Corporate Voles

A couple of decades ago, West Publishing (then Thomson West and now Thomson Reuters) made the move to the burbs, trading urban bluff dwellings for a monolith surrounded by square miles of blacktop on the open prairie. The reasons included space, cheap space, and more space (I am sure there were other reasons, too, but I am sticking to the obvious).

I started working there a little more than one decade ago, and the daily trip from the parking lot to the building is somewhat of an adventure. In the summer, the blacktop traps the heat and it feels like the hike back to the car is through Dead Valley. I swear I have seen a Fata Morgana or two over the years, lush oases mirrored in the pools of boiling air. In the winter, if you shun the shuttles to company so kindly provides, one can entertain oneself with juvenile games like spitting on the ground to see whether your expectoration will bounce off the ground with a clink because it gets there flash-frozen.

There are some hiking trails and colleagues claim to have seen coyotes while taking a stroll during lunch break. I believe them because I have seen  evidence in the form of paw prints and scat. After a rain storm one can see deer tracks in some muddy puddle along the trail. Wild turkey are a common sighting, too.

I come in early enough to park near to the building and I therefore do not have too much of a hike between car, building and back. Not too much opportunity for wildlife spotting, one would think, but there is plenty.

I mentioned the savage winters. Because quite a few of us early birds do shun the shuttle and because the company fears liability, it installed a heated sidewalk along the roundabout, protecting us from slippery mishaps. One interesting phenomenon can be observed because while everywhere outside frost gets a grip on the land in late November, it does not have a chance under the heated sidewalk. The outcome is that where the footings are not below frost level, adjacent structures, mostly abutting sidewalks, are raised by up to a couple of inches, which makes the heated walkway seem sunk in.

Sunk by the heat or lifted by frost? The voles don't care, they like the heat!

The other observation I made is the surprising level of critter activity along the edge of the flower beds next to the heated sidewalk. By the time the snow melts, a well established vole colony is in evidence. Think of it, they have condos with central heat on one side and a larder well furnished with delicious and nutritious day lily rhizomes on the other.

Voles have no respect for proper decorum or corporate plantings. 

Not sure if the pest control guys can do much to keep these rodents in check where conditions are so favorable. I secretly hope they can't because I find the vole colony highly entertaining. But if West is serious about ridding itself of voles, it should consider building an in-ground pool in the vicinity. Voles love the water, but they do seem to forget that they are not very strong swimmers ...

Skunk Alert

Mike, my neighbor from across the street, had a run-in with the stow-aways in the tool shed next to his garage. It's hard to imagine how a family of skunks (Mephitis mephitis) could have possibly moved in right under his nose.

When the skunklings grew past the baby stage, the obvious could not be avoided any longer. Often, they could be seen playfully catching the first rays of the morning sun just as Mike or Molly were heading for the garage. Mike sent them scurrying by stomping his foot on the ground while still at a safe distance, but Molly thought it might be wise to start parking on the street. Christian's (not mine) and Sarah's (next door to Mike) cat Elsie made closer acquaintance. A diminutive but fearless hunter who's frequently seen with squirrels and rabbits in her fangs and calmly stares down any mutt in the neighborhood sustained a direct hit in the face, doubtlessly when she tried to make one of the skunks its lunch. She was sprayed so badly that it warranted an $300+ makeover at the University of Minnesota Veterinary Emergency Clinic.

Molly thought it wise to start parking on the street and Mike decided that removal was in order. He enlisted his brother-in-law, did some research on the internet and got going. They rigged a hose to the exhaust pipe of Molly's minivan and stuffed the other end in some hole that Kevin, another neighbor, had drilled in the floor of the tool shed. Apparently those critters have fine noses because before long, the first made its appearance. Armed with spades, like doughboys for trench warfare they were ready for the enemy. When the first head appeared Chop! off with its head, likewise with the second one. But then things started to fall apart, when the three survivors decided to use the weapon evolution had provided them with. Fortunately, they did not score a direct hit, but the poison-gas cloud enveloped them. Somehow, they had forgotten their gas masks in the bunker.

Animal control took care of the remaining ones, showing how it's done correctly. They trapped the critters, stuffed the traps in a plastic bag and gassed them with exhaust from their truck.

I always worry that my dog will get sprayed. I often run early in the morning through wooded areas of Como Park and, judging by the smell, skunks do live there. Mellie's off leash but I make darn certain that she heels when I notice that aroma. It would be worse if something like this should happen on a back country trip, I certainly would care to share a tent with a fouled dog, like my colleague Sheli had to do when her lab was sprayed in front of their tent during a weekend trip to southern Maine. Sheli's dog had awoken in the middle of the night, gone berserk and wormed its way out where the zippers of the tent door were not quite closed, only to meet a skunk that had no intention to back away. Sheli's husband had to drive 10 miles to an all-night convenience store to get some home remedies such as tomato juice, dish washing soap, etc. Since everything I have seen about deskunking indicates that time is of the essence, it must be that two-times 10 mile trip delay is why Sheli's dog had still a faint skunk odor,  several months later especially when wet.

Elsie survived, as did Mike et al. The skunk adventure was not cheap, counting the the vet bill, the new concrete shop floor Mike felt compelled to pour and the big scrape Mike's new Buick sustained while being parked on the street instead of in the garage. But as the saying goes: time heals all wounds, including smelly ones.

Wild Turkeys in The City

This morning I gave James and his buddy Joe a ride to Afton Alps for their first ski outing. Since a warm month of November gave way to December, the temperatures have been more seasonable. In only one week, the ground was frozen hard and the dusting of snow we got on Wednesday is still around. No wonder the ski areas around town have been making the artificial stuff like crazy.

On the way to Afton we are heading out of St. Paul east on I-94. The weather is perfect for a day on the slopes, perfect for all manner of outdoor activities, -8C under a blue sky. I dressed up in my running gear (snickering from James and Joe over my tights) and packed the lab to take advantage of Afton State Park, immediately adjacent to the ski area. St. Paul's East Side is followed by the sprawling suburb of Woodbury, which slowly merges into the countryside. But before we even left St. Paul proper, I saw two large birds standing by the roadside. Since I was working on my breakfast, all I could do to catch the boys attention was to mumble something like “furfee” and gesture excitedly with my sandwich. James yelled “turkeys!” as we sped by. Two good-sized jakes and a third bird a little down in the ditch, just past the McKnight exit, right across from 3M headquarters. It always strikes me how big they are up close. This was even apparent while whizzing by at about 100 kph. In addition, they have something vaguely antediluvian to them, as if they could have possibly escaped from a time warp or from Jurassic Park.

I have hunted for turkeys over the past 15 years or so, in traditional turkey country of south-east Minnesota, so far without luck. About half the years, I heard the birds but did not even see them. In the cities however, I have stopped counting the number of times I have seen them. The first time (as really every time since) was really special: I was heading for Rosedale Mall with Colin and James in tow, heading north on Fairview. At the moderately busy intersection with Roselawn, which is controlled by a four-way stop sign, there was a hold-up. I couldn't tell what was going on, it did not seem like an accident, but traffic was just crawling. When we got to the intersection, the cause became apparent: three big turkeys were occupying one of the crossing's corners, they looked as if they were checking each car to decide which one would be worth high-jacking. This must be about ten years ago and I have had several encounters like this every year.

Some of the more memorable include almost hitting one while riding my bike to work in Mendota Heights' Valley Park, having one fly so low over my car while giving my brother Arnulf a ride to the airport that I thought it would enter the car through his open window and land on his lap or Colin being distracted by a small flock on East River Road during one of his first driving lessons. Turkeys, like various birds of prey and deer have become an integral park of our urban wildlife. Let's hope it stays that way and let's hope that drivers will be careful and break.


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