On calm days this spring when Sleeping Bear Bay resembled glass, some Glen Arbor residents with homes on Lake Michigan heard what they described as periodic burps, or the sounds of water gurgling in a pipe. On days with wind and waves, they heard nothing. The sound may have come from two “propane cannons” on the North Manitou Shoal Light Station, commonly called “the Crib” which lies 4 miles from Pyramid Point, the closest spot on the mainland. According to Dan Oginsky president of the North Manitou Light Keepers, which acquired the Crib from the federal government in 2016, the canisters are used to scare away cormorants, large aquatic birds that nested on the lighthouse and covered it with “guano” poop after it was decommissioned by the government and sat empty for decades.
