A day in the life, circa 2024: At just past 8 o'clock on a recent Sunday morning, David Skillrud was on his way to church. The son of a Lutheran minister, he does that almost every Sunday. Cruising westward along G.
E. Road, a 45-mph artery through the middle of Bloomington-Normal's east side, up ahead he noticed a large flock of Canada geese, maybe 100 of them, on both sides of the road, some near the roadway and a few out on the actual pavement. Geese are funny.
They have wings, but they never seem to use them to cross a road in B-N. Instead, they slowly walk across it. They also can loiter and linger aimlessly.
K Beautiful when on water or in their arrow-shaped flying formations, they're otherwise when on land. Not long ago, the geese population became so great along Towanda Avenue, in front of the Illinois Agricultural Association complex where there was a pond, that years-long problem was finally eased. They got rid of the pond.
And so here was Skillrud, a well-known, longtime Twin City doctor, proceeding down G.E. Road, near Hershey Road.
He thought he had made it through the labyrinth of wayward waterfowl when — bump — he realized one apparently had been nicked by his car. "I didn't ever see it," says Skillrud. "It gave me that sick feeling you get when you hit an animal.
I felt absolutely awful." He went on to church, some three miles down the road — to St. John's Lutheran, at Emerson and Towanda, across from Ewing Manor.
Once inside, first stopping off in a chur.
