Nature in my Neighborhood — Ghosts

 

I am fortunate enough to live in a small apartment with a beautiful view of Bellingham Bay. Directly in front of my window—slightly to the left really—and in front of the homes across the street, is a fir tree (maybe a Grand Fir?) where eagles regularly perch. I live on the third floor of a building that is on a hill above the street and the tree beyond the homes across the street grows in a spot downhill from them. This puts the top of the tree just above level with my living room window. There are two mature and one immature bald eagle who perch in its upper branches regularly. Intermittently, the crows who compete with these eagles will also perch there, I imagine just to spite their larger competitors. The third floor that I live on is also the top floor of my building, so presumably these same crows, as well as gulls, land directly above my living room window too, which delights my cats. 

My walk home from classes and from work leads me downhill from the Viking Union and a few blocks to the south, through moderately quiet neighborhoods with lawns. Families of deer graze in these lawns, and seem utterly unconcerned with most of the vehicle and foot traffic that passes by. Often, if I am walking home at dusk, I will find myself within ten or twenty feet from these deer before I even realize they are there. Last summer, there were a number of fawns I saw here daily.

In the mornings, when I am heading to class or work, there are typically several separate murders of crows enjoying their breakfast in the grass beside the sidewalk. I always greet them and try to move in a way that seems non-threatening. They usually hobble or hop out of the way slightly as I pass, giving me a wide berth, before returning breakfast when they are certain I have no interest in harming them. A few do inevitably fly off though, I’m afraid. They, too, return to the breakfast before long though. 

Although I don’t see them as often as I used to, I am occasionally fortunate enough to spot a family of raccoons scurrying through the neighborhood. Sometimes they skirt the homes across the street, below my living room window, spotting one another as they move between bushes and parked vehicles like small, furry black ops soldiers from some high-octane espionage film. 

Many years ago, when my daughter was small, we lived in a different apartment in the same building. Because the building is old, it often requires opening the front window and back door to cool the place down on the evenings of particularly hot days. Back then, we had a regular visiter we named Leroy. Leroy was a raccoon who was blind in one eye, had one unusable leg and limped on another. The first time I saw Leroy, he was halfway down the hallway in our apartment, rather innocently searching for his next meal. Of course, he hightailed it out of there as soon as I poked my head around the corner, but Leroy became a regular visitor when we began leaving morsels out for him. What impressed me about Leroy so much was, despite his injuries, it did not seem as though he had been searching for a meal in our apartment because he was incapable of finding one elsewhere. Rather, he seemed to be leading a perfectly healthy and fulfilling life, and had simply stumbled upon the opportunity of an open door. We remember Leroy fondly on a fairly regular basis.