By Dennis Smith
My wife and I live on the northwestern edge of town in a subdivision real estate agents like to describe as “a quiet, older neighborhood with large trees and mature landscaping.” Strategic plantings of cedar and juniper create evergreen shields of privacy between the modest homes while patches of maple, ash and aspen trees lend an undeniably woodsy feeling to the area.
The guy next door built a small archery range and another neighbor keeps a good-sized veggie garden and a small flock of laying hens. We’re just a few blocks shy of the official city limits, but it’s no trouble at all to imagine you’re smack in the middle of farm country if his rooster starts crowing while you’re sipping coffee on the back patio at sunup, or a flock of Canada geese goes honking overhead so low you could smack them with a broomstick.
The real clincher, though, lies in the amazing variety of wildlife that lives in the neighborhood or passes through each season. We have our share of resident fox squirrels, rabbits, robins and songbirds just like everybody else, but we get some really interesting wildlife visitors, too. For the past several years foxes took up residency in the neighborhood. One frequently beds on top of our compost pile, sometimes for hours. I’ve seen him lie in wait on top of the neighbor’s tool shed on summer evenings, keeping a wary eye on the hen house. I don’t know if he had a chicken dinner yet, but I have photos of him dining on one of our cottontails. He seems to regard humans with remarkable indifference. We watched him march right down the middle of our street, moving to the sidewalk only when traffic forced him to.
Cooper’s and sharp-shinned hawks prey on the doves and finches at our bird feeders, and this winter a tiny owl hung out in the pine tree next to our back patio for a couple of weeks. I’m guessing it was either a northern saw-whet or pygmy owl, but all I know for sure is that it was extremely small and amazingly tame. We saw it only at night and always in the same tree. He didn’t seem to mind our presence at all.
Last year, a flight of common snipe landed in our yard and returned several times to probe for worms and grubs with their long bills in the lawn where the snow melted. They were followed by a family of five raccoons that made nightly visits to our frog pond for the better part of two months before we got rid of them. The ’coons were cute, but terribly destructive; they destroyed our squirrel feeders a half-dozen times before we finally decided to stop refilling them. Eventually they took the hint and quit coming around.
All of this wildlife action takes place within easy walking distance of an extremely busy convenience store, a gas station and a small industrial complex. Whenever I feel the need for a walk in the woods but time and circumstances prevent me, I just mosey out to the backyard and wait for the critters to show up. We might be on the city line, but it’s about as close to real country livin’ as you can get without giving up pizza delivery.