Beautiful Animals

I really like oppossums, not matter how good a pie they make. I've caught them doing the oppossum thing...

You ate a marsupial? What did it taste like?

I had reindeer steak when I was in Norway. It tasted like what I think a shoe would taste like if I were inclined to taste a shoe.

Short-finned lion fish:

Only met two possem in my life. One seemed to think it owned my porch. The other was so laid back...I walked up to it, he looked up at me (very slowly), looked back down and sauntered away.

Possums would come up out of the California sewers and attack my garden. I'd lay in wait and whack the smaller ones with a stick. Best possum is dead possum.

I've never "met" most animals (except in zoos), even the ones that roam freely around the U.S. I recently watched a wildlife show that reported that raccoons have moved into urban areas and have settled in nicely. They showed film of raccoons crossing the street like true city dwellers and finding lots of stuff to eat. So there's a chance I may one day see a raccoon. I'd probably jump ten feet in the air from the shock. (Just read a Brooklyn-based forum discussing raccoon sitings in Prospect Park. Maybe I'm living in the wrong borough.)





This photo was taken in somone's backyard near Baltimore.

I'm feeling "herdy" today. Here's part of a zebra herd.





And an elephant herd:





Lots of wildebeest:

No, no, no, no. I skipped a word in that post...
We did have possums (possa?) in our yard; they probably lived under our or someone else's house (pre concrete slab type house). There was one just a'sitting on a branch of the liquidambar tree once...

on possum pie, I saw a recipe in some interesting magazine, forget which, years ago now.

I've also had raccoons at work, have told here on a2k somewhere about one dropping through our bathroom ceiling not many hours after I'd heard scratching noises above ... while I was in a compromised position. I've photos of clawmarks up the wall, Racky trying to get back up there.

And I've probably told the story of a friend who was staying at a place in the LA area; she lived in a small apartment over the garage, if I remember correctly. On a warm night she left the windows open. Woke up in the middle of the night to what turned out to be mamma and raccoonlets in the kitchen. She turned on lights, the raccoons left back out the window, except for the littlest one, who couldn't make the leap. So my friend put a pillow on a box and that worked, baby racky got out to the garage roof too. How they got to the roof in the first place, I dunno. Tree branches?

Rosborne, Can't identify that animal. It's very cute.

Speaking of cute, I heard recent reports of an orphaned hippo adopting an unusual surrogate mother. Here's the photo.






Yes, that's a squirrel in the midst of those puppies.

It's a Sugar Glider.They are becoming popular pets.

Rosborne, Sugar gliders are pets? Thanks for filling me in.

Reg, Thanks for the boids--both crested and wonderful colors.

Weasel in the winter (ermine):





Weasel when it's not winter:

This is a species I never heard of and never saw--a fishing cat (from India and southern China):

Jellyfish:





Butterfly:

Gouldian finch (from Australia)

Snake





Another sea slug:





Sea fan (yes, this is an animal)

Seagulls:





Snowy egret:

moray eel





fascinating, yes.
beautiful? notsomuch...