Russ' wild kingdom. (no politics!)

R

RussSchultz

Professional Malcontent
Veteran
Heh, this weekend my wife and I were treated with our very own episode of Wild Kingdom.

Three deer eating the green beans in the garden; a centipede in the bathroom, and two tarantulas (already dead) on the front porch.

Last weekend we had a 2-3 inch scorpion hanging around outside the house. Wasp spray works well to stun them, and large rocks work well to squish them. >:)

Just thought I'd share. A shame I don't have a digital camera to record it all with.
 
:D

Isn't wildlife great?

I was outside today enjoying the rare perfect NH day, 65 degrees, sunny, light breeze...ahhhhh... and a robin came out of nowhere and flew *SMACK* right into the tree trunk! I about wet myself laughing (don't worry, PETA supporters...the bird shook it off and was fine)

We've also got a bobcat that won't leave the dumpster alone. He doesn't do much but hiss at us, just makes me a little leary to let the kids outside. We don't want to call animal control...he took care of the mice this winter ;)

I couldn't imagine living in an area with scorpions and dangerous spiders. We've got dangerous mammals up here, but it's too cold for the creepy crawlies. We do have earwigs, which are nasty in their own way....
 
What I usually see in my flat are some humming-birds and other birds because we have small gardens in all floors.
 
I'm in a nice small house in the midle of Italy's nature right now and the variety of wild- and especially birdlife around here is stunning. Weather's perfect too, what a shame I have to spend most of the day working. Still beats the offive though... :)
 
In the middle of farm country in Indiana, we see more deer than we care to... I hit one last year in my truck and a week later, my wife hit one in her car. Totalled the truck, $5000 damage to the car.

They run in packs of 20-30 at a time, and will just jump out of the woods right next to the road, 10 feet in front of you. It'll scare the crap out of just about anybody.

We live way out in the woods here, our closest neighbor being about a mile away. The biggest problem in this area, currently, is the coyote population, and secondarily wolves. They get awful hungry and it's amazing what they'll do for a meal. Sometimes we'll find a pile of bones from what has to be 4 or 5 small animals (racoons) all piled up together in the back yard, licked completely clean.

In the winter, when you can see their tracks, I go out with the local farmers and help hunt the coyotes/wolves, who just in the past year have been known to take a hog or two from the farmers, even.

Makes me wonder at times about letting our dogs stay outside for extended periods early in the morning or later at night, although one of them is an 85 lb bulldog with a bad temper...

I wouldn't trade this for living in the city for any amount of money, though.
 
be happy that you have only deers...

Moose accidents aren't really rare here, and moose is so heavy and tall animal that whenever you run across with a car, things start turning dangerous. (it usually falls directly to the roof of the car and when it weights around 150-300 kg's it surely crushes the roof.)

also amount of bears has been increasing here... most likely they are coming from east. anyways, with in a week I have seen 2 bear foot prints. and that print is umh... respectable in size... 30 to 35 cm long. I really not like to meet one of those in the forest.

in backyard we usually see some smaller and much more cute animals... like Squirrels. :)
 
I fear the day one of our dogs get sprayed by a skunk and comes running right into the house.


Ewwww..
 
RussSchultz said:
I fear the day one of our dogs get sprayed by a skunk and comes running right into the house.


Ewwww..
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naah... that's nothing... during cold winter nights homeless cats are looking for warm places, and suprisingly just stopped car hood with grille sure is warm. So, first they fight who gets the best place first (noise is unbelievable.) and then they one by one sleep there and piss to the engine department! (don't remember correct word here, but hoepfully you got it.) in the morning you jump on car to go to work and turn the heating to full and you can guess the smell inside... :rolleyes:

thank god that he made cats to hate Orange peels... after we noticed that, the troubles were gone.
 
Lets hope the cats were smart (and quick) enough to get out before the engine started.

Growing up, we had several that weren't.
 
Wow. I bet a moose doesn't quite get the hangtime a deer does when you hit it. I can only imagine what that'd be like. The two deer that I've hit have just gone completely airborne and flown like 20 feet away.

I got called into work late one night and was in a hurry to get there. It was like midnight so I was alreayd asleep and only half awake when I was driving to work (about 10 miles in the country).

As I approached my first neighbor's house (he's a hog farmer), I BARELY (no more than 1 or 2 feet) missed hitting two completely black sows that had broken though their fence and decided the middle of the road was a good place to sleep. After backing out of the corn field, all the racket of the screeching tires and my truck flying through 8' high corn didn't even budge the sows. You can imagine the sight of me half asleep, herding two HUGE sows back to his lot about 1/4 mile away with a stick, and not a lumen of light other than my headlights from my parked truck at the scene of the crime. PETA members stop reading here, but I broke a couple of sticks on the backsides of those two sows in the process, needless to say. Better than breaking my truck and myself on the rest of them though!

Maybe the vegetarians have something... if we had no livestock, imagine how many $$ the insurance companies would save on accidents like this! That's it. I'm converted today. No more meat for me!

-Chris
 
Maybe the vegetarians have something... if we had no livestock, imagine how many $$ the insurance companies would save on accidents like this! That's it. I'm converted today. No more meat for me!
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Or, maybe if there were no vegetarians, and everyone was eating meat, then there wouldn't be enough livestock to go out wandering :LOL:
 
Foxes have moved into the Urban areas big time in the UK, I can see it now Fox Hunting becomes legal in cities. :p

Apart from that wildlife is pretty tame around the area I live.
 
Foxes? There are loads of the buggers around where I live - masses of them have been moving in from the countryside.

An old fella who my dad knows from church hates foxes because he's a country lad and as such goes out on hunting expeditions with his rifle already! He winds down his car window... you can guess the rest.
 
The whole bavarian countryside where I live is full of settlements so we don't get huge deer packs usually, but I spot a deer every couple weeks when I drive home late at night, wild rabitts, foxes etc. are not rare either. About 18 months ago I also had an unfortunate accident with a deer (usually I get lucky and they cross roads like 500 m in front or behind me), but thankfully I didn't hit the deer straight on and thus got away with a scare, broken headlight and some scratches to the car. Dunno what happened to the deer, when I went looking for it it was gone, so at least it wasn't dead instantly (hope it recovered, however unlikely that is)...
 
Nappe1 said:
be happy that you have only deers...

Moose accidents aren't really rare here, and moose is so heavy and tall animal that whenever you run across with a car, things start turning dangerous.
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Same situation in Sweden - but I guess in Saudi Arabia they can say "be happy that you have only mooses...". I understand they have our moose problem, but with dromedaries (sp?). They can be twice as heavy as a moose and are much higher too, thus being even more inclined to land on the driver's head... what an ignominious demise!

On a side note, the most dangerous spider we have are in the same league as wasps. Overall, there are very few dangerous animals in Sweden.
 
When I was backpacking in Kenya I got two scorpions in my sleeping bag. One stung in the right butt cheek before I could squash it, it swelled up like a beach ball. Most painful :oops:

I brought them both back with me for the biology department at my Uni. And a really nasty looking spider that I kept in a match box, it was pretty small but it had some evil looking markings on its body.

I just love nature, my fiance deplores the fact that when ever we go anywhere I spend most of my time turning over rocks and climbing trees, looking for bugs n stuff :D

I've done two trips to Kenya, one to Zimbabwe, and one to Tanzania (with a primatologist) just to look for things. And I found quite a lot, sometimes they can be very scary or really unpleasant!!
 
Yum, brown recluses.

We've found several (we think) in the house in the span of a few days.

Looks like the idea of going chem-free is going to get cut short.

Image search on google for brown recluse bites. Don't like that, no sir. Them spiders gotta die.
 
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