I saw an egret the other day. I don�t know what it was doing in town. I�d never seen an egret here before. It was in the brook in the park on the highway near what used to be the hospital. I�d never seen an egret in town before. I�ve seen egrets in South Jersey in Barnegat Bay, but never any this far north.
This used to be a gritty industrial town. The steel mills left town a long time ago. Steel was cheaper from the open pit mines around the Great Lakes. The canal closed down in the 1920�s. It was paved over and turned into a highway. (We do hold the distinction of being the only place where a canal boat hit a train.) Nothing lived in the river in those days, nor in the streams. The knitting mills that followed after the steel mills were somewhat cleaner; but not much. They moved to Singapore or Mexico about thirty years ago. No one cared about the environment in those days.
Four years ago I saw a blue heron flying up the river. But he was headed north into the watershed. Really surprised me to see him in town; though I have seen them further north, in Buckabear pond. The water is much cleaner now, though we still have seepage of trichloroethylene from the vinyl wallpaper manufacturer that left the next town twenty years ago. Yes we have a municipal well on the Federal Hazardous Clean-up List. But the water is getting cleaner.
I saw an egret the other day.
