Wild (?) Animals and the Modern World

The Late Night Gourmet

The Late Night Gourmet

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I have seen 3 recent incidents of animals on freeways, and amazingly all 3 ended with the animals surviving:
  • In May, Highway 402 near Toronto was at a standstill because of a raccoon on the freeway. I saw this as I returned from a visit to Niagara Falls, on the side heading the other direction. Traffic had completely stopped in both lanes, and someone was out of their car, trying to shoo it off the road.
  • I was taking my daughter out to practice driving two weeks ago when a mama duck decided it was a good time to lead her babies across Metro Parkway (55 MPH / 88 KPH speed limit) near where I live. My daughter alertly stopped, and everyone else followed suit as they waited for the ducks to cross.
  • Last week, on another busy road (Hall Road, 50 MPH / 80 KPH), a kitten somehow made it across the road safely. Someone stopped to help the kitty, and probably to make sure it didn't decide to go back onto the road again.
I know situations like this don't usually end well for the animals. I would have thought that animals would have adapted better to the presence of humans. The above cases are all in very busy areas. I'm sure that this sort of thing is much more frequent in remote areas.
 
No wild animals in nz, maybe the odd duck crossing the road, there's a family of ducks that cross regularly about 600 metres away from me, but everybody in our area know they cross so it's not uncommon to wait for them to cross to a wee creek they seem to live in. I have hedgehogs that visit here at night looking for food scraps. I throw bread etc out for the birds.

Russ
 
We have deer wandering about. This advert was made a few years ago close to where I live -
View: https://vimeo.com/116766627
- and so was this clip from the BBC Winter Watch in January this year - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06zr9gw. They are about during the day time too and I often have to keep my greyhound on a tight rein (!) when I take him out for a walk. The nearest I've seen them to my house is about 100 yards away in the middle of the day, but I'm sure if I looked out in the middle of the night they'd be in our road too. They are known locally as the Community deer. Sadly some of them do get injured on the roads, often when some idiots let their dogs chase them.
Of course we have our urban foxes too. When my black cats were a lot younger they used to go out and play with them. I think the foxes were more afraid of the cats than the other way round. They are often mooching around in our gardens.
 
Elawin said:
We have deer wandering about. This advert was made a few years ago close to where I live -
View: https://vimeo.com/116766627
- and so was this clip from the BBC Winter Watch in January this year - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06zr9gw. They are about during the day time too and I often have to keep my greyhound on a tight rein (!) when I take him out for a walk. The nearest I've seen them to my house is about 100 yards away in the middle of the day, but I'm sure if I looked out in the middle of the night they'd be in our road too. They are known locally as the Community deer. Sadly some of them do get injured on the roads, often when some idiots let their dogs chase them.
Of course we have our urban foxes too. When my black cats were a lot younger they used to go out and play with them. I think the foxes were more afraid of the cats than the other way round. They are often mooching around in our gardens.
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No deer around here, wouldn't last long. Bang.

Russ
 
rascal said:
No deer around here, wouldn't last long. Bang.

Russ
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I quite like venison, but I wouldn't eat one of the local deer. When I first moved into my house in 1976 people used to come round door to door selling muntjac for Sunday dinner. Muntjac still wander around now as well as the deer in the clips above.
 
Elawin said:
I quite like venison, but I wouldn't eat one of the local deer. When I first moved into my house in 1976 people used to come round door to door selling muntjac for Sunday dinner. Muntjac still wander around now as well as the deer in the clips above.
Click to expand...

Never heard of muntjac?

Russ
 
I'll never forget that EDB rattlesnake I saved on Little Torch Key. I see dead raccoons and possums (one of the few marsupials we have) everyday on our major hiways. Deer are often seen off the side of the road. Same with gators. I was just getting ready to turn into a fire station on my route when a black bear came onto the road from someone's back yard and crossed over into someone's front yard. The saddest thing I've ever seen was a dead Florida panther on the side of I-75. There are less than 30 still around.
 
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If you live in California, all bets are off. Lol. Usually during the Summer, I've seen bears & their cubs taking a dip in swimming pools on the News. Guess people call animal control (?), they shoot them with tranquilizer guns/darts?, tag them, and release them back into the wild -- after they get some of them down from the trees. They get hungry and thirsty too. :)
 
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We've been driving through the centre of Canberra on a dual carriage way when it ground to a halt. Several kangaroo were on the central reservation trying to cross our carriageway and you simply don't argue with something 6 foot high and totally muscle. They write vehicles off the road frequently. On this occasion the speed limit was 100kph. No one argues, everyone just accepts that it's part of life in Australia even in the middle of it's (rather green) capital city!
It is even expected that you'll hit one sooner or later. Insurance only really start asking questions when you've hit 3 in the space of 2 years! (That's per policy not per driver though. We're at 2 in 3 years, one each.)
 
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SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
We've been driving through the centre of Canberra on a dual carriage way when it ground to a halt. Several kangaroo were on the central reservation trying to cross our carriageway and you simply don't argue with something 6 foot high and totally muscle. They write vehicles off the road frequently. On this occasion the speed limit was 100kph. No one argues, everyone just accepts that it's part of life in Australia even in the middle of it's (rather green) capital city!
It is even expected that you'll hit one sooner or later. Insurance only really start asking questions when you've hit 3 in the space of 2 years! (That's per policy not per driver though. We're at 2 in 3 years, one each.)
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There have been several instances of rogue wallabies and rheas about in the UK (some of the rheas not far from me - although turned out to be the same one, a bit of a houdini). When I had my own business, there were a couple of exotic pet shops in the same area, and they did have a gorilla on the loose, although that was many years ago now and I didn't see it. In years gone by we have also had the occasional elephant, lion and tiger escape from a circus which used to visit the area quite frequently.
My son-in-law's friend and the friend' mate used to sell birds and reptiles, and on the odd occasion you'd see escapees in the neighbourhood, such as toucans, parrots, iguanas, tarantulas, and the odd cayman. The bird side of the business was closed by the local Council during the bird flu outbreak a few years ago as some of their quarantined birds developed bird flu, even though these birds were not kept on the same premises, The reptile side of the business closed not long afterwards mainly because the premises were too large for them to continue on their own. It became the local greyhound-specific vet, although now even they have moved to smaller premises.
 
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