How About Something Funny

For a change?



A couple days before christmas a couple friends invited me to go paddling with them at Dutch Gap Conservation Area and fish for striper. (See Paddling Report on this site under Virginia.) It was a great day and we all had a great time. We saw a lot of wildlife and I got the photo of a lifetime, a closeup of a bald eagle with a madonna complex who thought he was posing for Vogue. He would preen and pose and I got about 20 shots before he flew off.



When we got back, my friend found that the federally protected turkey buzzards had eaten the rubber gaskets from around his doors of his truck. This turns out to be an ongoing problem at this location, as well as snacking on the wiper blades. (luckily the subaru blades are hideen and the gaskets are behind the glass.) I only suffered poo and puke.



Anyone else ever encounter this type of problem? We have a similar problem on the farm here… the freakin mice are eating the wiring to our tractor. hah.



jim

funny
Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’s either my mom or my dad or maybe my older brother Calvin or my younger brother Hop-Sing-Lee. But I’m pretty sure it’s Calvin.

I’ve heard about that with CROWS
Crows doing the same thing:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/north_yorkshire/3591629.stm

Could be worse
In the 70’s, pika developed a taste for brake lines at Hurricane Ridge overlook parking lot on the Olympic peninsula - made for a nervous drive back down.

porcupines
Try having four flat tires because the porkies are eating the road salt off of your tires.

Not me ,but my buddy.

I’ve seen crows ripping off wiper blades
at an obscure BLM campground in Utah (Calf Creek).



The signs there advised you to wrap your wipers with cloth, along with the side view mirrors, which the crows also attack for some reason.



The glass of the mirror survives, but the crow perches on top of the mirror housing to peck at the

glass, and the talons scratch and gouge the actual housing.

Mice are weird.

– Last Updated: Jan-21-07 10:33 PM EST –

This has happened to me twice---once about ten years ago and then again last week. The first time it was with dog food. Recently it was with wild birdseed. Anyhow, both of these instances involved a bucket of food and a pair of boots. Mice had carried---piece by piece---the food from its container, to the cement floor, across the room about 20 feet, up onto some storage shelves, up to the top of one boot, and deposited the food into the boot. Incidentally, they put the food into one boot. They put nothing in the boot’s mate. By the way, I'm not talking about a few pieces of food---I'm talking about a men's size 12 boot nearly full of small pieces of food. Apparently they are storing it for future use. But when I think of the time and energy they expended to accomplish this it blows my mind. They could just as easily sit in the container of birdseed [or dog food] all night and gorge themselves on it, but---as I said---mice are weird.

-Rob

More wildlife damage
Up in the Mineral King access of Sequoia Nat’l Park, yellow-bellied marmots have developed a taste for engine parts. Wires, hoses, fan belts and (this must be a fun discovery on the trip back) brake lines have all become popular snacks. The rangers there suggest that when you park the car, you leave the hood open (I suppose light discourages their clandestine deeds), but some backpackers that frequent the area will either park on a huge tarp and then wrap the car like a birthday present, or literally encase the car in chicken wire fencing. Pretty funny sight.



My wife and I were away from the car for about 8 hours during peak marmot-damage season, and the simple hood-open trick seemed to work.



-Chuck

mice are weird

– Last Updated: Jan-23-07 12:54 AM EST –

The wife had started a Marine Corps cross stitch, a very ambitious project. She spent nearly 40 bucks on the different colors of thread (or whatchacallit, um floss?) that you do the stitching with. She was about a 1/4 of the way done and had to put the project aside in the family room for a couple weeks due to family obligations and when she came back, all that was left were the little paper rings that wrap the floss.

She looked all over the house for the floss and never found it. Nearly a month later, cleaning my loading room I noticed a hump under the rubber matt in front of the bench where the press resides. Pulling up the matt I find a huge ball of floss that looked like walt disney threw up. All the colors of the rainbow, made into a "rats nest." Literally. Shop vac took care of the nest and the babies... sorry guys. Emptied the vac near the barn and the barn kitties took care of anything that was breathing, and then a rake cleaned up the other mess. Hah.

Yup, I also found half a bag of macaroni in my holster drawer, but the little bastards hadn't touched my holsters. (Thank you Lord!)

Jim

Once my brother
parked his car in a pasture to attend “The Hunt Races” in rural MD. When he came back to his car, he found the vinyl top of his convertible had been mostly eaten away by horses.

yep
Mice are strange, apparently they like to live in Motorcycle “Air Boxes” when a friend went to change his air filter on his bike the air box was almost filled with Corn, twigs and other junk. Apparently some rodents were using it as a storage shed. The bike ran fine… L