I'm Marlin Perkins

We really do live in the country here and that fact becomes more and more apparent as spring goes on. Today, a John Deere tractor pulling a massive apparatus started planting (I think) in the field that's adjacent to our yard. The farm kids in my classes tell me they normally would have planted weeks ago but it's been so wet, they haven't been able to. It will be interesting to watch corn spring up around us. I'm sure it will take every honest bone in our bodies to not go out there and help ourselves once the crop comes up.

Another aspect of being in the country is dealing with the wildlife. Even though we lived in a suburb of Detroit, the world's grayest, deadest city, we still had little brushes with nature - the different birds our neighbor's feeder attracted, an absolutely terrified possum that we saw cowering at the corner of Newburg and 96 one night. But here, every day I expect Marlin Perkins to narrate what's happening in our back yard. Actually, the yard is pretty normal and tame - squirrels and birds. It's the drive to church that seems like a trip through Illinois Safari country. Over the last three Sundays, I've seen a herd of twenty deer munching on grass at the 4-H show grounds, a gaggle (?) of about ten wild turkeys just hanging out near a stand of trees, and an owl that was so big, it could probably pick up Maryn and take her away to feather its nest with her. (Seriously, the thing was the size of a Coleman cooler.) Earlier this spring, we had a flock of hundreds and hundreds of starlings in the trees across the street from our house. It was like listening to the crowd at a college football game. When they all took off (and they ALL took off at once), I could hear the rush of their wings from a hundred yards away. On a semi-regular basis, you can catch a bald eagle or two gliding over the bridge between LaSalle and Oglesby right near where I work.


Even though Idaho is rural, wildlife sightings are pretty rare - or at least they were for me when I was growing up. Crows. Robins. That's about it. So, for me, it's kind of thrilling to see things like cardinals and bluejays eating at our feeder, whitetail deer scampering into the trees, and frogs hopping across the road in the middle of a rainstorm.

So here's my list of what we've seen so far:

squirrels
chipmunks
possums
deer
wild turkeys
owls
bald eagles
hawks
bluejays
cardinals
gold finches
red-winged blackbirds
common grackles
rabbits

I will update you if I happen to see anything else exciting - like a unicorn or something like that.