Building Memories (BM) uses personal experiences and relates them to topics of importance to building.
This BM explores the various animals of Northshore.
This is the second Building Memories post focused on animals of the Northshore. For the past 20+ years I have taken walks throughout the Forest Preserves and Skokie Lagoons that surround the town I live in. Most of the time I am walking our family dog, originally Ringo, who passed away approximately six years ago, and for the past seven years my walking companion has been Fletcher. We often hike on an island within the Skokie Lagoons accessible via a single land bridge or canoe. Fletcher can run off leash and we see a wide variety of animals in their natural habitat. In fact, when I compare the number and variety of animal life we experience within the immediate proximity of our home, with numerous wilderness adventures out west and around the world, there is no comparison. Within 20 miles of downtown Chicago, we interact with much more wildlife than I ever encountered in the wilderness of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, or the Andes mountains in Peru.
Most of the time the animals are not interested in us, and we can get close, but occasionally, Fletcher gets somebody’s attention. I had to put on gloves and grab Fletcher by the collar to extract him from his fight with the possum.
But sometimes animal life gets close to home. The gate operator at the back of our property stopped working one day. When I opened it up, I found a very cozy nest of fiberglass insulation that was keeping a family of chipmunks, or mice amazingly comfortable during frigid winter or scorching summer weather. Unfortunately, their housing shorted out the circuit boards and the gate operator being ~20 years old, was no longer supported. So, their cozy nest became an expensive line item in our household’s budget. The hawk was perched on a power pole at the back of my backyard. I was sitting in the sun and this hawk decided to hang out looking for a tasty opportunity. They stayed for approximately ten minutes before deciding to move on.
The Skokie lagoons are a habitat for a large variety of birds. Geese, ducks, and herons can be seen everywhere, scattered throughout the bodies of water that comprise the lagoons.
Of course, the recent emergence of the 17 year and 13-year locusts created an intense and very loud couple of months. Incredible that these creatures stay underground for such an extended period, dig their way out of the ground and go through their life cycle over the course of 4 to 6 weeks.
At the beginning of Covid my mom came and lived at our house for approximately one year. That summer our neighborhood had large populations of rabbits and squirrels. A coyote took residence within a block of our house and began to eat its way through both populations. We started a tradition of having a daily happy hour on our front porch at approximately 4:00pm. The coyote was on a similar schedule and would come through our yard every day at approximately 4:30pm with either a rabbit or squirrel in its mouth heading back to its den for a leisurely meal.
If you have pictures of animal life in the Chicago metro area, please share. I find it remarkable how the Chicago metro area supports a vibrant wildlife community, living harmoniously with us and adding vitality, interest and meaning to our everyday life.
Photo 1: Algae & Geese
Photo 2: Deer
Photo 3: Fletcher in meadow
Photo 4: Fletcher
Photo 5: Fletcher & Possum
Photo 6: Gate Operator Nest
Photo 7: Geese
Photo 8: Hawk
Photo 9: Spider