Man-made Mini Sinkhole in Sturgeon Bay

I love karst landscapes. Wisconsin’s Door County, where I was born and currently live, is a monumental block of cracked, leaky Niagara dolomite, riddled with caves. Southern Poland, where my novel, A Drum Is Empty, is set, has it beat all to heck for caves, sinkholes, water-sculpted limestone cliffs, and monadnocks (huge free-standing rocks).

A shallow sinkhole provides a convenient camping place for kidnappers with evil intent in ADIE. It’s out of the wind and concealed from view. Un?fortunately, it makes sitting ducks of the bad guys for a sling-toting stone age sharpshooter like my MC.

This morning, I discovered a much less handy hole half a block from my home. Apparently the large snowblower that clears some of the sidewalks knocked an old storm sewer lid half off last week. I have walked past it every day, but didn’t see it until I was coming back from the laundromat today. It must have been concealed by snow until the weather warmed up; then the snow fell in — a man-made sinkhole!.

When I saw the hole, I said a couple of rude words, stared a bit, and then hastened home. Leaving my bags of wet wash to amuse themselves for a while, I scrounged up the makin’s for a couple of small marking flags. (Damned if I had the energy to drag a plank out of wherever….) I went back with two blaze-orange markers and my camera, shot some pics, and then returned home to leave a message on the street department’s answering machine.

Then I hung the wash and fed my hungry face.

It’s plenty big enough, and deep enough, to swallow a small child or an animal, and an adult could be trapped and/or injured.

The lid is not only heavy, it’s covered with snow and frozen down. Owoo.