Wildlife in Your Life

(Smiling back at tai chi)

How wonderful and humbling when they let us see them so close

#12
another bedroom bat last night, just as i was settling in with a book.

running on pure adrenalin, i eventually swatted it with my trusty tennis racket and gave it a burial at sea.

took me about 30 minutes to calm down...

Jeez. All it wanted was a home.

i'll have the next one shipped to your place...

... postage due.

Now, just a cotton picking minute!

All wildlife have their homes already. We come in and the places we take for ourselves, or our agriculture, take away the places they have for their homes. That is our fault any creatures of wildlife are sometimes among us. We are not better. They need their own places with those places left alone. We live with way too much demand from the world for so many things, and we are destructive, we should not be living this way.

I'll take "Missing The Point for 500", Jim.

Heard a badly syncopated knocking at the back of the house the other day and went to the side door most guests use. Nobody there. Heard it again and the cat was starting to freak out. Checked the less likely door (as it only leads to the clothesline and our butterfly sanctuary -- read unmown yard) and nothing there. Poked my head out the door in time to see a juvenile woodpecker trying to feast on the wood siding under the kitchen window. Much yelling and waving of arms drove it off before any damage done. This is the second woodpecker to think our siding looks delectable. The first was a gigantic pileated woodpecker and it sounded like someone trying to break through the wall with an axe. They make a godawful racket.

Now I know why Elmer Fudd carries a shotgun everywhere.

I worked at a seasonal craft school that had 20 cabins with exterior walls and roofs covered with cedar shingles. One spring we were opening the place up and I saw this big gaping hole at the top of a wall when I entered the cabin. I got a ladder and checked it from the outside – sure enough, a pileated had chopped big square hole into it. When it broke through it must have been pretty surprised. "Wow – a hollow tree with furniture!"

Just a note, Tai Chi – those woodpeckers aren't hungry for your siding, they're going after insects. You may want to do a little exploration and see if there are carpenter ants behind the siding. Forego the shotgun and put up a suet feeder!

Here in Australia it's magpie swooping season, which usually goes from August to November. The males do the swooping protecting their nests when the babies are still young. They tend to go after people who get within a hundred metres or so of the tree. Here’s something interesting: magpies can remember faces. So if you’re gentle with them they often leave you alone. A pair of sunglasses on the back of your head or even a fake eye sticker, on your bike helmet can trick them into thinking you’re not a threat. Meanwhile the brushtail possums have started climbing onto our roof at night making loud noises and running around like little thieves.