Post #129,201
12/5/03 9:57:41 PM
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How close do you like YOUR nature?
Officers from the Chicago Department of Animal Care and Control and the Police Department Thursday afternoon tranquilized and captured a coyote spotted near Navy Pier.
Imagine that - a coyote running around Chicago's lakefront, right at the big tourist attraction called Navy Pier. I prefer my coyotes in another state or in a zoo. lincoln
"Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/resume.htm|VB/SQL resume]
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/tandem_resume.htm|Tandem resume]
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Post #129,204
12/5/03 10:18:30 PM
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We're used to in around here.
Wildlife has become quite urbanized in Los Angeles. I'm pretty far from the hills (about a mile) so I only get raccoons (but very large ones), possums, hawks, owls, ravens and parrots.
People closer to the hills get those plus rattlesnakes, coyotes, deer, mountain lions, and an occasional bear relaxing in the hot tub. No big deal.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #129,216
12/5/03 11:59:28 PM
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This is nothing new
On the news last winter, when the lake was frozen over, there were multiple days where they were looking for a coyote seen running on the frozen water.
-YendorMike
[link|http://www.hope-ride.org/|http://www.hope-ride.org/]
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Post #129,248
12/6/03 9:07:00 AM
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Big deal.
One coyote. Pah.
My dad's place has packs of them. Plus black bear.
Of course, he does live out in the sticks... ;-)
Reminds me of when we had a cougar roaming around Mt. Clemens.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #129,257
12/6/03 10:22:53 AM
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Re: Big deal.
Michigan, that model of Euclidean geometry, has a "Mt."?
(The highest point in Kansas is right on the Colorado border, and the locals have a lot of fun with it.)
-drl
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Post #129,263
12/6/03 10:38:24 AM
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It's a city... :-P
Not much as far as mountains down here... the U.P. and northern parts of the L.P. get pretty hilly, though.
The highest point in Michigan is 1,979 ft. above sea level (Mt. Arvon). The lowest point is around 500 ft. above sea level, so there's only 1,500 ft. of variance.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #129,265
12/6/03 10:41:12 AM
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With a capital T that rhymes with P...
...and that stands for Pool.
(dunno where that came from)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #129,291
12/6/03 1:47:00 PM
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Re: where that came from?
[link|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000F14B/102-6284588-1153766?v=glance|"The Music Man"] and the song "There's trouble in River City.".
Alex
"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves." -- Eric Hoffer
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Post #129,294
12/6/03 2:23:11 PM
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Well...that part I knew...
...I just have no idea why it sprang in my head after reading that particular exchange.
I suppose "left field" is a strong possibility ;-)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #129,268
12/6/03 10:52:32 AM
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Mt. Sunflower KS
[image|http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3162/HiPlains/Sunflower/KSsunflower.jpg||||]
In Colorado, it's a hobby to climb all the 14teeners, one of which is Mt. Evans. People wear T-shirts with their conquests marked off. For the non-mountaineering, I thought it would be fun to make a t-shirt that stated "I Climbed Mt. Evans". Mt. Evans is a 14teener right outside Denver. There is a road (Colo. 5) that goes almost to the top - there is a parking lot about 200 feet below the summit. So, the T-shirt would have a picture of the parking lot with the grueling 200ft climb to the summit marked as a dashed line, from some random car door all the way up the manicured path to the top.
(BTW the view from the top, of Pike's Peak 50 mi south and Long's Peak about the same north, is awesome beyond words. If you're ever going through Denver, take a couple hours for the detour.)
-drl
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Post #129,297
12/6/03 2:58:30 PM
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Aye, but to go up Pikes I always take the cog railway
Your "I climbed Mt Evans" T-short reminds me of one we were going to make for gags at the World Freefall Convention. The hot shirt is "I jumped the Jet" (727) but we were going to make some that said "I jumped the Cessna" (always the last resort up).
"I believe that many of the systems we build today in Java would be better built in Smalltalk and Gemstone."
-- Martin Fowler, JAOO 2003
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Post #129,348
12/6/03 9:26:16 PM
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It is a "Big Deal"
as you say, since we're talking about a wild animal running around in the heart of the third largest city in the country, and 99 44/100% of its residents have never even SEEN a coyote in their life, except maybe on The Discovery Channel. These people don't have a clue on how to treat it.
Didn't you read the story from about 2 weeks ago, about the lady that jumped the moat, scaled a fence and stuck her arm into the wolf compound at Brookfield Zoo late at night? Wolf acted as expected, and the woman is now an amputee.
lincoln
"Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/resume.htm|VB/SQL resume]
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Post #129,349
12/6/03 9:34:26 PM
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Was she trying to commit "lupicide"?
"Hey! I feel frisky! Let's go pester the wolves and tease them! It'll be fun!"
Think how long it's gonna take to make the dot over the "i" into a heart with her left hand...
"Hey Lori! Why do you make the "i" with a pancreas hovering over it?"
-drl
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Post #129,355
12/6/03 10:47:57 PM
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Re: Big deal. - yeah pretty much
My folks place in AZ is pretty much a zoo.
Wild pigs, mountain lions, coyotes, tarantulas, scorpions...the works.
But its warm there :-)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #129,356
12/6/03 11:05:45 PM
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Funny story
Since I'm sitting here waiting for a DVD to finish burning ...
For several decades there was an amusement park on the shore of Lake Erie: Euclid Beach Park. Rides, a midway, live music and dancing under the pavilion on the weekends.
And rats. Eventually, lots of rats. They seemed to like all the popcorn and cotton candy people dropped. The owners tried traps and poison, but every morning they'd have to scramble to remove the carcasses before the guests started showing up. Then they got the bright idea to import a predator. A nocturnal one that would take care of the problem when no one was looking.
Did you know skunks prey on rats? Neither did I. But someone at Euclid Beach knew this back in the 50s or 60s. Worked really well, too. Until the 90s. When the park closed and they built high-rise apartments on the site. There was now a sizable population of skunks with no place to stay and no food. So they moved to the next nearest semi-wooded area.
How do I know all this? Guess where I live? Freakin' Wild Kingdom in the backyard is where I live. Skunks nesting under people's decks. Racoons fighting with cats over the trashcans. Possum the size of small dogs.
My father-in-law found a possum on his deck eating the grapes from the arbor. Beat the thing with a wiffle bat and it just looked at him for a second and kept eating. He's had skunks rip open the screen doors to come in and help themselves to the cat food.
===
And on a related note ... (BTW how long does it take to burn a dvd, cripes.)
Cleveland is surrounded by what is known as the emerald necklace. A series of parks the surround and weave through the entire city. It is not uncommon to see deer in neighborhoods that you would never expect to see them.
Less common, but about every three or four years, a deer takes a wrong turn from the park onto a railroad line and ends up downtown. Last time it happened they had to shut down several square blocks to try to round it up. Rush hour was a bitch.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #129,367
12/7/03 1:36:12 AM
12/7/03 1:40:57 AM
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Possums
Having dispatched nearly 20 of them by hand with the Swiss army knife I'm holding in [link|http://www.aaxnet.com/images/ajg11.jpg|this photo], (generally at about 3:00am) I know a fair amount about possums.
Thinking a wiffle bat would get a possum's attention is a complete misunderstanding - Sammy Sosa's corked bat swung by go'vner Arnold wouldn't get its attention. Those things are tough. They feel like a deflated football with some jello and loose chicken bones inside. You can't get a knife through them and they're just too stupid to know they're dead - and yes, they'll just keep right on eating. They don't "play possum" either, they snarl and snap and try to get at you any way they can.
The state possum expert (It's illegal to be a possum in the State of California) describes them as "working with about 1/3 of a deck". The first time one got into my pigeon coup, I disciplined it vigerously with a 2x4, but it was back 10 minutes later. they're too stupid to retain a lesson, so all you can do is kill them.
They're plentiful though - they're just too ugly and disgusting for any self respecting predator to want to get close enough to to kill one - and who'd want to eat it?
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #129,388
12/7/03 9:02:46 AM
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OT is that a 1911 colt 45 ACP on the left side of the pic?
"We must face the fact that there is not a single country in the world that measures up to the lofty moral and social standards that are the hallmark of the U.S.A.: even Canada is delinquent and deserves a whiff of grape. There is not a single country in the world which, like the U.S., reeks of democracy and "human rights," and is free of crime and murder and hate thoughts and undemocratic deeds\ufffd. And so, since no other countries shape up to U.S. standards, \ufffd I make a Modest Proposal for the only possible consistent and coherent foreign policy: the U.S. must, very soon, Invade the Entire World!" Murray N. Rothbard
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #129,400
12/7/03 10:55:13 AM
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WIDs (Weapons of Individual Destruction) . .
. . in this picture are a Lugar (navy length barrel), a 7mm FN49 (on window sill), a 1911 Schmidt-Rubin bayonet (in hand) a 1911 Schmidt-Rubin rifle (behind me so you can't see it) a bottle of Glenfiddich, and a plate of pickled pigs feet (yum!).
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #129,403
12/7/03 11:18:50 AM
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Ihr Kueche erscheint als U-boot - even the slacker uniform
-drl
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Post #129,506
12/7/03 8:19:00 PM
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Had an 'artillery' long barrel model.
Luger ..for the fineness of craftsmanship + 'appreciation'. Never fired it, but noted how the complex mechanism might not have fared so well on Pacific Islands (say). Nor could you have cocked, reloaded the sucker with any injury to arm/wrist.
I always thought that the "point" of this WID must be about The Best; it indeed seemed that the CG blended-in perfectly, as extension of one's arm (the opposite of a .45, for one hideous counterexample). Were I into such lore, that is. ;-)
Now, whether the BID went.. where the sight suggested it might -?- no info on that.
Hey - want a Luger book? Forget title, but it's a big one I don't recall how materialized. Been there done that. Cute, for a WID, I guess. Bad WW-II vibes, for my sensitive psyche.
Ashton
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Post #129,384
12/7/03 8:50:11 AM
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Re: Funny story
I remember someone telling me about the west side rat problem.
"Beach" on Lake Erie - that's a stretch :) Somehow in the mind's eye though, I can see the green tables and ashcans, and I think I saw a fireworks display at some kind of lakefront park - could have been the one you mentioned. (I rarely made it west of Cleveland Hts.) It was really packed and a good time was had by all.
-drl
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Post #129,590
12/8/03 9:34:42 AM
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Old timey pics
[link|http://history.amusement-parks.com/eb1.htm|http://history.amuse...parks.com/eb1.htm]
Not the best beach, but looks like it was a great park.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #129,395
12/7/03 9:34:18 AM
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Might as well be here.
We've got the possums, skunks, raccoons, groundhogs (didn't see you mention those), and cats (boy, do we have cats) up here, under our deck at times as well. The nice thing about the cats is that they keep the rabbits away from the gardens. The bad thing about the cats is that they breed (Greg can confirm the high numbers of previously bred cats we have here - 14 now, was 24 at one point).
There's a 40 sq. mile metropark half a mile north of here. Every year they have a lottery to see who gets to blow away a bunch of deer in the park because they're completely overbred. There's a test plot in the park on the nature center grounds, surrounded by 10ft high fencing. Inside the fence there's a riot of undergrowth. Outside the fence the ground is pretty much scoured clean by the deer.
A possum got in our garage once. This one was reasonably smart for a possum: 2.5 on the "dumb as a soapdish" scale (that means, dumb as 2.5 soapdishes). I "chased" it around the garage with a pitchfork. Poking it made it stop and snarl, not speed up like any self-respecting pain-feeling animal would do. Someone pissed in the genetics vat the day those things were invented.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #129,404
12/7/03 11:24:19 AM
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<sides are splitting>
Come ar, ye scruvy beast! I'll run ya thrugh, ye foul critter! Wench, fetch me blunderbuss! Ahrrr!
-drl
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Post #129,408
12/7/03 11:36:40 AM
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That's about the extent of it.
I don't have a gun in the house, though, and I really wasn't interested in sticking the thing hard enough to require cleaning up the garage floor afterwards.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #129,410
12/7/03 11:48:33 AM
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There was a 'possum carcass in our backyard once.
Well, not really a carcass. Just some bones that were near the outlet of some plastic drainage hose extensions attached to our downspouts. The hose is about 6" in diameter. I puzzled for a while on why there were bones there.
Sometime in the fall, I think it was, the 'possum had apparently tried to crawl into the downspout hose, got stuck, and died. After a good rain, most of the bones were washed out, but the skull and jaw were still inside. I wondered why our dog seemed to be so interested in running out to that spot whenever she was in the backyard.... <eewwww>
Indeed, opossums are not terribly bright. I'm glad that's been the extent of my dealing with them so far.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #129,412
12/7/03 11:54:23 AM
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They've been doing SOMETHING right..
..for 80 million years:
[link|http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news92.htm|http://www.trussel.c...rehist/news92.htm]
-drl
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Post #129,414
12/7/03 11:59:51 AM
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Indeed. Maybe not enough predators or something...
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Post #129,415
12/7/03 12:42:40 PM
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Andrew had the right of it:
they're just too ugly and disgusting for any self respecting predator to want to get close enough to to kill one - and who'd want to eat it? Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #129,421
12/7/03 1:10:41 PM
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Re: Andrew had the right of it:
Who'd want to eat it? That there is Ozark lobster.
[link|http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Estates/3443/possum_recipes.html|http://www.geocities...ssum_recipes.html]
-drl
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