Tag: hunting

Suburban or Rural?

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On the discussion sites of licensed real-estate appraisers, they have a witty saying about how to tell the difference between urban, suburban and rural homes.  This witty saying involves standing on the porch (maybe naked) and peeing off the porch (or not) and whether anyone can see you and whether the police come if they are called.  Even though these postings come from licensed real-estate appraisers, I do not believe that this is how you determine if a community is rural or suburban.  
I have not yet decided whether I believe that North Salem, New York is suburban or rural. I struggle to describe it to people.  Efforts are clearly made by those in power in this community to emphasize the rural flavor of the place.  The North Salem Open Land Foundation, founded in 1974, protects over 900 acres of land here, through purchases, donations and the maintenance of conservation easements.  The Foundation is practically invisible in the community, but their efforts are not.
There are no sidewalks in North Salem, but I often see snakes sunning themselves on the pavement.  Many roads have no lines painted on them and no shoulders.  Some roads not wide enough for two cars to pass, and there are still plenty of unpaved roads.  I see hunters in our yard and in the post office.  The mailboxes are on posts here, and some bear the scars of people driving by and attempting to smash them.

Yet for all these rural features, there is no smell of cows.  Our next-door neighbor had  swimming pool water delivered, by water truck.  The other neighbor keeps a car in the driveway under a car cover.  Many homes have Invisible Fence installed to keep the dogs close to the house.  Even more have elaborate deer fencing and decorative fencing, two things I would not expect to see outside of the suburbs.  The community is served by hourly MetroNorth trains to New York City, even in the middle of the night.  The North Salem Architectural Review Boardminutes include lengthy discussion of color and roof shape of a proposed installation of pre-fab pump house not visible from the road. 

There is decorative informational signage marking historic sites throughout North Salem. And there are BMWs.  But the one thing that convinces me that I live in a suburb is the regular presence of the North Salem Parking Patrol cruiser.

Oh, Deer

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The house we are renting has large windows, and the windows want washing, inside and out.  First I wasted a whole bottle of Windex and a whole roll of paper towels, having poked around in the closets looking for a proper squeegee, and finding none.  The dogs watched me going at the windows the whole time. I thought I was being interesting. It was the deer in the yard, though, that was the interesting part, and as I came in, out went Captain for a long, deer-chasing romp.
Later, I made for the closest hardware store I know of, in the near-ish town of Cross River. The hardware store makes keys, sells paint, and has the parts of your running toilet that will make it stop running. Like so many of the small hardware stores you find in strip-malls, it’s packed to the rafters with merchandise. I always find that you walk in and ask the guy behind the counter. Don’t bother looking for yourself. I was shown a few options, and picked a squeegee for which one must provide a handle. The clerk found a couple of possibilities for the pole, none of them perfect, but he did secure the pole to the squeegee with a screw, charging me for neither the pole nor the screw. Along the way, I got a bit of history (the upstairs of the store used to be the screening room of the old movie theater), and some predictions for snow this winter.
In Westchester County, deer (and black bear) can be hunted only by bow, and the season is from October 15thto December 31st. I have already met one man who has permission to hunt on this land.  The deer here are certainly plentiful, and a danger to motorists. I see them every morning when I walk the dogs to get the paper, all day when I look out the windows, every afternoon when I walk the dogs on the road, and every day when I am out driving.  There was a large doe killed recently on Cat Ridge Road, where I walk.  One of its hind legs was broken in the accident, and stuck out from its body at a disturbing angle. It happened on Friday night, and the carcass had been removed by Monday midday. Scavengers had only just started to make progress on it.
The deer here in Westchester seem well adapted to seeing people and cars and trucks, and give everything a good, long, dumb stare before walking or running away.  There is a group that I have seen grazing dully at the margins of the Taconic Thruway near Lagrangeville. The speed limit is 50 mph, but many people seem to take that as a polite suggestion, like flossing daily or changing your smoke-detector batteries twice a year. The one thing that seems to make deer try to leap high and run fast is my knuckleheaded dogs; they charge at deer, barking furiously in frustration, running as fast as they can with no plan for maneuvering over the stone walls that the deer hop over without much visible effort.  Maybe if deer made more noise I would respect them more.
My landlord informs me that he likes seeing the crows and ravens and vultures and eagles that come if the bow hunters leave the entrails after gutting a deer.  As a dog owner, the possibility of my dogs getting into rotting deer entrails is pretty scary, but it is not nearly as scary as the prospect of preventing any and all Vizsla escapes from October 15thto December 31st, from dawn to dusk.  I am pretty sure that Vizslas look as much like white-tail deer as any dog can.  

15

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My mice escaped from time to time, and I am sure Sugar took care of them. Sugar was an adept and successful hunter, living in the days when cats were allowed in and out when they pleased. I once saw him walk casually across the patio and without pausing leap into the air landing in the ivy upon a mouse. His most infamous hunting exploits all involve bringing litters of babies to us, one by one. There was a possum story my mother used to tell, where Sugar brought her one after another baby possum. She had some sort of punch line about encountering the possum mother herself, but I can’t say what it was. The better story involves the Presbyterian church-goers walking to Easter Sunday services, while Sugar dispatched a litter of screaming baby rabbits.