After a Lifetime of Working Around the World
MIKE AND MARGARET HAVE WELCOMED RETIREMENT
Mike and Margaret Jaeger have lived a life full of adventure. They first met at Michigan State University where they were earning degrees in zoology. After graduation, they filled their life with work that would best serve their love of studying wildlife. They aren’t strangers to major changes in their lives, so retirement has been a breeze. But they went on quite a journey together before they got there.
Mike and Margaret enjoying Germany.
Bamberg, Franconia region of Bavaria.
“Our story is a long and happy one,” Mike says. After grad school, Mike and Margaret moved to Ethiopia for six years to study bird migrations. They eventually came back to work with the Denver Wildlife Research Center for a couple of years before succumbing to the call of Africa again. This time, they went to Kenya to study bird migrations. They then settled into permanent positions in Denver, only to be sent to Bangladesh to help citizens learn how to research and solve problems caused by vertebrate pests. The following 16 years were spent in California and Utah working with graduate students studying coyotes and the depredation of livestock. They finally retired to Pine Junction, Colorado, for eight years before moving in 2017 to their current home on the Fox River in Illinois.
After a life of constant change, they wondered if retirement might get the better of them. “It’s been nice to discover that Mike is really quite easy to have around the house all the time,” Margaret jokes. “He plays outside and leaves me to keep things the way I like inside.” Margaret’s passion since well before retirement has been fiber arts. Spinning, weaving, and knitting have brought her the joy of a creative pastime and helped her get involved in nearly every community in which she’s lived. She’s attended conferences, worked in fair trade shops, and is a member of three different fiber arts groups. Retirement has also freed Mike and Margaret to do all the traveling they desire. Most recently, they’ve been to Germany to delve deeper into Mike’s ancestry and Iceland to explore its spectacularly rugged countryside. “We’ll always love to travel because it’s such a big part of who we are,” Mike explains. Their next big trip was going to be to Ireland, but the pandemic has altered those plans. Luckily, stay-at-home mandates have provided them with unexpected but welcome opportunities. Mike and Margaret live in a prairie-style home originally built in 1914. It’s got unbelievable character but needs ongoing work and maintenance, creating engaging home projects for Mike. And nothing will stop Margaret from her passion for fiber arts, even if her group meetups have to be done over video rather than in person. Living on the bend of a river next to a small, quiet town also means that abundant wildlife visits them. Foxes, woodchucks, deer, bald eagles, coyotes, and beavers are just a few of the birds and animals they spot in their backyard every day, so their binoculars are never too far away. Retirement has been good, but sometimes, the job you loved for so long has a way of sneaking back into your life.
Mike outside a traditional 9th century Viking house (Iceland).
Mike in the February Iceland landscape in a snow-covered lava field.
“Against the advice of my mother, I always followed Mike on his world adventures!” Margaret admits. While Mike worked in the field, Margaret often worked with the local community, sometimes as a community liaison officer, sometimes as an assistant to university professors, and other times doing volunteer work. She even learned taxidermy and donated an impressive collection of hundreds of birds to the Smithsonian.
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