The good news for me is that yesterday, the 196th day of the year, I did my four miles of walking for the 130th time this year. Not too bad.
But, so many of us walkers in Dogtown really miss the Tamm Ave. bridge. Since I live on Tamm, I have to either walk over the Hampton Ave. bridge or go up to Hi-Pointe and enter off Skinker Blvd.
The bridge is really coming together. On each end the current bridge they are working on ends about 10 feet from the end of the bridge. I'm sure they are building it that way on purpose so that people like me and many others don't climb up on the partly finished bridge and cross the highway.
Perhaps by September....
I have been walking a lot lately in the natural prairie and bird sanctuary that has been created in the park just off Skinker Blvd in the first several blocks past Hi-Pointe. I've been walking in the park for about 62 of my 68 years and can categorically state NOTHING HAS EVER BEEN THIS BEAUTIFUL IN THE PARK IN ALL MY LIFE. There are several acres of wildflowers now taller than I am and the place is just crawling with birds and small mammals.
Then, when I walk east past that I get into the really deep and dark areas of Kennedy Forest. There is one gravel path I especially love and Sally and I have nicknamed it Hummingbird Lane. It is the path which has the famous Osage "tree within a tree." This is a large hollowed out tree trunk about 25 foot tall in which a new small tree was planted several years ago. The young tree is now itself about 10 or 15 foot tall. This was done in honor of an old Osage Indian custom of planting a new tree inside an old tree to honor the concept of nature renewing itself with the young growing out of the old.
In the past few days we were able to see a magnificent brilliant blue indigo bunting, some lovely goldfinch feeding on these high flowers (though I have many many more goldfinch in my backyard than we see in the park).
In the Hummingbird Lane path this year there are almost no hummingbirds. I did see one on Thursday. However, this path is just lined with many many trumpet vines and last year we would see a dozen or more every time we went there and they would even be sitting on the branches and we could walk right up to them, not common in my experience of hummingbirds. This year they just aren't there.
However, on Saturday I saw a wood thrush, only the second one I've ever seen, the other being in my back yard about a month ago.
Yesterday, however, Sally and I witnessed one of the most hilarious and unusual animal events I've ever seen.
The path itself is narrow, less than a yard across and is gravel. Directly across from the tree within a tree is a bench, a wooden bench, one of the very few anywhere in the deep woods of Forest Park. (There are a few over by Skinker in a semi-circle, and several in the paved path just west of the zoo).
I have found that if I sit very quietly, not moving much, on that bench, things happen, things come out, birds come by. A few days ago when I was sitting on that bench a cute little chipmunk came out of the tree trunk itself. Until yesterday I had never sat with anyone else on the bench. However, Sally walked with me and I was hoping she would get to see the cute little chipmunk. While there seem to be lots of them running around in the zoo (loose), there are very few that I ever see in the woods of Forest Park.
So there we were sitting quietly on this bench, and just to the right, on Sally's side of the bench a fairly large rabbit came out of the woods onto the trail. This is extremely common, and while, as I said above, there are almost no hummingbirds around this year, there are more rabbits than I've ever seen before. I was watching the rabbit when all of a sudden a small chipmunk ran across the trail just on the other side of the rabbit, father from us. It just zipped across the trail and into the underbrush.
I whispered to Sally I'd seen it and gave her my binoculars. We waited and just a moment later the chipmunk came out again and stood in the middle of the path. The rabbit closest to us and about 3-4 feet on the other side of the rabbit was the chipmunk. All of a sudden the rabbit lunged at the chipmunk and chased it, it flew into the underbrush, but the rabbit stayed on the trail right in the middle. Moments later the chipmunk rushed out of the underbrush right at the rabbit and it leaped ABSOLUTELY STRAIGHT UP IN THE AIR. I have never seen anything like it before. It must have just pushed very hard with those large back feet and it went straight up, at least a foot off the ground and the streaking chipmunk went right under it and into the brush.
Soon it came out again, they stood looking at each other and then the rabbit lunged and chased the chipmunk into the brush. Sally and I were just cracking up and trying so desperately not to laugh out loud.
This went on for several rounds. The chipmunk would charge the rabbit, it would leap straight up in the air, the chipmunk would fly under it and into the brush. The chipmunk would then come back out to the trail, stand there staring at the rabbit which would chase it, and then it was the chipmunk's turn to charge. This went on quite a few "rounds" before they quit playing, and I am absolutely convinced it was PLAYING they were doing.
So incredibly cute.
I had a similar thing in my backyard about 2 months ago. I had a very small rabbit in my brush pile. (I think the neighborhood cats eventually must have gotten it). At the same time it was in my yard every morning, there were some baby squirrels as well. One squirrel and the rabbit began this chasing game all over the yard, just like one sees adult squirrels to all the time both on the ground and in the trees, just chasing each other at extremely fast speeds all around. Except this daily play in my yard was between the bunny and the baby squirrel. Sally and I would sit at the window and howl with laughter watching these two frolic.
One of the greatest advantages of living in Dogtown is making use of Forest Park, and the best way to see anything is Forest Park is by foot or bike. Leave the car at the entrances and just enjoy this magnificent park.
Bob Corbett
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