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(edward@ordman.net)
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This story has appeared in the Christian
Science
Monitor.
When
skunks
and bears go to town
August 6, 2004
In 1987, my wife and I were teaching in
Denmark. We did a few
guest visits to a primary school to speak English with the
pupils and answer
questions about the United States.
The younger pupils had a strong interest in
animals. One
especially caught their attention - the skunk. Called a stinkdyr in
Danish
- literally a "stink animal" - it appears in enough children's
books and cartoons to be well known. I carry a toy skunk on
trips, and my wife
and I know a few children's songs and stories about skunks.
They were amazed to hear that skunks are so
common in our part
of New Hampshire that we see them, or smell them several times
a week. The
defense system of skunks is good enough that they are quite
fearless. Not
expecting to be attacked, skunks don't fear even automobiles.
This results in
quite a few encounters, with the smell spreading in the
process.
We have found that skunks are not the only
North American
animals that people overseas like to hear about. When we talk
of seeing
frequent deer, occasional moose, and even bears near our home,
Europeans (and
even Africans) often react with as much interest - and as many
questions - as
we do when an African tells us of an elephant or giraffe
wandering through his
garden.
How did we come to live near all these animals?
Well, in a
sense, they came to us. We live quite near the center of town,
one block from
the main street - but it isn't a large town. We have several
acres of woods
adjoining our backyard, and there is more extensive forest
across the street.
And why are there woods so close to town? Well, there is a
reason.
New Hampshire was farmed intensively from
colonial times through
the mid-1800s. It became heavily industrial in the early
industrial revolution,
with many rocky streams providing water power for small mills.
There were stone
dams at frequent intervals on the rivers and stone walls
separating the fields.
The glaciers left granite stones mixed through the soil. But
the soil shifts
with the winter freezes, and the stones move, so you can
remove all the stones
from a field, and the next year there will be a new crop. The
stone walls did
serve a function, but in addition you do actually need a place
to put all the
new stones each year.
When farm machinery became common, the stony
and hilly New
Hampshire farms became uneconomic and were abandoned. For over
a century, the
survey every 10 years has shown a higher percentage of the
state covered with
forest.
When electricity came, and factories that no
longer needed a
water wheel for power were constructed, the small factories
closed. Now, the
towns in many cases are doing fine, with tourism and software
among the new
sources of employment. But many of the old stone dams are in
disrepair, the old
foundations cracking and decaying.
As you walk through the woods, you encounter
the many stone
walls and can see where the fields and cow pastures were a
century ago. You
find abandoned lanes bordered by stone fences, cellar holes,
and stone
foundations of abandoned houses and mills. A few flowers
survive from
century-old gardens.
As the forest spreads into what was once
farmland, the animal
population grows and moves about more easily. And new ski
resorts and
mountainside condominiums force animals into more contact with
people. Both the
people and the animals in New Hampshire seem to us to be
coping with this
pretty well.
When we arrived at our house this summer, we
saw a mother deer
and its baby browsing in our backyard. The neighbors said they
had been there
frequently while we were away; now that we've been here a
while, they've found
another field or retreated into the woods. We've seen moose
within a couple of
miles of home. And bird feeders are becoming less common, as
the bears move in.
Our daughter, eight miles away, took in hers when bears
started emptying them
regularly. She didn't want bears attracted to the yard where
her young children
were playing.
A friend living in a second floor apartment -
its back balcony
had a stairway to the ground - called a neighbor one day:
"There is a bear
on my balcony, trying to reach my bird feeder. I don't worry
much about the
bird feeder, but he's leaning on my sliding glass doors, and
they are bending
so much I'm afraid they will break. What shall I do?"
The neighbor went out and made a noise - near
enough and loud
enough to distress the bear, not so near as to endanger the
neighbor. The bear
left, and our friend took in her bird feeder.
When one reads of deforestation in so many
places in the world,
it is nice to live in a place with increasing forest cover.
And while I'm not
an expert on animal life, it is nice to feel that in this area
at least, people
are coexisting well with animals that many people in the world
consider marvelous
and exotic.