Karen Keninger, Author at Heartland Safari

A pair of nightcrawlers aligned side-to-side and front-to-back. Earthworm sex.

Intestines of the Earth: Night Crawlers

Updated April 20, 2023

Last summer, we decided to build a new shop. That meant cleaning out a bunch of old junk in the fence row and digging down to make a foundation. in the process, we disturbed legions of night crawlers (Lumbricus terrestris). They had made their homes in and around all the debris that had been dumped […]

Invertebrates

A grey critter with huge “hands” bearing long claws, pokes out from the top of a mound of dirt. Common mole has a short, tapered snout and tiny eyes that aren’t even visible in this head-on view.

Earth Thrower: Moles

Updated April 17, 2023

When I was a little girl, I wore Coke-bottle-lens glasses. They were heavy, and often made my nose sore where they rested on the nose pieces. To make them more comfortable, my father put moleskin pads on the nose pieces to cushion them. This helped until the little pads inevitably fell off and had to […]

Mammals

Action photo of a Northern Flicker boosting itself out of a hole in a dead tree. Bright yellow flashes from the underside of its unfurling wing, as it shows its white breast with black dots.

Another Drummer: Northern Flicker

Updated April 13, 2023

There’s a lot of drumming going on in the trees on Owl Acres. Woodpeckers are staking out their territory and calling to potential mates. One of the drummers is a northern flicker (Colaptes auratus). Unlike Woody Woodpecker and all his cousins, the northern flicker is brown, not black. He does have a profusion of black […]

Birds

Photo of Dave, a Yellow Labrador Retriever, and Clancy, a Golden Retriever pup, catching some zzz’s on a mat on a sunlit tile floor. Favorite toys lie strewn on the floor next to the mat.

A New Member of the Household: Clancy

Updated March 26, 2025

I have gained a heightened appreciation of the 500 or more families who take on the task of raising puppies for the Seeing Eye each year. It takes a lot of focus, attention and work just to get them housetrained, let alone all the other things that a new puppy needs to learn. And the […]

A European Starling takes flight. Wings spread, showing the tapered tips that give the bird its name. Brown bird with white mottling and a long, tapered beak.

Thank You, Shakespeare: Starlings

Updated April 6, 2023

There’s a racket going on inside the fireplace. This is the second time this spring. A bird has mistaken the chimney for a home, and, once it tumbled down that pipe, it can’t go back up. So it’s fluttering and bumping around in there trying to get out. After some attempts that sound like they’d […]

Birds

Old black and white photo of a prairie farmstead. Small, rude frame house and large wooden windmill and small livestock building and wagon in the background. Man and woman seated in the foreground and another man stands with his hand on a fence near the windmill.

Settlement Part 4: The Reeves Family

Updated April 3, 2023

Records indicate that Jesse Reeves bought the quarter section of land that today contains Owl Acres. He bought it from the Government for $1.25 per acre. How Jesse and his family fared over the next 15 or 20 years is uncertain, but records do exist of a Jesse Reeves of Elkhorn, Douglas County, Nebraska who […]

History

Red Tail Hawk in full flight, carrying a gray rat in its talons

The Hawkeye State: Red-Tailed Hawk

Updated March 30, 2023

On a bright sunny day, a red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) sits surveying his domain from the top of the cupola on the barn. We see them everywhere—on top of utility poles, high up in trees, sitting on fence posts, even sitting on the cable barriers that run down the median on the interstate. They hunt […]

Birds

Karen stands behind a replica of John Deere’s sod-busting plow he invented in 1837. A stout wooden beam supports a curved, diamond-shaped plowshare, made from a sawmill blade. The point cuts the sod and starts it curving up and across the face of the plowshare. As the sod slides across the steel, it continually scours the surface clean so the plow doesn’t get clogged by the sticky prairie soil.

Settlement Part 3: Jesse Plows the Prairie

Updated March 27, 2023

In the 1850s, a massive campaign to recruit settlers to the prairies was underway. Land speculators bought up land to resell at a profit. Soldiers from the Mexican-American war were granted land warrants for 160 acres of land, which many sold for cash. Thousands of farmers and their families from Pennsylvania, Ohio and other eastern […]

History

Northern cardinals have a short, stout bill, adapted for cracking seeds. This species is the only bright red bird with a crest.

Solo Duet: Northern Cardinal

Updated March 23, 2023

All winter, northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) have been brightening the landscape with their red plumage and their upward-rising whit-whit-whit calls followed by that descending pfew, Pfew call. Three or four pairs of them have been frequenting the bird feeder, lording it over the finches and chickadees. On this cold March morning, one is sitting on […]

Birds

1930 plat map of Palo Alto Township in Jasper County, Iowa. Containing slightly more than 36 sections (even though it lacks Sections 30, 31 & 32), Palo Alto Township is one that was distorted from the usual 6-mile square to accommodate the meandering South Skunk River along its southwest corner.

Settlement Part 2: Townships and Land Purchases

Updated March 20, 2023

In today’s world, every piece of land is owned by somebody. In order to draw the lines and make the plat maps that define the land, a framework has to be in place so that the land can be described precisely and mapped accurately. In the Midwest, where the land is generally rolling prairie laced […]

History