Roadwork disturbs a thriving immigrant

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a small turkey I was seeing most days up the road. Once again, I misidentified it, as I see now that it’s a guinea hen. Since that time the county’s secondary roads department has done some work on the road, disrupting the young bird’s habitat, which totally annoys this old man. In Iowa, the mowing of ditches by anyone is not legal until after July 15, to protect the habitat of nesting birds. The same rules should apply when repairing roads but hey, no one pays attention anyway.

As bird populations dwindle, we simply shrug, thinking it’s someone else’s issue. The good news is that the hen has taken up residence in the deep grass by my lane, joining some squirrels and a few deer that call the area home. She and I reenacted a recent scene, this time on the lane, not on the road. As I was driving up toward the road, she stepped out, saw me, and began that cute little trot these birds have, up the lane, ahead of me, three miles per hour for 20-30 yards before diving into the grass. It was both ridiculous and heartwarming.

While writing this on a sunny Sunday morning, I again saw her up the lane, so I grabbed one of my Canon cameras and got off one shot before she took off. It’s not great art but it’s nice to see animals not native to this country live and thrive here without being a nuisance or invasive. There is an immigrant lesson in here somewhere, but I’ll let it lie.

On another note: back in the early 1970s, a friend, Chuck, and his fiancee Eileen asked me to sing the song “Color My World” by the band Chicago at their wedding. I was proud to be asked, but wasn’t allowed to sing it, because the minister determined that, because neither God nor Jesus were mentioned in the lyrics, the song wasn’t appropriate. A couple of years later, my friend and his wife moved to Idaho, where they have stayed all of this time. Funny thing, time. Last week, Chuck’s niece told me that “Uncle Chuck passed away.” I’ll miss him. There is no point to this little story, though I suppose a class of poetry students could discuss it and make something of it, maybe something about lost time.

All around me, people talk of planting their gardens, both vegetable and floral, and they do so at great length, in great detail. I tune it all out, as such things don’t interest me. Up until a few weeks ago, the only plant color around my house was green, until my sister gave me some red flowers to honor my late wife. Internally, I rolled my eyes, but accepted the gift and placed it next to my garage, not knowing what else to do with it. They are stunning, unexpected, and I think of my wife every time I see them. There may be something to this plant business.

Enough of this. Walnut trees in Bobbi’s Hollow have finally leafed out. On both sides of the hollow are limestone bluffs and ancient trees, so it’s always cool and shady down there, thus the late leafing. Resident badgers may have moved on, as I haven’t seen them for a while. I wish they’d hang around my outbuilding for a while. Every time I start my tractor in the building, I have to urge nesting mice in the engine compartment to move on. Mice are not very large, but to have them scamper across my work boots while on the tractor is a little disconcerting and heart-stopping. I’m already in serious heart failure, and it causes me to think that death by mouse scare would be kind of amusing, if not a great headline.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald has published a 60-page magazine of Kurt’s columns. The magazine can be purchased here.