The return of nature is exaggerated

A rabbit in our neighbour's yard

 

Wild turkeys have returned to this area

Somewhere on the West Island of Montreal beavers have returned and are bothering the local people with their behaviour, they are felling trees along the shore and the earth is being eroded there. It is not so much that nature is returning but that the natural habitat for wildlife is being invaded by people and the wildlife has nowhere to go but to live among us. It’s not so bad, food is plentiful, and the animals get used to eating what we discard. The other night, it was 4 a.m., our spotlight in the rear of the house went on and I saw a big fat raccoon walk by the basement window not three feet from where I was standing. Other visitors include skunks, rabbits, ground hogs, and many types of birds I rarely saw even five years ago; for instance, many cardinals, juncos, and other birds. I never saw any wildlife when I was growing up in this neighbourhood, on Oxford Avenue, that’s because only a few blocks away there were a few fields where animals and birds could still live. Or these animals that we didn’t see in the past are now among us, moved in from the surrounding countryside, because the off-island land is being developed. These fields that were in this neighbourhood are long gone, condos, apartment buildings, and duplexes were constructed there years ago. As another example, rue Norman (in Lachine, parallel to Highway 20) used to be wide-open fields, some of it formerly used for agriculture, now it’s an industrial zone and made up of garages, trucks, and various companies.

A ground hog with babies on the next street over

Butters the Wild Turkey, 2019 - 2021, RIP

This is Butters outside our front door, early January, 2021

Butters, the wild turkey, has died; he never learned how to navigate traffic. A neighbour tells me he looked out of his living room window one day and saw three wild turkeys. So this isn't the end, just a chapter. In the local history of Covid there will be a chapter on Butters, he was a celebrity on social media, he brought people together; I would see crowds looking at Butters and talking, people loved that bird. He brought us together and then he was gone. He was everywhere, one day in Montreal West, the next day outside of Police Station Nine, he was famous in Loyola Park, he had a following wherever he went, and then he'd be back on our street sitting in a tree sixty feet up in a snow storm. But he wasn't too bright, the only reason he didn't walk on the road was that there was no food there. Butters had also become a peeping turkey, looking in people's windows. Butters, gone but not forgotten; he gave so much and expected so little.

Fox at Cote des Neiges Cemetery

Not far from downtown Montreal, Cote des Neiges Cemetery is at the heart of Montreal... here's a fox seen one winter day, in March, not far from McGee's mausoleum...

 

 

...urban wildlife at Mount Royal Cemetery...