The Bullhead Queen: A Year on Pioneer Lake

Via Dolorosa

Via Dolorosa 167 O n the first day of summer vacation this year, as we approached the driveway into our cabin, we came upon the porcupine that lived under our front steps, dead on the highway. Its quills were raised, the brown fur glossy and stiff beneath them, and I could see its rounded nose and perfect paws. Porcupines are slow, bumbling creatures and take a long time to cross a road. Though the speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour on our highway, people go seventy. If I ever go certifiably around the bend, it will be because of roadkill. This is a frightening thought because roadkill is part of daily life in a technological society. It is the cost of “doing business.” It is collateral damage. To thrive in such a world as ours, a sane person needs to don emotional armor as protection against the slaughter laid bare on the roads every day. I seem unable to do this, however, and consequently each time I step out onto an asphalt strip, I sense how emotionally fragile I am, how ill equipped to be an American. As Americans go, I am at high risk for sensitivity to roadkill because I engage in two activities: as a bird-watcher, I am acutely attuned to the avian residents in my neighborhood; and as a fitness runner, I am in earthy contact with miles of roadway on a daily basis. This June, there were bobolinks nesting in a hayfield on County 9; sedge wrens skulked all summer in thickets in certain low-lying areas along County 12. One perky kestrel staked out a portion of a particular telephone wire and appeared there each time I ran by, and an eastern bluebird held down another phone wire at the corner of County 37 and Pleasant Valley Road. It broke my heart to discover the blue-feathered form on the verge of County 37 when out on a run two weeks ago. Thank God, the breeding season was over. No young birds depended on his presence any longer. But it’s sad to know he will not migrate, or return, with all this summer’s experience, to renest. In recent weeks, I’ve also come upon a couple of young indigo buntings, their immature azure plumage streaked with brown. They appeared perfect, no indication of injury, save for a broken neck. You might imagine whispering at the funeral parlor, “She looks like she is sleeping.” Young buntings must fly low to the ground, putting them in the path of rushing cars more so than adult birds. Especially heartbreaking are the warblers I discover in the spring, during their two-thousand-mile odyssey from Central America. One day, I found a striking Cape May warbler , brilliant yellow with rusty cheek patches, dead at the foot of my driveway. Warblers are quick, agile sprites, but no match for an SUV. Imagine flying over the Gulf of Mexico , the rangeland of Texas, the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City, the planted cornfields of Iowa—all that way, that perilous journey, only to be killed on a Minnesota street, by someone going sixty in a forty-five-mile zone. The pain and regret over the massacre on our roads rise from many wells. When a migrating bird is the victim, I feel a rush of sadness over the futility of heroic effort— such a small creature, flying an incredible distance, and all 168 Via Dolorosa for naught. Sometimes the regret is bright with a sense of waste. All summer, residents in our town have been living with massive road construction on Highway 8, the interminably busy thoroughfare through our county. Thick, fourfoot -high barriers have been in place since May, separating the highway from the lake and from the adjacent lanes under construction. We drive miles through a narrow concrete tunnel that essentially divides South Center from North Center Lake. Nonetheless, the barrier is not impenetrable. Somehow, the lakes’ turtles manage to enter this concrete tunnel of doom, and once in, there is no escape. Mornings, we have witnessed magnificent snapping turtles, two feet long, smashed on the pavement. Their blood is scarlet, signifying the presence of hemoglobin; they are our kin. Snapping turtles can live sixty years. How long have the venerable reptiles avoided the hazards of first being small and vulnerable, then experiencing innumerable winters, the flashing blades of outboard motors...