Birds, squirrels, deer gorging for fall

David Sherman

Autumn’s coming. And autumn in the mountains north of the big city is an entirely different trip than fall in the big city.

In town fall means cranking up the Hydro bill, putting on a sweater, changing tires if you own a car and preparing for the winter glee of watching them spin through stop signs on three inches of ice the city has not salted.

The city of Montreal went on a tree-planting rampage a few decades ago, lining streets with Norway Maples. They are thought to be heartier than our traditional Canadian maple that adorns our flag and our tradition. It’s also front and centre on a NHL team, name of which fans of les Canadiens, Nos Amours, cannot speak. Mostly because the plural of leaf is leaves not leafs but Toronto is a different country.

The Norway Maples were a bust. They were resistant to cold, salt, snow plows, dog urine, but their leaves go from green to yellow -- not unlike my face after too much Quebec gin --earlier than maples.  The cowardly leaves want no part of autumnal chill and commit premature suicide. Visually, they were a bust.

In the mountains north of town, autumn is a happening. The hills, swathed in oak, birch, maples, spruce and pine, start leaching colour. In spring they are brilliant green. Shining symbol of new life. As summer fades, so do the colours. Even evergreens seem tired as if they know the icy winds will soon be coming and they’re bracing themselves. Maybe they have Mexico on their mind.

Our neighbours, nuthatches, blue jays – the winged variety, not the suffering band of baseball brothers – chickadees, juncos, hummingbirds, cardinals, sparrows, gold finches, flickers, woodpeckers and yellow-belly sap suckers, (really), begin to shuttle vigourously between our feeders and wherever they stash their cache of seeds for those who insist on weathering winter. Those that migrate plump up for the journey ahead, which means duelling with squirrels and chipmunks for their seat at the feeder.

Hummingbirds, average weight 3.25 gms, will double their weight before heading south to Mexico or Central America. Some Republican birds still go to Florida where they’re known as Trumpingbirds.

Most of the rest hang in here, storing seeds in as many as 1,000 spots that they remember. I have trouble remembering where I put the mayonnaise. With the voles and ground hogs, the furry rodents have the grass around our house resembling a fairway where divots have never been replaced.

While the pickle ballers keep pickling with rackets, others take the wares from the market and pickle while most start loading in the wood. Serious wood burners stack ten cords of heavy hardwood to carry into the house log by log through the winter. Then see their orthopedist for cortisone injections in shoulders that no longer wish to shoulder anything. Health care being what it is, you can usually get an appointment in time for next winter.

As the temperature dips, and our cars line up at garages for the ritual tire change and tune up – living in rural areas without a car or two means being housebound or dependent on others. Cars are coddled and good tires, with studs, can be the difference been life and hospitalization.

Walking in winter is an option for the those whose joints still have life in them. Climate change often brings thaw during the day and ice during the night. To protect plant life, towns don’t salt roads, leaving them to become strips of corrugated ice until the next day’s thaw. Determined walkers don boots with cleats to stumble over the ice and make sure they’ve booked cortisone shots for knees, hips and backs. It seems the body was designed for flat surfaces and joints beg to migrate with the birds.

It also means the dark, starlit nights give way to the white sky as ski hills turn on their night skiing spots and try and get a jump on Mama Nature by making snow during cold October evenings. The stars disappear and the trails that were brown gouges during daylight, slowly turn white.

Around us, leaves turn a rainbow of reds, oranges and yellows before finally floating to their final resting place. Not quite final because idiots bring out their leaf blowers. Rakes are so yesterday. Why hurt your back when you can take a gasoline-powered, screaming leaf blower to piss off your neighbours and blast leaves and every living thing that lives under them to hell? Or onto your neighbour’s patch of land.

Yes, birds, deer, squirrels, ground hogs and various four and two-legged creatures forage for goodies under the leaves but screw ‘em. Leaves on lawns are considered a blight.

Fall’s approach also means white-tailed deer start stuffing themselves on anything from bark to the crab apples that drop from trees like manna from heaven.

So intent are they on trying to survive what they know is coming, they gobble even if you stop and watch them.

They give us a “Ya want something, buddy?” look as they chow down, deciding a feast is worth tolerating humans. A vet friend says apples are not good for deer but no one has told the deer. Life span in our winter wonderland for a white tail is one to three years. And we live in a no-hunting zone. Cold and hunger as well as sprawling construction of new homes for urban exiles is destroying their habitat. They’ve learned to put up with us, even if we’re too stupid to remember where we put the mayonnaise.

For better or for worse, they, like the birds I call to breakfast each morning when I fill the feeders, don’t fear humans as much as they used to.

Fall in the mountains also means wearing multiple layers. The mornings can be anywhere from 2C to 10C and the afternoons 18-24. Rapid shifts between cold and hot means walking or driving with an all-weather wardrobe.

There’s the bounty of harvest time to compensate for autumn’s labours. The markets, usually once a week, here and there, are overflowing with fresh everything, well below supermarket prices, their providence usually only a few kilometres away. The taste, colour, texture is a feast for eyes and taste buds, not unlike the blush of leaves that turn the mountains into a feast for the eyes.

So, autumn’s coming. Bring it on.