I thought it would be simple enough: Just tell a story about the animals in my back yard in Evanston, and ask people to share their stories. Hundreds of e-mails later, I now know with certainty that one of the oldest and most dependable of newspaper themes, animal stories, still works.
It was a column on a Tuesday a few weeks ago, and frankly it was not heavy lifting. Sometimes column writing is like that in the summer. It’s easy to write and fun and not of great substance, so not much thought is required.
What a surprise.
The only thing I can think of that has drawn more responses than animal stories is, of course, “The Dog Story” that every columnist gets to write just once. You spend your life immersed in policy stuff and weighty issues, but it’s raccoons and squirrels that draw a big response, that and any column in which you argue your mutt is the best danged dog in the whole world, which, of course, he is.
Here are just a few stories — but certainly not all because there isn’t enough paper to print them — telling what you had to say about animals at your place.
It’s a wild kingdom sampler.
You can find many more at chicagotribune.com/wildkingdom.
Some of them say as much about the sweetness of people as they say about the wild kingdoms that are our back yards. I haven’t fooled with them at all; some are short, some are long.
But all of them are yours.
NORTH BARRINGTON — One year we came home from a trip, and my husband thought that perhaps the pool man didn’t do a very good job. It looked as if there were clods of dirt and upon closer examination discovered that they were baby snapping turtles!
About 10 made it and a couple did die, but my sons found it very interesting. (We did put them back in the creek.) We see great blue herons; we have had baby owls nesting in my lights near the front door, robins making nests in my windowsills; every year we have a doe come and have her fawns.
This year we have a single fawn and a deer with twins! I have seen wood ducks kill one of their own that was injured, (He sat on it until it drowned), and foxes and coyote, and there is a woodchuck under our outbuilding. There is a muskrat that we see swimming in the creek. I have hummingbirds;, I have seen a kingfisher when we had small fish in the creek. That was pretty cool to see him dive into the water and come up with a small fish.
“There are opossums, chipmunks and those crafty squirrels. I have heard and seen a great horned owl and watched as the crows try to make him leave the area. Red-tailed hawks attacking my songbirds. I know one is in the area when I see all the birds “freeze” in the tree.
— Deborah Zuhlke
WILLOWBROOK — For 15 years it’s been my joy to live in a lovely little condo on a lovely little lake surrounded by wildlife and woods — just one fourth mile east of Route 83 of Illinois Highway 83 of and one mile north of I55 Interstate 55 in Willowbrook — a busy, busy area.
Once just a wetland, our serene little lake features parades of mama and papa geese, a sight to behold each year with their six to eight young, heads held high, floating in a perfectly straight single line — all wild, and just where they belong. Just six weeks ago, 2 two coyotes emerged from the nearby woods and stalked my adult son, who was out walking my dog, a Westie. Many coyotes have been spotted since — even a pack of six!
I carry a big stick now, and fear has replaced joy.
— Dolores Duncan
SPRINGFIELD — In 1998 I was living in a small town in southern Illinois. One night the toilet in my main bathroom was running, so I lifted the toilet tank cover to take a peek. Well, peeking back at me was a snake of unknown origin and species.
Not being a zookeeper, herpetologist or conservation officer, I let my next action be guided by discretion as opposed to valor — I put the toilet tank lid right back on and vacated the bathroom. After all, the toilet really wasn’t running all that fast! Because it was 11 p.m. on a Friday and my three grandsons were already sleeping, I resisted the idea of tossing a hand grenade into the tank. Besides, I had no desire to kill the creature; I just didn’t want to share my quiet moments of contemplation with it.
I crawled into bed, making sure to check the floor for the creature’s relatives. During the night, I spent a few moments off and on pondering just how it got there and how it was going to exit. By morning I had come to a few conclusions.
From the short glimpse I got of it, I was reasonably sure that it was something more like a garter snake than a king cobra, but it was a very short glimpse. Unfortunately, I was also convinced that it was part of a whole family of reptiles who inhabited all my toilet tanks and under-sink areas. I also was pretty sure I knew how the head of the family had come into my house in the first place.
The questions that remain are: When did he crawl into the toilet tank; and, how did he get into the tank? Also, if I hadn’t discovered him, could he have gotten out again?
For some reason, I was out of bed earlier than usual the next morning making sure to check the floor for tank escapees first of course. Two long hours later I anxiously called the pest control people and was told, “I don’t do snakes.”
The grenade idea briefly came to mind again, but I also thought about my neighbor and co-worker, a real outdoorsman if I’d ever met one. I called him, and before it was over a whole posse was there. The conclusion was boringly anticlimactic. Larry took the lid off, and Bill just reached in and got him. The snake was liberated to the field behind my house, and I hope he hasn’t stopped crawling yet!
Presently I live in Springfield, and nothing more exciting than the day-to-day battle to keep the squirrels from gobbling all of the birdseed ever occurs here.
— Mike Cremeens
LIBERTYVILLE — About six or seven years ago, while working in the yard, I heard what sounded like a bleating sound around the corner of the house. It turned out to be a very small young fawn that apparently had lost its mother.
I started talking to the fawn, obviously unaware in my ignorance that he had positively no idea what I was saying. To make a long story short, he walked over to me. He followed me around the yard, so I went inside, got some carrots and he ate them out of my hand.
We have deer on our property every day. I don’t ever recall a day that I haven’t seen at least one. You get to know and recognize them. But never had one come closer then about 8 or 10 feet. They eat everything in sight, including the plants from flower boxes that were attached to the house (we finally gave up — they are now gone). They stand and stare at us through the windows, and there are a few spots where they usually just lie down and rest near the house.
The young fawn was a huge anomaly, given that he essentially adopted us. He was in the yard every day, always walked up to us, ate out of our hand and allowed us to pet him. We ended up naming him Stanley. During that time frame of a few weeks, our daughter and family from Texas visited us. Their youngest son, about 10 at the time, fell in love with Stanley. Of course, we were concerned for his health and safety, without a mother. We were also concerned that either the raccoons or coyotes, both of which are abundant in our yard, would injure him.
So we started making calls to see if there wasn’t someone or some agency that would take him. A week’s effort turned up nothing from any governmental or private agency. Finally, my favorite bartender suggested a farm in Wisconsin, where he has a friend with many deer on the property. A few days later, he came to the house. Stanley, as usual, was on our property, and when I went out, he came over to me. I picked him up, put him in the back seat of the car, and they drove him up to Wisconsin.
I wondered why the deer would remain on the farm in Wisconsin, but was reminded that when you are fed every day, you tend to stay close to home, which was the case, not only of Stanley, but of all the other deer on the property as well.
Stanley was very small when we found him. I have seen pictures of him, and he has grown into a 24-point buck, something I have never before in my life seen, except in pictures. I can’t help wondering if he would remember us.
— Ric Potenz
