As much as the landscape around here has changed over the years, in some respects, nature may have changed more. Or maybe changes to the landscape forced those changes in nature.
The bald eagle, for example, was thriving, then it wasn't and then a few survivors became tourist attractions. People flocked to the base of the Conowingo Dam and walked downriver along the Susquehanna for a glimpse of one. And there was a nest alongside a driveway to a farm on Stafford Road just north of the Susquehanna State Park. Any daylight drive out of the park across the Deer Creek bridge took motorists right to the spot. It couldn't be missed because of all the cars parked blocking part of the narrow, shoulder-less road and the people with binoculars, cameras with long lenses and such, pointed up toward the tree.
That nest appears to have been abandoned. But the eagles haven't gone far. Each of the last two summers, my wife and I have kayaked down Deer Creek and have been awe struck by the sight of bald eagles working that last, flat section of creek before it empties into the Susquehanna. The brilliant white head of the stately bird is unmistakable.
More folks are seeing bald eagles every day. Some years back, when our daughters were much younger, we drove up along the Susquehanna River from Lapidum Landing to the mouth of Deer Creek to show the girls the raging water during a particularly wet spring. We hadn't gone far when we saw a bald eagle on a large rock, clutching a rockfish that would've made many an angler happy.
That's not the change in nature around here that's most striking, though the birds are stunning. What is truly stunning are the deer – as in how many there are, how tame they are and how easily they are to see anywhere and everywhere, day and night. It wasn't always that way, or at least they weren't as obvious. My father and his friend, Jack Harris, and my uncle, Clyde Lewis (or Uncle Junior, as I called him), used to do a lot of hunting around these parts.
They mostly hunted rabbits and pheasants. I remember walking around with my dad in the field and woods that eventually became the Havre de Grace Middle School complex. Occasionally, they would travel to the Eastern Shore and hunt geese and a few ducks. Uncle Junior also liked hunting squirrels; the other two didn't as much. They didn't hunt any deer, at least around here.
When we were kids, our family used to travel to upstate New York during Thanksgiving Week so my dad could hunt deer with my Uncle Benny and his crew. It was a long way to go to hunt deer, but that was the way to find them. Those days are long gone.
I hadn't been working for this newspaper for very long when 30-some years ago there was a big incident in Havre de Grace with four deer rampaging through downtown. Two of the four ran off. The other two crashed through the window of the Cash Loan Co. in the storefront in the 200 block of N. Washington Street that's been vacant since Walton's Hardware closed some time ago.
Police surmised the deer swam into town from Garrett Island. A short time later, I heard that in the cool of the evening deer were congregating in Susquehanna State Park. I started driving through the park regularly and eventually saw the small herd.
Driving to find deer around here is not only no longer necessary, but also it's just the opposite – when driving around here you have to constantly be on the lookout for them. If you don't, your vehicle will be spending time in a body shop. A case in point, shortly before noon last Sunday, a doe and a fawn trotted across the street in front of our vehicle on Grace Manor Drive, right near Joehill Drive. No doubt, anyone living out of the downtown part of Aberdeen and Havre de Grace see them regularly and, most likely, aren't real pleased about it.
We live a little farther out of town than many people and if the deer who "live" in our little patch of woods were any more tame, they would be pets. Our daily sightings are not unusual, though I hope not many folks have shared our experience of having deer parade around on our deck in search of sunflower seeds and other bird food. It's not so bad to watch them from a bit of a distance, but they're so destructive, not in a malicious way, rather in a way that there are so many of them, they're big animals, they have to eat and there's less and less wild habitat and fewer and fewer cornfields and orchards to sustain them.
It's hard to say where the deer population woes are headed, but it's safe to say time will tell.