I can’t resist writing something about Clyde, a blue heron that spent most of last summer in my front yard on the shore of Lake Superior.

I swear Clyde followed my wife, Darl, all the way from South Padre Island, TX, to Paradise. Down at Padre, where we fish in the Gulf of Mexico surf, we have a blue heron that hangs close and urges us to toss him a fish. Those birds are so stoic, standing there and seeming never to move a head or leg and yet they are soon reaching into your bucket of fish if you take your eye off them for a moment.

Well, I swear that bird I named ‘Clyde’ migrated to Darl’s front yard—not for a handout of fish, but for a meal of chipmunks.

Clyde walks along the lakeshore in front of our house and stands under the bird feeder until he spots a chipmunk after sunflower seeds. Suddenly, WHAM! Clyde has the chipmunk in his beak. He quickly flies to the water, drowns the chipmunk and then proceeds to swallow it down.

While my neighbor, Debbie Musielak, watches aghast because she loves her chipmunks, I keep cheering Clyde on. My chipmunk population needs thinning.

A few years ago, my grandsons had fun making pets of the chipmunks and teaching them to jump into their shirt pockets for sunflower seeds. But when they started to follow us into the house and sit there begging, it all had to end.

We also have a bald eagle hanging around out front, but all he wants is a fresh fish. I’d like to teach him to hunt chipmunks. One day last summer, I bought some whitefish for smoking. I took the heads and guts to the shoreline for the seagulls. Suddenly, a large shadow came over me and I turned to see that eagle, with a six-foot wingspan, diving in front of me for the head of a fish. I’ll bet he would eat a chipmunk if he was hungry enough.

It has also been fun in recent years to see and hear the loons out front. For a long time, they were getting scarce. Darl has a special loon whistle, and she calls them. They answer and sometimes come in close. Loons are so special. We find them all around us on the lake where we go fishing in Canada. You really feel ‘Up North’ and in the wilderness when you hear the call of the loon.

I’d also like to teach the bears and raccoons to catch and eat chipmunks. Bears and raccoons stop in at night to rip the bird feeder apart and go off munching all the sunflower seeds. Seems to me that if I were a bear or raccoon I’d get a better meal out of a chipmunk.

Meanwhile, Clyde is my hero. I just voted him the migratory bird of the year.

Gerry Brehm, a longtime friend of mine from Brimley, got mad at the chipmunks that kept getting into his garden and taking bites out of his tomatoes. So Gerry bought a live trap. On his first try, he was delighted to catch a big chipmunk. Gerry took the trap and the critter about a mile down the road and opened the trap to let it loose. The chipmunk darted out and ran right into the road where a truck ran over it.

You can feel badly all you want to Gerry, but you can’t have my Clyde.