NEWS

Leidorf, Tipper chronicle life at East Harbor

Sheri Trusty

CATAWBA ISLAND – One of the area’s top weathermen lives on Catawba – and has four feet. And likes to play catch. And greets new friends by sniffing their – well, never mind.

Tipper, a half-lab, half-Chesapeake mix, takes walks twice a day at East Harbor State Park and, with the help of her owner, Yvonne Leidorf, reports her findings on her locally-famous Facebook page.

Leidorf writes “Tipper’s Tales,” where she often describes the current weather, the lake condition, and the social climate of the day, which may include meetings with eagles, coyotes or deer.

“I retired from Davis Besse after 28 years. Right after I retired, that’s when I started taking Tipper for walks,” she said. “I was writing Tipper’s Tales one week, and people told me to keep doing it.”

Tipper’s Tales gives a unique view of life at East Harbor that many people don’t have the chance to experience. Liedorf and Tipper walk early in the morning, when they are likely to encounter a variety of wildlife, and then return in the afternoon when other people are often walking their dogs – if the weather is nice.

“We come all year long. It makes no difference what the weather is. It can be raining; it can be snowing,” Leidorf said. “We see dogs in the afternoon, but they’re not there in the winter. Tipper and I are the only ones hardy enough to walk the winter trails.”

On many mornings, Leidorf encounters the same deer in the same places. On her drive back to the beach, she often stops midway so Tipper can greet the deer that walk up to the edge of the road to snort a greeting.

“It’s like a good morning,” Leidorf said. “One day I counted 35 deer there.”

But not all of the wildlife they meet are so friendly. Three days before Christmas, they came across a couple of unwanted strangers that Tipper didn’t like.

“We were standing in the brush on a mound of dirt,” Leidorf wrote in a December 22 post. “Tipper stops, the hair on her back goes up and her tail curls up. She does not move a muscle. I am looking where she is looking and holy smokes there is a coyote walking right down the dog path. Tipper growls from her toes and just stands there.”

Leidorf took a hold of Tipper, but she wouldn’t move until the coyote, and then a second one, disappeared into the brush. She held her ground until she was sure Leidorf was safe.

“I praised Tipper for staying with me and we continued our walk and had a good time. I think Santa might have something special under the Christmas tree for her,” Leidorf wrote.

Eagles are a common sight at the beach. One day last August Leidorf and Tipper turned their heads upward toward the sounds of screeching to see six eagles flying overhead. On a walk earlier this month, Leidorf and Tipper heard a “whoosh, whoosh” sound and looked up in time to see an eagle swoop right above their heads.

“Tipper just stood there, frozen in her tracks,” Leidorf wrote in a March 10 post. “I have never seen an eagle that close where I could see and feel its wings. We watched it fly up to a tree branch and it just stood there looking at us. What an exciting afternoon.”

On other days, Tipper has watched fox playing on the frozen lake; greeted rescue and therapy dogs; retrieved a downed goose from the lake for a hunter; and watched treasure hunters don wet suits and search in the water.

Leidorf has lived in the area all her life, and the only thing that keeps her and Tipper from their walks is Sunday morning services at Faith United Methodist Church in Port Clinton, where Leidorf serves as secretary of the board of trustees and is a member of the pastor-parish relationship committee. She has attended the church all her life and was married at its altar.

“Every morning, Tipper wakes me up by licking my face. While I drink my coffee, Tipper lays her head on my lap,” Leidorf said. “On Sundays, when I’m done with my coffee, I tell her, ‘No walk today, Tipper. Mom has to go to church.’ Then she goes back to bed.”

But the other days, she jumps in the back seat of Leidorf’s truck, ready for another adventure. A couple of times a week, Leidorf writes about the experiences on her Facebook page, under Yvonne Glasco Leidorf.

“Everything I write is what we see. This is our quiet time, when we walk in the morning,” Leidorf said. “This is life. This is awesome.”