Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • 125

COMMUNITY FREE PRESS SlMM Y. JI.XY8 2017 DETROIT FREE PRESS WWWFREEP COM Is your mouth still watering for muskrat? Riverview eatery is closed, but aquatic rodent available A i x. That's why I was pleased JOEL THURTELL as 1,500 pairs, has poked holes into a survives amid pollution, ''J huge pile of sand on Zug Island to use be cleaned stopping flooding in basements, i The corps straightened the Rouge and directed its flow to- ward the Detroit River. The con-; crete liner is 180 feet wide at the top. When Pat and I canoed this I stretch on June 6, 2005, 1 esti-! mated there were 40 feet be- Bob Burns of Grosse Deis the tween the top of the concrete lin-1 Detroit river keeper.

He's paid er and the water surface on each by Friends of the Detroit River side. Eighty feet of concrete, to monitor water-quality prob-with a river 100 feet wide, I lems for wildlife along the De-guessed. The concrete part troit and Lower Rouge rivers, above water level was big In a 22-foot motorboat, he pa-enough that we used it as a slant-! trols the river, on the lookout for ed sidewalk for towing the canoe bad stuff coming from the 78 when the wind was too strong to sewer overflows that disgorge paddle. human and industrial waste Tradition has it that rats flee the sinking ship, but not at Kola's Food Factory, a Riverview restaurant famed Downriver for its muskrat dinners. At least not for now.

Proprietor Johnny Kola-kowski assured me that he'll still be cooking muskrat even though he's closed the restaurant and put the building at 17168 Fort Street up for sale. Whew! For the more than two decades that I've lived in Metro Detroit, I've rested easy knowing that I needed only to journey Downriver to Kola's for the repast of my dreams: broiled I've had a hankering for some time to fix rat and beaver again. muskrat. When I heard he'd closed the restaurant, I feared the worst what would life be like without Kola's special rat? You think I'm joking? Hey, back in the 1980s, when Kola's was in a Wyandotte bowling alley, I took my young sons down there on a Sunday morning for a terrific breakfast. We bowled, and then I scored what I'd come for raw muskrat carcasses and a chunk of beaver tail.

My older son, Adam, was supposed to provide some game for a wild feast in his fourth-grade class. I followed the Kolakowski recipe and boiled the rats three times first in salt, then in tomatoes and finally in bay leaves. Then I roasted them. Can't recall exactly how I cooked the beaver tail. What I remember, though, is thinking that there would be plenty left for us to eat the evening after the feast.

Guess again. Those kids in Plymouth's Bird Elementary School gorged on my rat and scarfed up beaver. There was none left for me. I've had a hankering for some time to fix rat and beaver again. when Johnny said he's not out of the rat business, even though he's closed the restaurant.

"You can still buy Vats," Johnny says. "I can still do special orders; that's no problem. It won't be table service. You can preorder 'to I'll still have the rats and 'coons and turtles I fought so hard to get." In the 1980s, the Michigan Department of Agriculture banned muskrat dinners because there was no approved source of muskrats. Some chefs of high rat cuisine defied the prohibition.

Back in the day, I went to an Erie Veterans of Foreign Wars fundraiser expecting to see state officers order the men to shut off their broilers. Instead, I ate some of the tastiest and greasiest muskrat I've ever had. Johnny worked out an agreement whereby he imports muskrat carcasses from Canadian trappers and inspects it himself. So why did he close the restaurant? "I couldn't justify it anymore," he told me. "I'm paying $16,000 a year in property taxes.

The economy has changed. People are not going to restaurants like they used to. People are buying $5 pizzas. How do you pay $16,000 in taxes with $5 pizzas? I bid on a brand-new cafeteria to open at Severstahl Steel, and it looks like I'm gonna get it. I got 200 people to feed lunch every day, plus street-fair business." Will he serve rats to the Severstahl crew? Does a muskrat swim in the river? But the days of the table-served rat definitely are over.

And that is sad. "I've got so many loyal customers, and nobody really does it," Johnny lamented. "It looks like the rats are going to disappear. I hate to see that happen." But if you want carryout rat, call Johnny at 734-281- 0447. He'll fix one or a dozen, or sell you the raw carcasses to cook at home.

Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or thurtellfreepress.com. LEFT: Johnny Kolakowski, 60, of Wyandotte, proprietor of Kola's Food Factory in Riverview, in his restaurant with a stuffed muskrat that was trapped in Gibraltar. BELOW: Muskrat was served daily at Kola's, which is now closed -but customers still may order carryout muskrat either cooked or ready-to-cook. Just call We couldn't have done that on June 2L 2007: There were no more than 10 feet of concrete above the water surface. In 2005, we paddled under the bridges in the area of the con- crete trough.

This time, when going under the same bridges, the water was so high that we A colony of bank swallows, as many RIVERS but the waters From Page 1 up the Rouge River from Zug Island to Fair Lane Manor in Dearborn. We fought against gusts and towed the ca noe part of the way. In the 22-foot Riverkeeper boat, powered by a 150-horse-power outboard motor, we zoomed up and down the river. The boat belongs to Friends of the Detroit River, a nonprofit aimed at bettering the river. Burns uses it to patrol the Detroit and Rouge rivers, looking for overflowing sewer outlets, oil spills and problems for wildlife.

Our other guide was Friends of the Detroit River chairman David Howell, a Southfield resident. We hoped to see improve ments. Maybe some of the junk boats Pat took pictures of in 2005 had been removed. Nope. The junk boats are still behind Fordson Island, Burns assured us.

We couldn't see them, be cause the water is too shallow for the Riverkeeper boat. But we saw the latest junker a 24-foot cabin cruiser scuttled under a bridge a few months ago. Burns wanted us to see some thing amazing. He opened the throttle, and the olive-green boat sped down the Detroit River. He pointed to dozens of holes near the crest of a big pile of white sand.

"Bank swallows," he said. He guessed 1,500 pairs of bank swallows are nesting in that pile of sand. Burns reported the colony to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which persuaded the owner of the aggregate not to bulldoze the sand until the young swallows have left their nests. Swallows are migratory birds and protected by law, Burns said.

Wildlife can adapt to indus trial surroundings, but some times it needs help, Howell said. Burns sped the boat farther downstream, turning into the Nicholson Terminal slip. Tied to the U.S. Steel side of the slip is an old railroad car ferry that now serves as an unplanned nesting area for ring-billed seagulls, said naa to aucK our neaas in tne er programs were operating boat. It would have been much throughout the country, more difficult to use the edges of i In 1992, they formed the Na-the concrete liner as a sidewalk.

tional Alliance of Rivers, Sound There's a plan afoot to re-' and Bay Waterkeepers, chang-move part of the concrete liner ingthe name to W'aterkeeper Aland allow the river to have "nat-; liance in 1999. The group is PSISiCiA BECIC froit free Press them as nests. BOB BURNS: ON PATROL Islander is committed to the river Br IOKLT1IURTE1X FKU PRKVS fl M-E WKrim along the Detroit waterfront. In the 1960s, a group of commercial fishermen on the Hudson River in New York banded together to improve the condi- tion of the highly polluted river when governments were failing to help. The idea caught on, and by the 1980s, several Riverkeep- based in White Plains, N.Y.

Burns grew up on Grosse lie, where he hunted, fished and swam in the Detroit River. He Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or thurtell ci freepress KIJTE IRA' ADVISOR CSA ural" wetland areas for fish and other wildlife to live and breed in. But the watermark on the concrete showed the river had still crv out to Burns. The gulls used to mate on Fighting Island, but as vegetation has taken over the Island, they've moved to the car barge. As the Riverkeeper boat approached, thousands of gulls launched from the steel carcass of the ferry, creating a cacophony of shrill screeches.

They're safe as long as nobody moves the barge. We entered the Rouge through the natural channel, passing three U.S. Steel iron-making blast furnaces. Smell of sulfur, clanging of a train bell. As we passed Zug Island, we noticed a black haze over a pile of coal.

Pat and I instantly remembered one of the hazards we had encountered in the canoe grit in our eyes. The dust is thick in the air on a windy day, either from uncovered piles of coal, slag or, further upstream, heaps of gypsum at the U.S. Gypsum plant At the Russian-owned Severstahl Steel, there's more dust. Noses are offended, too. Cruising along Zug Island, you smell rotting foliage from a composting operation.

But the worst stench comes from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department wastewater treatment system. From our canoe two years ago, Pat and I guessed the purpose of a pair of inflated cloth booms over a drainage outlet just east of 1-75 was to stop oil from entering the river. We were correct. According to Burns, the source of the nasti-ness is the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's plant, which doesn't always stop oily waste from getting into the Rouge. Burns pointed to tiny iridescent patches floating downstream.

Oil. What is the source? Unknown. Over the past few years, there have been several spills of oil into the Rouge. For about four miles upstream from the Ford Rouge plant, the bottom of the Rouge is lined with concrete. This was a U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers project of the 1970s aimed at 800-235-6557 iJ5VH -sfij'i' been even higher. You couldn't graduated from Grosse He High remove much of the concrete School and later majored in without inviting the river to pop business at Kalamazoo College, its cement banks if there were a After graduation, he came flood. back to Grosse He and worked in We noticed large orange marine construction. His com-stains on the concrete. Iron, said mitment to the Riverkeeper pro-Burns.

Natural iron? Not on the gram began in 2002, after some-Rouge, said Burns. Nothing nat-! one dumped an estimated ural here. That iron washed 255,000 gallons of oil into the down from a dump site some-; Rouge River. It remains the larg-where higher up. est toxic spill in modern Great Something, probably a carp, Lakes history, invisible in the muddy depths, Burns assists the Michigan made the water swirl.

We kept departments of Environmental disturbing a great blue heron. It Quality and Natural Resources. flapped off to fish out of sight. A good sign. For more information about the De ll there are feasting herons, troit Riverkeeper program, see www there are fish, noted Burns.

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