Field Note: January 2001

          Lately, we’ve been picking up skips on the game commission’s radio system, with the result that a lot of Spanish speaking transmissions are being received.  I didn’t think too much of it until I recently returned a phone call, and a young boy answered the phone.  After asking the boy if his mom was there, he yelled for her to come to the phone.  Before the mother answered the phone, I heard the young boy tell her  “It’s some guy, and it sounds like he’s speaking a foreign language.”  Hmm... maybe I’m picking up  Spanish by osmosis.

           We have been getting complaints that snowmobilers are using trails that are closed to them.  So, Deputy Fox and I went to State Game Lands #12, and in no time at all, I managed to get my vehicle stuck.  While we were trying to free the vehicle, several snowmobiles appeared and stopped about one hundred yards down the road, which was a closed trail.  I motioned for them to come and help but to our dismay they turned around and left.  

           In looking through some items that belonged to Joe Leiendecker (deceased), who was a member of the first training class at Ross Leffler School of Conservation,  I found the following poem entitled The Stranger.   

                   “Who’s that stranger, Mother dear?

                   Look! he knows us! Ain’t that queer?”

                   “Hush my dear! The mother smiled,

                   that’s your father, dearest child!”

                   “That’s my father? Not at all,

                   For father died, you know, last fall!”

                   “Father didn’t die, my dear

                   Hunting season came again last year,

                   and it’s closed this spring so he 

                   has no place to go, you see.”

                   “No place is left for him to roam,

                   That is why he’s come back home.”

                   “kiss him, he won’t bite you child,

                   all game protectors look that wild.”