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Local Animals — the 1880 baseline and what the record has done to it since
#174 — The dated baseline: Chapman's natural history, 1880, read whole
Every later record in this section is measured against one printed page-turn: Chapter II of Chas. C. Chapman & Co.'s History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (Chicago, 1880), "Natural History — Quadrupeds — Birds — Reptiles — Fishes…
#175 — The bison question, tested: on the river, not proven on this township
The bison has two records here, and they do not meet: a county record that is firm, and a township record that does not exist. The county record is Chapman's, twice over. In the natural-history chapter the buffalo heads the gone…
#176 — The departed predators whole: wolves, panthers, bears — and the bear that came back to the county
Chapman's predator list is three animals deep, and each has a different end: the "black wolf" and "black bear" gone with or before the buffalo by 1880, and — a distinction his own text forces — the panther gone in the same…
#177 — Extirpation and return, dated at both ends: deer, turkey, otter, beaver
Four arcs, each with a date at each end — and one shared shape: every one of these animals was gone or nearly gone from Indiana within living memory of Chapman's page, and every one is present in this county today because…
#178 — The lost birds: the prairie chicken Chapman warned about, and the pigeon overhead
Chapman wrote both of these birds' warnings himself, in 1880, in the present tense: of the prairie chicken — "the chiefest among the Grouse family is the prairie chicken, which, if not carefully protected, must ere long follow…
#179 — The river's fish: Chapman's list, the sturgeon between the dams, and the managed river
Chapman's fish list is the shortest in his chapter, and its most important fact is an absence: the fishes of St. Joseph County in 1880, as he gives them, are the black bass, goggle-eye, crappie ("big black sun-fish") and two…
#180 — Raptor returns, dated by first nests: eagle, osprey, and the downtown falcons
Chapman closed the bald eagle's county account in 1880 — "once quite common, now scarce" — and the modern record reopens it on two nests in one spring: 2015 . Notre Dame's Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF), in St.…
#181 — The counted birds: the Christmas Bird Count test, and the rookery that is not here
The Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running bird census in the country — 15-mile-diameter circles, one count day between 14 December and 5 January, every bird seen or heard tallied by volunteers — and Indiana's own CBC…
#182 — The arrivals: zebra mussels in the river system, carp at the gate
Two arrivals, two different postures — one already inside the county's river, one still held at a gate a hundred miles away: that is the whole shape of the invasive record for this ground, and it prints by animal.
#183 — Kept and mascot animals: the test, run
The test is for an animal, not a name: a living kept mascot, or an animal that itself carried the town's name. John Glenn High School's Falcons are banked as a team name, and no kept falcon — no live bird kept by the school, the…
#184 — Record now: the species status of this ground, November 2026
Closed at November 2026, this section's whole arc stands thus. The baseline of 1880 — large fauna gone, game birds failing, marsh birds retreating — is no longer the ground's description, but the recovery is selective and every…