~a column by Colleen O’Brien
There are reasons why they’re called dumb bunnies and bird brains, these backyard friends of mine. I have to wait for the bunny to get out of the way when I pull into my driveway; he spends much of the day munching clover there, and he never twitches a velvety ear at the thought that I might run over him. And the cardinal that flies out of the lilac bush and into my window each morning – is he blind? Is it vanity that lures him as he sees his reflection and can’t resist it? Or does he think it’s a cousin he wants to visit with or an enemy he wants to peck to death? Whatever, he is surely a bird brain now if he wasn’t before, brain damaged beyond hope after a summer of flying out of his nest and straight into my window several times a day.
The rest of the yard is busy with bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, a moth that looks like a hummingbird, thin green, airy bugs that look like the flower stems they hang out on, millions of spiders and their complicated, lacy, intricate condos.
The squirrels are a busy bunch. Some say they’re always gathering for winter; I think all they do is play and live up to the adjective squirrely. One of them makes the daily trek along the power line of my alley, his high wire antics laughable. Right at my window, he often seems to fall, clinging precariously upside down, breathlessly, all fours to the wire, when he suddenly rights himself and scampers on, across the street and into the broken garage window of my neighbor.
One afternoon as I sat reading my book outdoors, I suddenly became aware of moving ground. It was an army a foot wide, maybe 10 feet long of medium-sized ants marching from the alley along one of my brick paths, over to the side yard, turning around and marching back through the rear guard – it was almost a marching band maneuver. I never saw them again. Apparently the enemy or the food source or the new home that they were scouting out was not where they thought it should be and they had to retrace, retreat. Let’s hope give up the war and go out for a glass of beer and a bowl of peanuts . . . at the neighbor’s of course, not at in my kitchen.
There are robins, sparrows, jenny wrens, black birds, blue jays, once in a while a goldfinch and the lovely if bird-brained cardinals. I have occasional on-the-wing sightings of hawks, ravens and buzzards. My desire is to see an indigo bunting, but so far no luck. I would also like a resident meadowlark, my favorite songbird, but my backyard is not meadow enough for him. I hear woodpeckers but never see them. The wounded dove that hobbles along on my bricks scares both me and himself as he flutters dumbly in my path.
One summer five baby barn owls flew into my linden each evening about dusk, and the neighbors gathered around to peer up at them as they peered down at us. I hear the chickadee daily, the bird my sister thought was calling to her on her way to kindergarten oh so many years ago; we have ever since called him the Dee Dee bird.
I sat in my daughter’s backyard in Cincinnati this spring startled to see a hawk swoop down nearly alongside me, glide up, snatch a baby bird from her nest under the neighbor’s eve and fly away to his own nest two houses down. It was nature red in tooth and claw, my son-in-law saying, “Yes! My yard is Nat. Geo!”
I sat in my son’s backyard in Reno startled to see a two-foot-tall great gray owl in the neighbor’s pine tree. He was eyeballing something near the swimming pool but flew away when I pointed at him. I had never seen such a big fellow before.
Two summers ago I saw standing by my garage a buck deer with heavy antlers. I live in the inner city of Jefferson, a block and a half off downtown. I ran out to get a closer look and he was gone, off to someone else’s even more delicious flower garden.
My friend on the outskirts of Jefferson had foxes in her backyard for years, each spring the kits gamboling on her hillside. If I lived in the country, I suppose I might see coyotes or raccoons, minks, martens, maybe bobcats? I hear there are 12 eagles down by Jackson Bridge. I’ve seen blue herons there but no muskrats or beaver.
The funniest animal I ever saw in the wild was a porcupine, but that was on a farm in Italy. He waddled along the narrow, winding road at midnight in front of our headlights, oblivious to us and any diversionary tactic that could have suggested he veer right or left and remove himself from harm’s way. That was a sighting of almost childlike joy to me who thought that perhaps porcupines were mythical creatures.
The point of all this listing of the fauna of backyards I have known and loved is only an exercise in wonder – we do live in Nat. Geo., and it’s a constant source of pleasure. It is summer in Iowa, so verdant and lush, full of food and good hiding places and critters as busy with their lives as we ever thought of being. However citified we may be, we are all intensely interested in wild creatures who pay us no mind. We flock to zoos and butterfly houses and if lucky, in our own backyards come face to face with our personal Nat. Geos.
