing the black tab that's underneath the orange safety cap. Don't spray into the wind.

Thankfully I never had to use the bear repellent. It's a weapon, and like any weapon it can hurt the user if not used properly -- like if you spray it into an oncoming wind. 

A Powerful Metaphor
Back to Suerae. As she wondered if she reacted appropriately to the bear encounter, the bear became a powerful metaphor for a health issue that reared up on its hind legs. She asks readers to share stories on how they reacted to unexpected challenges. The unexpected challenges in my life right now: finding roadblock after roadblock while tearing into the plumbing of an old house. Some days you want to yell and stomp and make yourself big. Often, the best thing to do is turn around quietly and try again later. I'll keep you posted on how things are going.

Related Posts:
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Towering Trees and Rolling Oaks
The Disneyfication of Wildlife

A Place Where Ideas Can Grow

Mike and his dad are finishing assembling my studio. It was the first thing on his list, even before the kitchen and bathroom renovation. It’s as important to Mike as it is to me that I have alone time. I don’t take it personally. I can be hard to live with when I'm writing.

He has thoughtfully planned it and located it, under a tree which I call the Whomping Willow, on the north side of the house so I won’t bake in the sun.

I love this idea from The Artful Blogger by Suerae Stein at Red Barn Artworks because I’m always looking for storage ideas that make sense to me. 

A pre-fab garden shed is all it is, but it's my studio, my alone place, and it's mine, mine, mine. 

Towering Trees and Rolling Oaks

When I walk down Shady Pine Road, sometimes the passing trees remind me of  a Hanna-Barbera cartoon background. They go on and on and on.

And sometimes they're the cathedral in which I worship. 

 We lost several trees to storms last week. 

And we've lost a few more to developers. No wonder subdivisions and developments have street names like "Rolling Oaks." The oaks are rolling because earth movers roll them out of the way.

Dogs and Beavers and Water Don't Mix

Open swimming at the pond has been slapped shut by a couple of beaver tails.

And I'm lucky that my dog Jerry wasn't seriously injured or worse.

The pond on the 80 acres across the road has been low for the past several years, leaving the entrance to the beaver lodge high and dry and the structure uninhabited. After this year's snowy winter and rainy spring, the swelled pond called to more critters than swimming dogs. The exiled beavers returned.

My dog Watch wasn't a swimmer, so I'd never been to the pond when the beaver lodge was occupied. A few days ago I watched the top of a bony brown head skim through the water, followed by a ker-thunk of the surface. Jerry swam out to see what was causing the commotion, navigating the 350-yard circumference of the pond. I was thrilled to find an activity to burn up the Weimaraner's boundless energy. I took Jerry for two and three swims a day.

Sometimes the dog and the beaver would swim straight at each other, other times Jerry followed the beaver. When it dove underwater,  Jerry would swim to where the beaver disappeared. I watched with uneasy fascination. The action resembled this video. You can't help but hold your breath when you watch it.



Real beavers don't resemble this video. They're not benign, befuddled critters who chatter away with a lateral S. A real beaver is a three-foot-long rodent with nonstop-growing teeth.  Beavers have disemboweled or killed dogs in defense of their home or their young, I learned with a Google. Thus, open swim sessions are now closed.

With a territorial porcupine to the west, a bear's den to the north, and beavers to the south, the eighty acres across the road is shrinking.

But since beavers mate for life, who's to deny them their lifelong contentment.

Media sources: photo from The Wilderness Classroom, film clips from loubagel1982's and CalypsoDogs' YouTube channels.

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The Disneyfication of Wildlife

The Disneyfication of Wildlife

On a back-road trek to the Bruno Thrift Store this morning, I stopped the car as three deer darted across the road. The smallest one, a yearling, kept on running. The two adults not only didn't run, they took a step closer to the car. Their eyes traveled from the front end to the rear, probably wondering what this jazzy little yellow thing was doing in a world of two-ton pickup trucks.

I put the car in idle and wished for my digital camera, as I was close enough to the deer to see the pattern of their nose leather. When one of the deer lowered its head, my reverie was replaced by the reality of what deer can do at this close range. They can charge. They can do extensive damage. I continued to town.

It's easy, even when you live in the middle of the woods, to engage in the Disneyfication of wildlife. Had I turned on my heel the moment I'd seen that porcupine, instead of watching it as if Rex Allen would start narrating at any moment, my dog Jerry may have been spared a snoutful of quills.

Queer Eye for the Bovine Guy
When the animated movie Barnyard came out several years ago, it irked me to see the main character, a foolhardy young bull named Otis, with udders. As if children wouldn't be able to identify a cow, or more properly a bovine, without them. I fumed about it all the way home. "Mom, it's just a movie," my son Wyatt reminded me. Apparently I'm not the only blogger who raised objections to the gender-bending bull.

I'm guilty of the same practice, that is referring to bovines as cows, even the males, because the terminology is more readily understood. But a lack of precise knowledge about livestock and wildlife, in my opinion, is what results in children in zoos getting injured because they want to pet the nice animal.

Chew on this: a memo to Jerry

To: Jerry     
From: Your Owner     
RE: Chewing
Dear Jerry:
Chew on this.
Not on the snowboot that is now an opened-toe snowboot. Such footwear is impractical for Minnesota winters.
Snowboots help you enjoy scenes such as the one you see here.
Chew on that.
That is all.
Y.O.

Fox, Meet Fredo

Last month I wrote about our farm's No Mean Animals Rule, and what happened to the  guinea fowl  who violated it.

Tonight Fredo has company.

My husband Mike plugged one of the foxes who has been snagging poultry from our farm. Mike was outside working on The Pentagon, a five-sided chicken coop, and at the same time preparing his deer stand for the upcoming season. While taking a break he saw a fox run through the front yard with a hen in its mouth.

The fox was so intent on catching the chicken he didn't even notice Mike was there. Using a few choice invectives, Mike hollered at the fox to get away. The fox dropped the hen, who escaped. Mike was able to get his hands on his rifle, a Winchester Model 94 .22 Magnum. From 75 yards away he took aim at the fox. Down, instantly.

A few months ago on my Facebook page someone had posted photos of a dead fox, and they were the topic of conversation all day. So I thought I'd post one here. The fox was a full-grown male, having grown lean and strong on free-range chicken. The shot was so clean he looks as if he's sleeping. With those long legs and bottle-brush tail, it's amazing how such a beautiful animal could be so destructive.

On a farm you don't celebrate killing as much as you celebrate survival. And a few more chickens will get to live out the year instead of being spirited off, which had to have been a terrifying experience.

When The Pentagon is completed later this month we'll find out for sure how many chickens have been lost this summer. The ones that were left gathered in a small circle as Mike laid the corpse out. If they could, the chickens would have sung "Ding Dong The Fox Is Dead."

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Turkey theme song? This is it!

Turkeys never fail to make me smile. They carry themselves in a dignified yet comical fashion. Maybe it's the befuddled expression that does it for me.

This morning I picked my 13-year-old son Wyatt up from a sleepover. County Road 43 is a two-lane back road that twists through the woods of northern Pine County. It's a road that sees plenty of wildlife traffic and just enough automotive traffic to cull the population. I maneuvered around a dead raccoon here, a dead skunk there.

On the eastbound route home, driving into the morning sun added to the challenge of navigating curves and wildlife. (Deer are entering their rutting, or mating season, which means they dart across the road more often than usual.  Safe driving tips  from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources  will help you avoid them.)

As I turned a curve against the sunlight I saw a single file of turkeys crossing the road. The classic rock radio station was playing Dire Straits'  "Walk of Life."

The bebopping instrumental and the head bobbing of the turkeys couldn't have been timed better if choreographed!



Flickr photo credits: Sage, Sarah B. in SD

Smelly Bugs Are in the Air.Smelly Bugs Are Everywhere.

A few years ago I was raking leaves on a day very much like this one: unseasonably warm and sunny, except it was after the winter instead of before it. A cloud of Asian lady beetles surrounded me as I raked and grumbled, with this poem effortlessly taking shape:

Smelly bugs are in the air,
Smelly bugs are everywhere.
They look like ladybugs, I think,
But boy oh boy! Do they ever stink!
They fly, they bite, they cover the door,
They're like a carpet on the floor.
Smelly bugs, I hate them so.
I almost wish we still had snow.

Asian lady beetles have been known as smelly bugs at our house ever since.

The smelliness comes from a defensive reaction known as reflex bleeding, according to a  USDA fact sheet  that tells  you more about Asian lady beetles than you ever thought you'd want to know. The best way to trap them, says the USDA, is attract them with light, then sweep or vaccum up. Better still, keep them out by caulking exterior cracks and crevices.

But once you go out, they'll be waiting for you.

Flickr photo credit:  Burnt Umber  Poem was printed in the Askov American and appears here with editor Colette Stadin's consent. Read an Askov American column  by former editor Marlana Benzie-Lourey and reprinted in MinnPost.