RIP Baby Woodpeckers
A story about Evanston, a place that's really starting to suck
I live in Evanston’s third ward - not far from the Walgreens on Chicago and Keeney. Almost every morning, I walk to get coffee from Brother’s K. This morning, I walked past a tree with this sign on it at 7:18am, I took this picture because it was so lovely.
I can confirm there is a woodpecker nest in that tree - I see and hear them almost every day.
By 10:30am, the tree was cut down. However, the City was kind enough to leave the sign on the tree. It was in front of a building that always has a lot of kids playing out front. Those poor kids are going to learn a lesson about the City of Evanston when they get home from school today.
A little background: A few houses up, there was a tree damaged in the storm and a branch fell onto a car, damaging it pretty badly. This was a different tree, though! They cut that tree down yesterday, presumably because it was going to die. I have no idea why they cut down this tree, besides the branch with the woodpeckers, it seemed otherwise healthy.1
I’m going to rant briefly for a minute (apologies) - with every passing year, the space around us turns more and more into an economic asset to be optimized. I often think of the Northwestern Alumni Magazine I got in 2020, where they quantified the exact financial value of their trees. Nature is to be consumed at the nature center and library; otherwise exists merely as a way to promote or damage property values.
Can we not just enjoy the things we have, listen to our kids and elders? It wouldn’t have killed anyone to close that parking spot (in front of a fire hydrant anyway) for 2-3 months so those woodpeckers could nest their babies.
We love to claim that we care about the environment and nature and all the right liberal causes but, at the end of the day, actions speak louder than words.
I realize that sometimes a healthy tree can actually be not healthy. However, the baby woodpeckers aren’t going to live in that tree forever.
This epitomizes the City of Evanston to me. Meanwhile, they’ll submit for another Most Livable or Tree City award or accolade and fall over each other to ingratiate themselves to the almighty Wizard behind the curtain that is NU
Sometimes when woodpeckers are taking up residence it means the tree is dying due to bug infestations that Woodpeckers feed upon; however, the tree could remain until the Woodpeckers flew away or got pushed out by mom.
This city sucks. It doesn’t value kid life or animal life.
That’s All Folks
Woody Woodpecker