The best things about Maine would be an awful long, varied list if
you polled many people.
The first images of Maine when the word is mentioned are what?
Or when you tell someone you are from this big state with lower population in the right hand corner of the nation?
Often the list starts with Maine lighthouses, lobsters, loons. It can progress to snow skiing, kayaking lakes, hiking Maine state parks.
Or maybe other Maine food like our famous wild blueberries, potatoes get added to the poll results.
But lighthouses in Maine are in the top three when a survey is whipped out. Maine lobsters come up high and maybe because of all those vacations to Bar Harbor, Kennebunk or Ogunquit.
But Maine loons, the sound of their cry or laughter depending on your reaction, mood at the time are sacred. The Maine Audobon had a loon photo contest and offers other worthwhile information on the bird.
On Drews Lake, last summer there was a young loon lake island chick that was being abused by his Maine parents.
Other chicks had been eaten. So intervention to rescue the Maine loon chick by concerned local lake campers got him to a vet. And each took turns hand feeding him back to health, in a safe setting.
Eventually a down country mother loon that had lost her baby was located to “adopt” the Drews Lake loon. And to provide a happy ending to the story. Evidently domestic abuse is not limited to just humans. Mainers living in the small town rural setting care more for each other, for the wildlife and the four seasons surroundings.
Special thanks to the Arthur Howell Game Shelter, Preserve that takes in “disabled” or abandoned Maine wildlife. The shelter is a neat place for school field trips and is located on the Lycette Road in Amity. Respect for the creatures in the woods, roaming the farms, out in, on and below the surface of the local waterways. Art is all over that.
I have known Arthur for many years and enjoy his visits with owls, hawks and other birds to the local Houlton Rotary meetings. He is definitely a friend to the wildlife of Maine. The place that Bambi goes when mom or dad are killed. Or for hurt animals to rehabilitate in Northern Maine.
