Vermont Wild’s cover is an illustration of a time Warden Eric Nuse was transporting raccoons and things got a little out of hand.Vermont Wild, Adventures of Vermont Fish and Game Wardens, by Eric Nuse and Megan Price, illustrations by Bob Lutz, published in 2010 by Pine Marten Press, 267 pages, paperback, $19.95
reviewed by Bethany M. Dunbar
When many people have a bad day at work, they get a paper cut. When Fish and Game Warden Eric Nuse had a bad day at work he might have ended up with eight baby raccoons loose in his car, or pieces of a dead moose floating all around him in a canoe at Little Elmore Pond.
It takes the right kind of guy to take a step back, on a day like that, and realize it’s a pretty funny situation. Some people would keep that kind of thing to themselves. Others value a good story more than their own pride.
Luckily, Eric Nuse is that other guy. Mr. Nuse’s stories, written for him by award-winning journalist Megan Price, are crazy and hilarious.
Mr. Nuse worked 32 years as a warden in Vermont, and I can easily see why he waited until he was not doing that work anymore before he came out with this book.
Not that he would have been able to keep these stories secret anyway. These are the kind of stories people circulate. Now, at least he can get a little income from circulating them himself.
The raccoon story is a good one, and it’s one I could personally relate to. Years ago, before rabies was as pervasive as it is now, and before there Another former Fish and Game Warden, Bob Lutz, did the illustrations for the book. This is one of Mongo, a steer Warden Nuse had that kept getting loose.were as many official wildlife rehabilitators, a warden with a baby raccoon on his hands might give it to a citizen to raise. I raised one of those orphans myself and it was a lot of fun.
I found out how smart and tough raccoons are first-hand, even baby ones.
The second chapter of this book is “Raccoon Riot.” Mr. Nuse describes how he had developed a pretty good network of volunteers who would raise wildlife and release the animals when they were ready.
“For instance, my deputy’s wife, Jackie, had a talent for rearing fox kits and coyote pups, the state conservation camp counselors did an exceptional job with fawns, and the guys over at the Boy Scout camp in Eden liked raising baby raccoons and were good at it. Maybe the fun-loving, I’ll-try-most-anything, enthusiasm of the camp counselors matched that of wide-eyed orphan raccoon babies. Whatever, it worked.”
So one July morning he headed over to the camp to pick up eight 12-week-old raccoons. The counselors had built a spacious kennel for them with tree branches and toys. The youngsters were doing fine and ready to go back to their wild world.
Only one problem. He realized after he got there they he had forgotten the folding dog crate he had intended to use to transport the youngsters 20 miles up the road to a place with lots of woods and not so many roads and people.
Fortunately, the counselors found a good-sized cardboard box, and he loaded the box into the back seat of the car.
At first he heard quite a bit of scratching and chattering.
“Two miles or so into our journey, I paused to try and remember the next verse to the song I was singing and I noticed something — silence....”
“Uh oh.
“Like the old joke in the cowboy movies, it was quiet — too quiet.
“I looked into the rear view mirror and saw a flash of black and silver. There was a tiny masked bandit standing on his hind legs on the rear seat ledge...
“Looking back at me in the rear view mirror was what appeared to be a BIG raccoon.
“He was next to my right shoulder and his shiny black button eyes were glaring at me.”
He swerved the cruiser and suddenly raccoons seemed to be everywhere.
“Suddenly the cruiser was awash with the sounds of chattering teeth, tiny claws tearing taxpayer-owned seat fabric, and a series of thumps and bumps as they ricocheted over the interior like animated ping-pong balls.”
The warden decided to keep going, still trying to reach his planned release site. Before long he had one crawling up his pants leg, one on his head, two on his lap fighting, and two others fighting over the remains of a peanut-butter sandwich that had been his lunch at one time.
It was then that he met a guy coming the other direction in a beat-up pickup truck.
“It’s a challenge to surprise most Vermonters up here in the Northeast Kingdom. We routinely see everything from deer and moose tied to car hoods and roof racks to all manner of Grapes of Wrath homemade transportation. But a live Davey Crockett coon skin cap wriggling on top of my head and another half dozen of them bouncing around the cruiser produced a look of astonishment on this fellow’s face as he drove by.”
About that time the warden started to smell something. He realized the youngsters had been given a big breakfast. Possibly the ride had affected their digestion. anyway, the result was an even bigger mess than he had already. He pulled over and opened the door, and the little tribe “waddled off in classic raccoon style.”
Mr. Nuse’s storytelling style, and Ms. Price’s writing style, work well together to make a book that has a friendly, conversational tone. It’s easy to read and bound to produce at least a chuckle or two.
The stories include a tale of a wayward steer Mr. Nuse tried to raise for the freezer who kept getting out of his pasture, a dog that was supposed to help him find an injured deer, and a moose carcass the warden needed to get rid of.
In each case once the mess was cleaned up, Mr. Nuse was left with a good story and sometimes a witness or two. With Vermont Wild he has made the best of a complicated situation, something it’s clear he had some practice doing over the years he worked as a warden.
