by Jim Schwartz

IF YOU HAVE wondered why restrictions are imposed on backyard "barrel burning" of household trash, here is one of the reasons: the Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 1995 that these devices emitted as many dioxins (a dangerous pollutant) as all the municipal incinerators in the country combined. The 1995 date is important because that is when emission standards for municipal incinerators were tightened.

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FEMALE MOSQUITOES (the biters) live for about 30 days, while males only survive from 7 to 10 days. As everyone knows, of course, it's the biters that make life miserable. The 3000-odd mosquito species on this planet are said to transmit more diseases than any other creature.

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MARTY MCCLEERY reports that five trumpeter swans (two males [white] and three females) visited Ten Mile Lake on the first of December, just about 10 days before ice-over. They were feeding on submerged vegetation off-shore from the McCleery property, staying in that area throughout the day. Marty says it's the first time he has seen trumpeters on the lake.

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FOR THE FIRST TIME in the 40-plus years we have spent at least part of the summer season at Ten Mile Lake, we spotted not one brood of ducklings along our shore in 2000. For us, the absence of ducklings was mystifying (I'm told other areas of the lake had their usual complements). To make matters even worse, neither of our nesting boxes produced ducklings, even though both were occupied. One was claimed by a hooded merganser and the other by a goldeneye. When I checked the boxes at the end of the season, both had clutches of unhatched eggs. The hatching failure was discouraging, our first such experience after years of success.

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WHEN THE ICE went out on April 29 it was like nothing my wife and I had ever seen before. If there is any breeze at all honeycombed sheets pile up along the windward shore, sometimes in huge mounds that keep growing until they collapse under their own weight. In a stiff blow, a fair amount of shoreline damage can accompany the event. On April 29, a gathering southeast wind pushed at the rotting ice and, in classic fashion, sent the floes across the lake's surface toward south-facing shores. As the gale strengthened "ice waves" began forming, a completely new experience for us. As the churning action intensified, disintegration quickened. When remnants reached the beaches they simply morphed into crushed ice, then disappeared -- a riveting but altogether benign performance.

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ONE MEASURE OF the wind's force was that Flower Pot Bay, ice-free prior to the blow, was completely ice-covered again by afternoon. To a lesser extent, the same thing happened in Lundstrom's Bay. Both bays, however, gave up their frigid cargoes that evening, and winter was over at last.

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WE WERE DELIGHTED on our return to be greeted by chickadees, purple finches, rose breasted grosbeaks, pine siskins, downy and pileated woodpeckers and, for the first time in years, a male scarlet tanager. Our old waterfowl friends the hooded mergansers, wood ducks, goldeneyes, mallards and loons were also on hand within a day or so of our arrival. By May 10 the Baltimore orioles and hummingbirds had shown up precisely on schedule. Then came the warblers as well as other assorted species . . . and spring migration was under way.

YOU WERE EXPECTING MARTIANS??

ITS NOT MARTIANS. Just highway planning.

THOSE WHITE CROSSES you may have seen along roadsides around Ten Mile were markers for an aerial survey conducted by the County Highway Department. The survey was done as a preliminary to planned project work on Highways 6, 71 and 50 in the immediate years ahead. Although planning is under way, actual construction probably will not begin before 2005.

Discussions that include Ten Mile Lake representatives are in progress on what can be done about re-routing Highway 50, but no decisions have been made. Meanwhile, Highway 71 will be treated again this year with calcium chloride, a chemical formulation that reduces dust and minimizes washboarding.

The treatment has been applied to Highway 71 for at least the last two years. Because high water has again inundated a short stretch of Highway 71, traffic is being re-routed on Hiram Loop Road NW (Shingobee 51).