The last few weeks spent in town for me have been like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” when she calls all of the animals out from the forest.
OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but seriously, my colleagues and I have run into a lot of curious animals in town recently, and Marblehead may be becoming the next great safari hot spot.
And here I am to offer my thoughts on these animal situations in town — not that you asked for this, but I’m going to anyway.
The town has been teeming with wildlife recently that rivals, dare I say, the likes of the Amazon Rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef, or even the great Alaskan wilderness. From a rare and shiny blue lobster, caught off the coast by Marblehead’s own Anne Rodgers, to turkeys sitting in chairs in the back of residents’ yards.
No, I’m serious. There’s a certain publisher of a certain Marblehead weekly newspaper whose wife chases turkeys off of their outside furniture and out of their yard. Or at least she tries.
I’m sure the neighbors have gotten used to her telling them to scram.
Just last week, I learned that an invasive species of earthworm has squirmed its way into town and is killing plants in gardens. It might even be disrupting forest ecosystems. From my research, it doesn’t sound like there is any practical way to exterminate these pests at the moment.
However, I think I have a solution: Take all the turkeys wobbling around town and let them have a field day.
Though it seems like those birds are enjoying life just fine on the Marblehead Neck from the sounds of it — unwinding on people’s chairs, living the island life, or peninsula life if you will.
But a question that I have had for a while is how did they even get over here? The causeway is too slim for them to just walk on over, and there is quite a bit of water in between the Neck and the mainland.
So I’ve narrowed it down to two possible answers: the first being that they flew over the water, though turkeys can only fly in the air for a very short distance, so that doesn’t seem likely; the second, and much more obvious answer, is that these gobblers took the charter that floats around Marblehead Harbor.
It seems like the myriad of rabbits may have done the same from what I’ve seen, or they just bunny-hopped over the harbor. Talk about a worm invasion, I can’t go a day without seeing a bunny in nearly every yard when I go into town.
Forget about “Planet of the Apes,” it’s a rabbit’s world, and we’re just living in it. Now maybe with all the coyotes surrounding Nahant, all of the rabbits and turkeys migrated to Marblehead and the Neck, because I haven’t seen any coyotes over here (knock on wood).
Whatever the case may be for all of these creatures, some cute, some gross, popping up in droves all of a sudden, it’s a curious situation that I feel does warrant some questions, but it’s pretty cool to see so much wildlife running about in town.
So if you have any peculiar animal stories of your own, please feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear about them.
Ryan Vermette is a reporter for Marblehead Weekly News.