Karen Wils photo A fawn rests in the ferns.

ESCANABA — June is the milk and honey of all the months here in Upper Michigan.

Healthy, sweet and growing is what the sixth month of the year is all about. It is like one big awesome baby shower out there. Presents, gifts, fancy foods and fun and games in the forms of new fawns, baby bunnies, nests full of eggs and wild strawberries are picture perfect.

Flowers are everywhere. Pink apple blossoms under a baby blue sky invite guests to the celebration of new life. Tiny purple violets and yellow lady slipper orchids dress up the nursery.

The warm rains have transformed the stark ground into a salad bar for wildlife. Fiddlehead ferns, mushrooms, morels, sweet clover and grasses feed the wild mamas and babies.

There is a population explosion out there right now. At no other time of the year is there so much “life” in the north woods.

Birds, from the majestic eagle’s nest high up in the lofty pine to the timid, little hummingbird in a cup nest of mud no bigger than a golf ball, are scattered high and low.

Many Yooper families adopt a brood of mallard ducks or a clutch of young robins that take up residence in our yards.

New life puts on quite a show. At this moment, I’m at OSF getting my treatment and watching a wobbly legged new fawn just outside the hospital window.

One of the many pleasures of living in the U.P. is being able to witness, first hand, wildlife from its infancy through the mature days of big bucks and bug bruins.

The quality of life is just a little finer in the nursery of the north woods.

The song birds of summer send out the invitations. The aspens, willows and birches knit together many comfortable niches for youngsters to nap.

Mother Nature decorates with ferns and flowers. A chorus of frogs sings a sweet lullaby. Just like at a human baby shower — we try to buy gifts that the mother-to-be truly needs to help care for her baby — wild babies are gifted needs like camouflage, little scent, rich milk and fast growth.

At this time of the year it is impossible not to come across young wild creatures out there. Sometimes as in the case of fawns, babies often look alone in the wilds. But nothing is farther from the truth. Does must leave their fawns hidden to keep them safe from predators. She will be back for her Bambi.

If young raccoons, woodchucks or rabbits are stranded in your backyard, just give them some space. Watch them from afar as they will wander off into the thicket just like their mothers before them.

During baby animal season sometimes we have to slow down a bit, be cautious or mow around a nest of kill-deer eggs, but it is very much worth it.

A “baby shower” to welcome cubs, kits, ducklings, fledglings, fawns, calves, pups, leverets and hatchlings of all sorts, is one grand celebration.

——

Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.