Several months ago we hung a suet feeder in our backyard to give the birds a little something to snack on during the final weeks of winter.
It didn’t take long before the birds noticed, and started snacking:
This didn’t bother us in the slighest because
a) We both love squirrels, and
b) You have to respect such drive and industriousness
But even though we were used to the wily ways of these furry little garden kings, imagine our surprise when one day we found the following scene:
If you’re having trouble deciphering that image, it shows the suet feeder right up at the branch level. Something had apparently reeled it in using the chain until it wasn’t hanging, but simply available right at the branch. In other words something was apparently tired of going to the suet, and instead chose to bring the suet to himself.
I like to think this is the culprit:
That photo was taken three days ago. It shows a big fat squirrel reclining in the sun, flying squirrel style, on the edge of our patio. I observed this while chatting on the phone with SFL, and was so amused/intrigued I had to snap a shot. It was such unusual squirrel behaviour I was a little concerned and tossed out a snack for him, which he immediately ran over to and ate. So he was just resting.
Sadly, yesterday we found the same squirrel dead in our yard.
He was in a similar position, just sitting on the grass. No sign of trauma, no sign of discomfort. He was a big guy, heavier than I ever thought a squirrel may be. And so soft. We both had a cry yesterday when we realized he was dead. Yeah, yeah ‘circle of life’ and all… but the fact he was in our backyard made him almost a pet.
So in tribute we went out and purchased two new squirrel feeders as a treat for the many other local squirrels. Here they both are:
Real corn and fake corn. One at the back of the yard, and one near the house. Both seem ‘squirrel proof’ in the sense that the squirrels should only be able to take the food, and not the entire device. But we shall see. Hopefully they will come soon and start eating, and hopefully we can once again have a squirrel we can think of as our very own 🙂
I put some batteries in our wildlife camera the other day, and tinkered with it to see if it was actually working (doubts existed in my mind for some reason). I couldn’t get it to test at all, and feared the worst. Even so, I placed it in the downstairs room and left it there to see what would happen.
It did work, and although my placement was arbitrary and far-from-ideal, the camera chronologued the actions of our cats as they visited the french door for a bit of wildlife appreciation.
Here’s a sample photo (click to enlarge):
That’s about as dynamic as they get. Daisy can be seen looking out of the window, and Stropping is approaching from stage right. This photo is a daylight shot (no flash), but nighttime shots were far, far more common. Like this one:
Or this one:
Similar aren’t they? Well the truth is terrible indeed. The camera functioned (based on the timestamps on the photos) for a little over 4 days, and took 285 photos in total. About 260 of those photos showed Emi, either heading toward or away from the window. Here is an example, consecutive pair:
If the above is typical (and it seemed to be), Emi made over 100 trips to the french doors, averaging about 15 minutes a time. That’s 25 hours in total, or about a quarter of her life during the time the camera was functioning 🙂
I’m not kidding either. Of the 285 shots only about 10 had Daisy in them, including this stunningly disturbing image…
And only one single shot had Yossie in it!
And she is the cat who used to live for looking out those doors!
I’ll leave with one of the atypical Emi images. Taken at night, this shows that Emi does indeed have a secret life of her own 🙂
Show me an Australian who claims to hate Kangaroos and I’ll show you a liar.
I was asked one of the perennial dumb questions about Kangaroos the other day “Do people really ride them?” I’m sure it was a joke question (I answered “Yes”), but the life of an Aussie ex-pat in America can be described as an endless amount of people asking questions about Kangaroos.
Q: “Are they everywhere?”
A: “Yes; you have to push them out of the way when you go outside to check the mailbox.”
Q: “Do people have them as pets?”
A: “Well, one person I knew did” (<- true story, see below)
Q: “Do people really eat them?
A: “Yep, and their jerky taste like fish!” (<- personal experience)
Etcetera, etcetera.
It is quite possible that my first ever encounter with a kangaroo was captured on film, and is show at the top of this post and here:
I’m not exactly sure where this image was taken (Gosford Reptile Park? Somewhere in Barrington Tops?) but as you can see the kangaroo itself is freakishly large – almost as tall as I am. Man-sized (see top pic) roos are rare indeed, and it is perhaps lucky I escaped with my life.
During my childhood years we often visited small family run nature parks and zoos, almost all of which would have a clutch of friendly kangaroos eager to eat whatever breakfast cereal (usually honey smacks) were offered up in the vending machines for $0.10 or $0.05 a go. I always liked the roos, and liked to think they liked me.
At some point, as these things tend to do, it became crass to house the roos. Domesticizing them and offering them up as feeding toys became uncommon. At some point during my teenage years Taronga Zoo switched from a roo enclosure in which you could walk right up and pat the roos (or wallabies) to one in which – while still free roaming – they urge visitors to not touch the beasts. And no machines offer up cereal for handy feeding opportunities.
Blackbutt Reserve had adopted this vision of roo-displaying years prior, and it’s roos were always behind bars in a rather large enclosure (frustratingly so from the point of view of a short child who couldn’t see them when they were behind a tree or in the opposite corner). I recall one of the other wallaby enclosures – built into the side of an incline so the beasts could bask on the rock – was great for viewing.
During these years of my young-boy-as-a-roo-viewer period, one of the better opportunities to see the beasts was of course on the television.
I refer to none other than Skippy The Bush Kangaroo
Skippy started in 1968 and ran, well it still runs today in some countries. It was basically Flipper in the Australian outback, but the producers really lucked out when they found Skippy for the lead role because he was the god of kangaroos. There’s basically nothing Skippy couldn’t do. He played drums! He scuba dived! He fought dogs and snakes! He was a horse rustler, a piano player, a thief-catcher and even a radio operator:
Truly, I wanted to grow up to be at least half the man Skippy was.
My first experience with wild kangaroos (seeing them from car windows during bush/country drives doesn’t count) was at some point in 198X, during a walk in the bush near where we used to live. I think I was with my brother and we were walking ‘out the back of Kahiba’ somewhere where we were amazed to see a roo in a bit of a clearing behind someone’s house.
Now I had almost been exposed to a ‘real wild roo’ since a friend of mine in primary school (JF, ‘hola’ if you’re reading!) somehow had a pet kangaroo in her field. The facts of this memory are blurred indeed, but I recall the beast (it was smallish, maybe a wallaby) being only slightly domesticated and both myself and JF being afraid to approach it. I think her mum was taking care of it for someone… (amusingly enough I had another friend with a magpie pet once… another entry…)
Anyway some years after the first spot of a wild roo I was walking ‘out the back of Kotara’ with GW and possibly MT when we saw another roo in the distance through the trees. I’ll never admit we were actually lost at the time. We approached the roo, but he fled. Sue once told me that some of the roos actually kept at blackbutt occasionally got out, so maybe that’s what we saw? At any rate it was a strange place to see one, since that bushland is surrounded by homes.
Years later (or maybe around the same time) during a class trip to ‘a mountain somewhere up north’ (Sue remembers where; I always forget) we all saw a bunch of red kangaroos when we climbed this tall hill. I recall them being enormous (as reds are) and slightly unsettling. They perused us and hopped away, as wild roos always do.
At some point, probably around the age of 15 or 16, with a few friends we saw two roos on the sand at Dudley Beach as well. That was a weird sight. They were in the far distance, and we ignored them.
Seeing roos in the wild very often means seeing wild roos hopping away from you. They are inquisitive but shy beasts, and although I never tried I doubt they’d let you get very close. They are not very common in the suburbs, although they do turn up from time to time. I liken their frequency to deer in America. (Although here in Delmar we see far more deer than I ever saw kangaroos in Australia).
When I was there this past January I mentioned at a family gathering that I had seen a very large collection of kangaroos just beyond Kotara out the window of a train. There was some skepticism directed my way, but I was adamant. This sighting did happen (I verified with KLS) but I may have been a bit off as far as the location was concerned – instead it may have happened somewhere closer to Lake Macquarie.
At any rate there was the biggest collection of roos I have ever seen (in or out of a zoo) – 40 or 50 of them. Most were lazing themselves, a couple were hopping around. I recall many passengers were as surprised as I was, so I surmise such a sighting was quite rare.
A dream of mine (one of many) would be to have a house in the Australian outback. Something like this.
Where I could wake up and hear nothing but the birds, and peep out the window and see kangaroos in that field in the early morning.
Do I love kangaroos? Yes I do. They are one of a handful of Australiana that if I think about too much is always sure to rekindle homesickness in me.
The other week, the Great Queen went to the vet for some dental work. Who is this ‘Dodongo’ you ask? Well here she is, in all her glory:
Cat dentistry is (apparently) an “important but often overlooked” element of the total cat health regime. We often overlook it, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times we’ve sent a cat in for dentistry. In fact our beloved Ziggi once had a tooth fall out (yes, I found it on the floor one day). It bothered him not at all, but may have been due to us overlooking as aspect of his regime.
(And believe me, that cat had a regime!)
So our local vet (name withheld to protect the innocent) was having a cat dental month in February and we were suckered in decided to send Daisy along for a checkup.
Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but I went to the dentist myself the other day. I had a checkup, teeth cleaning, x-rays and a small battery of other tests such as ‘oral cancer’ and some sort of weird overbite thingy. My teeth were fine (as they always have been) and everything went well. Total cost: $96 (paid for by our insurance). I go every six months, and usually it’s a bit cheaper since they don’t do x-rays every time.
Anyway GQD went to the vet as well. She had a checkup, teeth cleaning, x-rays and perhaps a few other small things done. Total cost: $300…
…
In case you missed that the first time, the total cost was:
$300 God Damn Dollars!
Oh, but we got a big bag of free dental health cat food that we obviously paid for, some free toothpaste that probably cost us $20, a kit bag of free food samples including stuff for dogs we instantly threw away and some free flouride water supplement for cats that had a warning label on it so scary I wouldn’t feed it to Idi Amin.
< Note the flavour!
In short, we were ripped off north, south, east and west got good value for money.
What’s that you say? How do we even know they did what they said they did?
Well how’s this for proof (click them to enlarge):
Yep, they gave us printouts of the x-rays (and probably charged us $15 for the service)!
Yes yes, I can hear you all now: “Stop complaining Sir! You live a profligate lifestyle!” (that was a shoutout to Prof MacD if she reads this :))
But as Ueshiba never said: “Even the rich man values a single grain of rice.”
What that means in English is, that the god-damn $300 spent on Duckaluck’s teeth are better measured as the loss of (say) 60 used gamebooks on ebay. Or 42 Star Wars action figures. Or 5 Ps3 games. Or… well or just about anything!
Daisy I love you. You’re my Greet Queen and your fantastic. But after forking over $300 for your dentistry… well then after doing that my mental image of you is less the image at the top of this post and more like this one here:
