Part of humor in the cartoon, The Angry Beavers, is that people can’t imagine one of the somewhat comical looking aquatic mammals being annoyed. Well, the CBC notes that they definitely get angry, and has the video to prove it.
Would you try to pick a fight with a German Shepherd?
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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Every year, we have some morons here who decide they want to catch a squirrel. Every year, they get their ass handed to them by a vicious little rodent with needle-sharp teeth and strong claws, and end up having to go through a round of rabies shots. Every year, said morons try to sue the city, saying that the city should get rid of all the squirrels. Every year, said morons end up getting laughed out of court, due to all the signs that are in every city park that warn parkgoers that squirrels might *look* cute and cuddly but they’ll tear you a new asshole if you try to touch them or grab them or corner them.
I don’t know what it is about people and animals. It’s like Americans have forgotten that wild animals are, well, wild. I blame Bambi and Bugs Bunny, myself… though that doesn’t explain the lady who wanted to put her young child into the bear enclosure at the zoo so that she could take a picture of her child with the bear. She just didn’t understand why the zoo employees got so upset when she asked them to help her get the child over the barrier…
– Badtux the “These people vote” Penguin
You know with just a slight increase in power on the full body scanners at the airports we could ensure they didn’t multiply, but that would be wrong.
I don’t know how many times I have attempted to explain to people the concept of “feral cat”, but they still think they can just pick up a kitten and have it do cute things. That is always gruesome.
Wild animals that approach people are definitely suspect. If they don’t run, I do.
The ones who feed the ‘gators are the worse. They just don’t understand that the last thing you want to do is have a ‘gator associate humans with food. It never ends well.
OTOH, it’s another form of natural selection.
Ah yes, gators. At the University of Louisiana we had a cypress swamp on-campus. With gators in it. Nobody knew where the gators came from, but they kept the duck population down (and those weren’t the pretty ducks, these were the most piebald ugly nasty ducks you ever saw, that just dropped in one day and never left), so nobody much cared. At some point some idiot started feeding the gators despite the signs saying not to (and remember that the deck of the Student Union extended out over the swamp a bit, it was a steel mesh deck like some of those old drawbridges cantilevered out there), the inevitable happened when one of the ‘gators mistook somebody’s hand for food and bit it off, and Wildlife & Fisheries came in and removed all the gators. The resulting explosion in the duck population turned the swamp into a reeking duck poop cesspool, and they had to remove the ducks (I think Wildlife & Fisheries came in again and removed the ducks to Butte La Rose so that the Cajuns could deal with them the way Cajuns do :twisted:), drain the swamp, and dredge it out and remove anyplace ducks could lay eggs within the swamp area before refilling it, because the ducks that didn’t somehow mysteriously make their way into gumbo pots would be coming back. And indeed they did. As did gators. Again. With nobody knowing how. And all was well, balance restored. Until the next time, of course. Siiiiiiigh!
Out here in the West the problem is black bears. Between idiots who feed them directly, idiots who feed them indirectly (by leaving delish-smellin’ food in ice coolers and such in their camp sites), and so forth, every year several bears have to be put down because they’ve become aggressive towards humans in their search for food in human campsites. Coolers are the big problem. People insist on bringing coolers full of beer to their campsites. Well, the problem there is that bears like beer just as much as humans do — and drunk bears share a lot of characteristics with drunk humans (i.e., the results are generally *not* pretty). You get a bear who has become an alcoholic, he latches his beady little eyes on that cooler, you are not getting between a 500 pound hunk of pure muscle and claw and fang and that cooler regardless of how many pots you bang or how much you yell and try to look big. We had some Okie from Bakersfield try waving a .45 ACP around to scare a bear off from his beer, the bear took the .45 out of his hand and rammed it up his butt. Fortunately the .45 went off in the process and scared off the bear, but the moron ended up having to be medevac’ed because he’d been pretty well mauled in the process.
And people wonder why I will carry a three pound bear canister when I go backpacking, despite the fact that I hate hauling all that weight. Well, I do it because I’m not an idiot… and because the bears have learned that they can knock on these canisters all they want and they’re not going to get food out of them. So far the only bear problem I’ve had is when a bear knocked over my KLR-650 and tore open its luggage (thinking it was coolers loaded with food) and ate my can of WD-40… luckily that was my KLR and not a touring bike, with a KLR it’s just bungee the luggage back closed, pick it up, wait half an hour for any oil to drain out of the cylinder (so you don’t get hydrolock since the bike was on its side for hours and oil could have gotten up there), start it up, and ride home :twisted:. Something to be said about old school caveman technology, same reason I like my Jeep Wrangler :).
Sounds like Muscovy ducks, the drakes have red wattles, and they all have attitudes. They are generally black and white, and are natives of Brazil. They have been introduced into the US as a “domesticated species”, and they all deserve to be served with orange or sweet and sour sauce while the eggs are served to racoons.
I lived through an infestation here and prefer the ‘gators, which we have, along with black bears on the local University of West Florida campus. You wouldn’t think a sign saying “Don’t Allow Bears in The Building” would be unnecessary, but you would be wrong. They had to disable the handicapped door openers to keep them out as the bears learned to push the large buttons before they were finally relocated.
People tend to spread bad habits wherever they go. Walt Disney made people believe that wild animals were their friends.
Yeah, there’s a lot to be said for having some sheet metal between you and nature. If you’re in nature’s “house” , you need to abide by nature’s rules.
Please do note I was not on my KLR-650 at the time. I had backpacked into the wilderness and came back to find the bike on its side.
Bears laugh at sheet metal. They walk around the parking lots at Yosemite staring into cars. If they see a cooler in the back seat, or if they smell food, they rip off the back door of the car and tear into it, including ripping out the back seat to get to the trunk if that’s where the food smell is.
I have a strong suspicion that Walt Disney has convinced large numbers of Americans that animals are not only friendly, but can talk, if only to each other. Remember, 50% of Americans are below average, and average ain’t so smart nowdays… 😈 Too bad we can’t just let the bears in Yosemite take care of them, it’d improve the gene pool immensely. Alas, too many morons, not enough bears…
We need to import Alaskan moose. I never worried about bears in Alaska, but everyone went armed because of the moose. They are flat insane and the adults weigh 1500 pounds.
We have people freaking out down here whenever they see a bear, but these are small black bears and will run if you let them. Most of the problems occur when the fools get them cornered against a fence, and the bear freaks out, wanting to get away with some moron between it and freedom.
I was never around the big browns down in Southern Alaska, and had no intention of being on their range, or the range of the Grizzlies, because I don’t go looking for trouble. Too many has gone to “Bear Country Jamboree” and expect that sort of experience to occur in the wild.
I certainly didn’t think you were on the 650 when it was attacked – there was no hospital stay mentioned.
Our black bears here in California are relatively tame compared to browns, they won’t attack you unless you get between them and their cub — or between them and their beer :twisted:. Which, err, is no longer *your* beer, in case you’re some Okie from Bakersfield and can’t figure that out ;). But they’re definitely bigger and more aggressive than their Back East counterparts. 500 pounders are fairly common. The notion of people treating a 500 pound omnivore with claws that can tear open tree trunks and needle-sharp teeth a half inch long as if it were *cuddly* boggles the mind, yet every year we have some stupid touron get mauled by trying to “pet the bear”… siiiiigh! We don’t have a gene *pool* anymore, just a gene *puddle*, rather shallow and muddy.
Yes, 500 pounds is well above what we have around here, and fortunately they have the Eglin Reservation to live in without worrying about people most of the time. Most of the conflicts involve people in new subdivisions, invaders if you will, in the bears’ territory. They den up for the winter, and when then wake up in the spring there are McMansions all over a prime nut and berry area.
The problem is that it is always the bears that lose, and we still have to deal with the “tourons”.
feral cats – i have trouble convincing some people that just because mine are housecats, it doesn’t mean that they all like people. tiger grrrl has taken up curmudgeon cat’s mantle as chief attack cat, only without any of his cuddlier qualities.
I don’t care how friendly the cat, coming on strong to the cat if you’re a stranger is unwise. The Mighty Fang is pretty much the most laid back friendly cuddly kitteh you ever seen, after he sniffs your hand and rubs his head against your leg and figures out you’re okay, he’ll let you rub him and cuddle him and everything, but if you just come on to him without that meet and greet he’ll tear you a new one and he has needle-sharp claws that will draw *massive* amounts of blood (and with 18 pounds of startled kitteh behind them, you betcha that you’ll be hurting!). Mencken avoids the problem by hiding under the bed until the strangers are gone :).
I have a friend that I cat-sit for when she has to be out of town. She has two cats, Ms Pepper and Mr Stripey, who I have seen once when they were in carriers. Over the years, when cat-sitting or just visiting, I have never seen those two cats “in the wild”. They eat the food I put out and use the litter boxes, but they have never made an appearance.
After she grew up, my Mother never saw Koshka. Every time she visited my place Koshka would hide out in “cat space” until my Mother was gone. Some cats are like that.
Whether it’s a cat or a dog, you have to let them make the first move. I watch the judges at cat shows picking up cats and handling them and I just cringe. The people who own those cats must have spent almost all of their time programming those cats not to shred judges, because I wouldn’t even consider trying to pick up a cat the way the judges do.
My present crew treats everyone like they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and hide behind the couch.
i used to ct sit for a cat who like ms pepper and mr stripey. and curmudgeon cat was like that for the first few months he lived with me.
my present crew pretty much covers the rainbow, in personality if not in color. there’s tiger grrrl, a koshka act-alike or two, some wary, a too-lazy-to-move, and a couple of overtly friendly.
they all show great unity of purpose and focus when the squirrels show up outside the windows though. 🙂
I’m in real trouble if a dove lands near the window by the bed – the thundering herd have no problem using me to reach the window en masse for the theatrics of pretending to be a threat to wild life.
Ah, “cat space”, that mysterious space into which cats disappear when they’re annoyed or just don’t feel like interacting with people.
When I moved from Arizona to California, I had everything all packed up in the U-Haul, and my pickup truck on the trailer behind the U-Haul. There was nothing left to do but put the cats into their carriers and put them in the cab of the U-Haul with me (separate carriers — Mencken gets rather annoyed if forced to spend too much time in close proximity with TMF, and fur tends to fly if he can’t move away and get some Mencken-space).
So TMF was easy enough. Remember, the house is empty other than their cat box, water bowl, and kitty carriers. I walked around, spotted TMF looking out the back window at the kitteh theater, grabbed him, and put him into his carrier (easier said than done but my technique — back him in by pushing on his nose — works fine with a bit of nudging of his hindquarters to guide them, cats don’t like humans pushing on their nose and back up to get away).
Okay one cat down. Now… where’s Mencken? I walked every single room of the house and looked into every closet, including up on the shelves. No Mencken. The house is empty, remember, other than the washer/dryer and the refrigerator. I started out looking behind the washer/dryer and even *in* them. No cat. I walk into the kitchen and pull out the refrigerator to see if he somehow managed to sneak behind or under it. No cat. I am baffled, and take a break to drink a cola. By this time roughly an hour has passed. I’m supposed to be on the road, not hunting for cats. Did he
So what’s left? Cabinets, duh! Well, I had checked cabinets to see if anything was in them before closing all the cabinet doors to keep cats out of them, but okay, I’ll check again. And I did. I opened each and every cabinet. Until finally I found Mencken — in that tiny cabinet over the refrigerator.
I swear that he wasn’t there the first time I checked. I swear I closed the cabinet door after checking to see if that cabinet was empty. All I can figure is that he was hanging out in “cat space”. Sorta a fourth dimension that cats can disappear into when they absolutely, positively don’t want to be found.
– Badtux the Cheshire-cat-owned Penguin
Dot can do that, and it drives me up the wall when I’m trying to put flea stuff on everyone, or it’s time for a vet visit. I plan on starting to look for her at least 12 hours before I need her, or I don’t have a chance. Some of it is the fact that if they can get their head though an opening their body will go through it, so thinking that an opening is too small for a cat only indicates that you haven’t seen a determined cat. Having to dismantle a dryer to get a cat, not a kitten, an 8 pound adult cat, out who had entered through the vent after pulling off the flex tubing will make a believer in “cat space” out of anyone.