The nature of Duluth

Our second day in Duluth was spent doing some shopping, and getting familiar with the layout of the city. We were driving home around 9:00 pm, and we decided to do a little exploring. As we drove toward our new house on an acre within the city limits, we rounded a corner to find a hulking figure crossing the street in front of us. My wife commented later that she at first thought it was someone in a bear suit... because that's what it looked like. As a matter of fact, it was one of the dozen or so black bears that live within the city limits of Duluth. The bear slipped into the woods along this suburban street, lined with houses on one side. We marveled at our fortune for quite some time. We had heard that there were bears up here, but now we had first-hand proof. Wow.

Since the bear sighting, we have seen many of nature's fine creatures. We drove along skyline parkway one day, and we pulled over and watched a porcupine for a while. This was fun, too. But, the most interesting thing to discover was all of the wildlife that we have in our 1 acre backyard.

Deer pass through our yard every day. We still stop and watch them watch us though our living room windows. We have friendly squirrels and chipmunks that keep our indoor cats entertained. Chickadees and nuthatches are our most frequent visitors to the feeders, but we see occasional juncos, harry and downy woodpeckers and once in a while, a pileated woodpecker. We have learned that the blue jays will land on the deck to grab peanuts in the shell that we have put out for the squirrels. We have seen a red fox on our deck more than once, and one even barked at me for a while when I was climbing the rocky ridge in our backyard. It was quite an interesting sound that the fox made.

Unfortunately, a few months ago we began seeing skunks in our yard. They would come at night and dig up the grass to get grubs. Then one night, the neighbor dog got sprayed and it stunk up the house so bad, we had to sleep in our guest room... farther away from the incident outside. What to do? Grandpa to the rescue. We borrowed his homemade skunk trap and caught one the first night. Set with some chicken or other meat, the trap is a metal barrel laid on its side with a hinged lid. Once tripped, you stand the trap on end and use a garden hose to fill it with water. Of course, first we would check to be sure we didn't get one of the pesky neighborhood cats or a curious fox. Since the skunk is in a confined area, it won't spray. For two animal lovers, this was not a fun task, but after trapping and drowning four skunks over a two week period, it started to get a little easier. Grandpa thinks that he may have trapped over a hundred skunks through the years.

We plan to head up the North Shore sometime to try and spot a moose or two out grazing in the morning.