Spring unsettles NH

The unsettling effect of spring is nicely captured in a quotation from Mark Twain. "It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so."

And it seems to unsettle both humans and animals. For example, A New Hampshire man shot his cousin in the head, believing that he was a wild turkey. "And I had this eerie feeling," Glenn Ranfos explained. I turned around and the gun was pointing at me. " (David Edwards, rawstory.com, 05/13/14).

Kenneth Ranfo, who has been hunting with Glenn for 40 years, shot him with a shotgun from just 30 yards away in the deep woods of Dunbarton. Fortunately, the outcome was less severe than you might expect.  Although Glenn Ranfos still has five shotgun pellets stuck in his body, he said that he planned to continue hunting with his cousin, if Kenny got his hunting license back. "I feel lucky that Kenny wasn't a great shot," he laughed. "He made an honest mistake."

 We should all be that forgiving.

And then there is the man living in Manchester, New Hampshire's largest city, who discovered all manner of wildlife traipsing through his backyard. (Keith Raho,  New Hampshire Magazine, 05/2014). Raho saw a moose, deer, foxes, coyotes, and a bobcat and all were headed in the same direction. That puzzled him.

A friend of his who is a hunter offered an explanation. New Hampshire has wildlife corridors; that is, paths produced by geographical barriers, such as mountains, rivers and valleys, that funnel wild animals along a particular route which is literally "the path of least resistance."

Well, Ranfo didn't have mountains, rivers, and valleys nextr to his home in urban Manchester, but he did have Route I-293, a path of least resistance that  apparently was about as appealing to animals as it was to cars. I have a money-making suggestion for Raho. Use I-293 as a corridor to guide another species of wild animals, tourists, into his backyard where he can charge them to watch the passing parade of  wildlife.

Then, there is the moose who apparently wanted to go to college, and not just any school would do. (Scott Merzbach, Gazettenet.com, 05/16/2014) She wanted to enroll in Amherst College, the prestigious "Little Ivy" located in Amherst, MA. "The 800-pound female moose . . . ran around the Woodside Avenue neighborhood and the campus and briefly held up cars and pedestrians on South Pleasant and several side streets."

Apparently, she got good directions to the college and wound up outside the home of Biddy Martin, the president of Amherst. Martin was welcoming to the animal, photographed it, and tweeted her friends about her new house guest. Though Martin apparently was impressed by the initiative shown by the moose in contacting her directly about Amherst, I am sad to report that the moose wasn't accepted for entrance into the school. However, the animal was later given a free ride to Deep Woods University where its talents could be put to better use.

If you want to read a book about creatures in New Hampshire including such exotic species as "outtastatahs" (out-of-staters),  natives,  and masochistic Red Sox fans, , may I suggest my book "Outtastatahs: Newcomers' Adventures in New Hampshire." It features the trials and tribulations of newcomers to this state. (Two out of three New Hampshire residents weren't born here.) "Outtastatahs"  can be purchased at River Run Bookstore in Portsmouth; the Galley Hatch Restaurant gift shop in Hampton; The Water Street Bookstore in Exeter; Gibson's Bookstore in Concord and on-line at barnesandnoble.com. Both paper and Kindle versions can be obtained at amazon.com.