News From Hawkhill Acres

Those of you who are still wearing the tinfoil hats I recommended in an earlier post may want to keep them on if you’re planning to go night-skiing in the Bangor City Forest. The rest of you after-dark schussers might want to borrow your kid’s bike helmet.  As reported in the Bangor Daily News article  “Owls Attack: Warnings Posted In City Forest”, Great Horned Owls aren’t going to put up with folks invading their territory.

My question is, “What are people doing, skiing with headlamps on in the dark?” Skiing in the daytime is one thing. But after dark? And, apparently, they’re also walking, jogging, running and biking after dark also. Sheesh! When do the nocturnal animals get a break?

I’ve run into a couple of territorial owls since I moved to Maine twenty years ago. One was a Great Gray Owl that swooped down on me in broad daylight when I was walking through a pine grove near a swamp on our rural property. I never heard it coming until it was right in front of my face and if I hadn’t ducked, its talons would have scratched my eyes. I was some unsettled, I’ll tell you, and left the grove at a run.

A short time later, on the edge of that same swamp, the geek and I ran into a mother bear with cubs. They were blatting at her and she was blatting at them and Geekdaddy and I were blatting at each other to get the hell out of there. It was some exciting for a few minutes.

Another time, on that same piece of property, I walked around a large tree and came face to face with a young moose and her mother. Like most young critters, Baby Moose was very curious and approached me, which didn’t go over very well with Ma Moose, who snorted and pawed the ground. We spent a very tense five minutes with me trying to edge away so that I wouldn’t be between the baby moose and its mom, and the young moose trying to circle me so it could sniff me.I finally got away by backing slowly out of the area, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a female moose was observed by my neighbor knocking down my mailbox a couple of days later.

Many of us who live in Maine learn the hard way that civilization is pretty thin once you get beyond the city limits. Or, in the case of Bangor, even inside the city limits. When I first stumbled upon the city forest, I thought it was such a neat idea, having a forest inside a city. Now, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea at all. Cities and forests are two very different things and maybe they should be in two different places.  Or, maybe they should be closed at night, so that the wildlife can go wild for a few hours without people shining lights at them and skiing through their front yards.