Button Bucj
Wednesday, July 16th, 2003By Dr. Everett Vreeland
In evening a young deer actually strolled unperturbed though wary, through my front yard. He was well fed but gangly, as yearlings are anywhere. The evident horn buds on his cranium told me his age, as acne often does in our genera, but here gave me his age and sex, as it often does not in our genera. He was alert yet unperturbed as he stopped to gaze at and evaluate the collection of machinery and vehicles that were across the road and never there as he gamboled and played behind his mom on this same trail a year ago. After his evaluation he visibly drew a deep breath, turned, and went back to my wood lot. There was, for certain, a sadness in his body language that we shared.
This is the time when hummingbirds exhibit rampant territory protection as they “squeal their tires” threatening anyone in their claimed area. I was watching this quietly this a.m. and the hummer went into “hover” mode in an area where a phoebe was alert for flying insects. The phoebe dove in a reflex way to grab the “biggest durn bug ever saw” only to swerve at the last instant, profiting by the experience - and shocked I’m sure.
Two things of note occurred in the natural world this day. At daybreak a fluttering chickadee pulled stuffing from a worn corner of an outdoor pillow out on the deck by my bedroom. Not unusual in April - but July? It means they are mating and nesting again for the second or third time. Chickadee supply will be okay this winter.
Later as I turned my car down river, my eye trained to the scene, spotted a group of some kind. They were on a new sandbar revealed by low water about a quarter mile away. The river mist and a rising sun made it look like a whole new world as I was treated to the sight of an extended deer family enjoying the river. The older doe was wary but four others cavorted in the water obviously pleased to be away from deer flies for a while. Two fawns chased each other and two yearlings simply stood up to their bellies in water content - like myself.
Across the road from my home three machines moved into a refreshing woodland. Other than mature oaks, maples, beech, and ash, there were other lives. Those of new young birds, mammals, amphibians all just getting used to living in the forest they were born in this spring. Here were the larva of katydids we wait to hear and tree frogs that serenade on hot summer days. There were young fawns squirrels, coons, possums, and chipmunks all learning to fit into a miraculous balance. In three days the trees were torn down and trunks loaded onto trucks while the tops were fed into a huge chipper. The woodland was no more. The focus now was to get a house into the space as fast as possible and none of the participants had knowledge of what was lost.
The only destruction I have seen to match that was of Pacific Islands under the guns and bombs of the US Navy. That was called war, this is called progress.
