Sometimes I feel my life is like a wildlife documentary.....

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...coz I keep seeing animals doing weird things!

Do you?

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 07:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Like this morning, I was walking down by the river on the way to the bus stop and I see something moving v. slowly across the path in front of me. Turns out that it's a rat with a HUGE frog which it's carrying along by its leg! The frog is as big as the rat! I don't know if the rat killed it, or it died of natural causes!

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 07:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't beat that, but the other night I saw a fox right outside of my apartment complex! A big one, I think. Pretty odd I thought because I live pretty much in a city proper; a quiet neighborhood, but I didn't expect wildlife, you know? He/she wasn't too shy either as I've heard foxes usually are. It trotted off as I approached, but only at a leisurely pace, keeping just about ten feet ahead of me. Then it ducked into the bushes and watched me as I walked by.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Friday, 2 May 2003 08:19 (twenty-two years ago)

but that's not all. Yesterday as i was eating my breakfast, I saw a cat climbing the tree in my garden. Nothing odd abt that, except that it is a very spindly tree which can only just about bear a cat's weight! Several times it almost fell off and only just managed to right itself and it took a very roundabout route around the branches, as if it wasn't quite sure whether it wanted to up or down!

And there was no visible reason for it to do all this - there were no birds in the tree, or anywhere nearby which it could watch from this vantage point.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 08:29 (twenty-two years ago)

where do you live Dan? In North America, I heard that raccoons are the urban animal that fills the niche that foxes fill in the uk (urban animal which rifles thru trash ect ect).

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 08:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I live in North America! I wouldn't have been as surprised to see a raccoon (although I've never really seen one of those up close either), but the nearest I'd ever been to a fox before was as a flash of orange in the corner of my eye as I drove down a road. So it was really cool to see one up close. Like the way they walk, ha, it's very stiff-legged, like they don't have knees or something.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Friday, 2 May 2003 08:41 (twenty-two years ago)

here in England, urban foxes are very common and we don't have raccoons. Urban badgers are less common, but there was a sett near my student hall in Bristol and I used to see them occasionally.

Mentalist cat mentioned above lives in one of the houses round abt - not sure who it belongs to. It once mewed very loudly outside my house and wanted to come in. And I do mean loudly...it was driving me nuts coz it sounded as if it was coming from *inside* the house!

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 08:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I nursed a sick baby bat (what is a baby bat called?) back to health at my desk recently. Apparently there are quite a few on campus, and the estates people hate them because they're a protected species so can't be exterminated.

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 2 May 2003 09:01 (twenty-two years ago)

your bat nursing skeelz might well be appreciated here in Oxford, Archel, as there are lots of bats here. I guess it's because there are two rivers --> lots of insects --> lots of food for bats. I remember sitting in a riverside pub at dusk a few weeks back and watching one bat swoop hither and thither through the archways of the adjacent bridge. I believe it may have been a Daubenton's bat, tho my knowledge of the different types is a little sketchy. I think the smallest ones are called Pipistrelles.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 09:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Baby bats are called pups. They drink milk from their mothers. They are pink and have no hair.
http://www.costumeholidayhouse.com/Costume/Children%20Costume/thumbs/1707-34w_small.jpg

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 2 May 2003 09:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Aww. Maybe mine was just a very small adult bat, because it definitely had fur. It had been attacked by a bird and was in shock in think. Nature red in tooth and claw on the Sussex campus.

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 2 May 2003 09:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Good thread, Mark H.

― the pinefox, Friday, 2 May 2003 12:31 (twenty-two years ago)

it makes me want to look up bat sites on the interweb and find out just how you tell the different species apart. Shurely bat watching is a hobby for ppl who find bird-watching too piss-easy...not only do you have to be able to tell small, flappy things apart but you have to be able to do it in crepuscular conditions!

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 12:40 (twenty-two years ago)

As I was leaving my flat the other morning I heard this strange scratching noise coming from the bins. I stopped and looked over at the bins just a squirrel scrambled out and climbed up the fence with the bottom half of a bagel in its mouth making it look a bit like the USS Enterprise.

― Alfie (Alfie), Friday, 2 May 2003 12:41 (twenty-two years ago)

http://bci.batcon.org/index.html

This is a fun site. Unfortunately the 24hr bat-cam doesn't appear to be working :(

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 2 May 2003 12:42 (twenty-two years ago)

http://members.aol.com/bats4kids2/flying.gif

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 2 May 2003 12:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Nice!

I remember talking to someone who was doing a PhD on bats once and being surprised to hear that bats don't exit their roosts in huge flocks but tend to leave in ones and twos. I had to come clean and admit that the "flock" image was based purely on the opening title sequence of Scooby Doo.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 2 May 2003 12:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I saw this thread title and thought it meant you had an imaginary documentarian with a hoity-toity accent making a whispered commentary to your life, like: "Mark, like all others of his species, yearns to join into a pair-bond, particularly in the spring season. 90% of all species eventually pair-bond."

In this region, there are lots of possums in urban settings; I've seen them her in Lexington, in Louisville, Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, etc. There was this courtyard/parking area behind a restaurant I used to work in, and some GIGANTIC possums lived under another building back there. Big like dogs. They were actually kinda creepy; ever seen light reflected in a possum's black black eyes? *shivers*

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 2 May 2003 12:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I was driving home the other night and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. There was something scuttling down the sidewalk. First I thought it was a dog, then I got a lil closer and noticed that it wasn't walking like a dog. It was a freakin' raccoon walking in a PERFECTLY STRAIGHT LINE down the sidewalk, as if he was just running out to the quickie mart for a pack of smokes. Odd.

― buttch (Oops), Friday, 2 May 2003 14:09 (twenty-two years ago)

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