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Post by Mare on Sept 5, 2021 17:07:07 GMT
The Squirrel on my balcony and in my crawl space over the kitchen was a Camo Squirrel. Or maybe a Senior Squirrel.
I was not pleased it was menacing my safe zone, no matter what color it was.
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Post by bluedemon25 on Sept 5, 2021 18:11:11 GMT
I can sympathize with you. I enjoy them when they are OUTSIDE. I do. It want then or bats or similar in my home. That is major anxiety for me with my germ OCD and plus its simply reality they do sometimes carry dangerous pathogens.
I never heard of a that color squirrel. Neat. I've seen what look like black fur squirrels. I remember going to the Bronx Zoo (which along with the botanical gardens are FANTASTIC) and I saw one AMD it was funny because there's all these fascinating animals there but the black fur squirrel momentarily stole the show. I've seen photos of albino squirrels but not seen one in person.
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Post by miles on Sept 5, 2021 21:11:03 GMT
Vermin. Grey squirrels, that is. You prefer the red squirrels I take it. We have both.
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Post by donavan on Sept 5, 2021 21:25:08 GMT
The Grey ones fucked up the red ones, now the few reds that are left are shelterd and protected. The grey ones are vermin like rats and pigeons over here.
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Post by miles on Sept 6, 2021 16:42:22 GMT
On my daily walks, I have encountered squirrels killed by cars, lying in the road. I pick them up by their tails and move them to the undergrowth past the shoulder. It is really disgusting to see them mashed into paste, and dead squirrels are a hazard for the bicyclists zooming down the hill. They are BIG! and weigh 3 or 4 pounds. Never try to pet a squirrel.
Back in San Francisco, legendary columnist Herb Caen had a campaign against pigeons. He called them "rats with wings." And even rats don't poop on you when you walk down down the street.
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Post by Mare on Sept 6, 2021 19:03:55 GMT
I can sympathize with you. I enjoy them when they are OUTSIDE. I do. It want then or bats or similar in my home. That is major anxiety for me with my germ OCD and plus its simply reality they do sometimes carry dangerous pathogens. Yep. That's the issue I have. I can't believe I could actually go out on the balcony and try to chase it away. Progress, I guess. More important that it got right out of here as soon as possible, perhaps. The Pest Control people that were here to board up any places on my building that rodents could get into or out of told me that these squirrels are protected. It looked kind of liked this but with more rust color spread about. It's not brown. It's not black. It's not grey. It's not red. It's all of that plus white!
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Post by miles on Sept 6, 2021 22:47:00 GMT
I can sympathize with you. I enjoy them when they are OUTSIDE. I do. It want then or bats or similar in my home. That is major anxiety for me with my germ OCD and plus its simply reality they do sometimes carry dangerous pathogens. Yep. That's the issue I have. I can't believe I could actually go out on the balcony and try to chase it away. Progress, I guess. More important that it got right out of here as soon as possible, perhaps. The Pest Control people that were here to board up any places on my building that rodents could get into or out of told me that these squirrels are protected. It looked kind of liked this but with more rust color spread about. It's not brown. It's not black. It's not grey. It's not red. It's all of that plus white! He needs to go back to the squirrely building. Unless they are rabid, they will retreat. A balcony is bad place to find this out. Glad he split.
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Post by bluedemon25 on Sept 6, 2021 23:41:43 GMT
Indian Malabar Giant Squirrel
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Post by Mare on Sept 8, 2021 0:32:18 GMT
He needs to go back to the squirrely building. Unless they are rabid, they will retreat. A balcony is bad place to find this out. Glad he split. I live in the squirrelly building, and I haven't seen or heard him/her around for awhile. When I chased it off the balcony (which is pretty big, but I am so far refusing to call it a front porch since it is upstairs) it ran up onto the stucco half wall and stopped and looked at me. It wondered what I was doing on it's balcony, I dare say. So, I acted like a crazy human and went toward it to shoo it further. It went out of my range of vision, and when I peeked around the corner, there it was about five feet away, clinging to the side of the second story of the building. I knew squirrels could cling to bark, etc, but I didn't ever see a squirrel clinging that far up in the air on a vertical stucco wall before. And now, I have. Maybe it was just mice/rats up above my kitchen and the squirrel was just living under the overgrown bushes I requested the property people trim way back. Yes, donavan ...it may not be in the kitchen, but good song for this exciting episode...
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Post by Mare on Sept 8, 2021 17:23:35 GMT
Indian Malabar Giant Squirrel At first I thought this image was photoshopped, next I thought there should not be GIANT squirrels.
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Post by miles on Sept 15, 2021 0:43:32 GMT
I was 13 years old and traveling across the US with my grandparents in a van. Not a hippie van, this one had a tent attachment you could extend off the van's side and that's where me and my grandfather slept, outside in cots. Grandma had the fancy inside bed. We drove up the west coast to Canada and went from British Columbia to Quebec in the rainy summer of 1967. Stayed for the World's Fair for over a week, at a camp ground outside town, a bus took us into the city.
After that it was, New York, Washington DC, and then back to west coast via the trail of relatives scattered in the heartland. Virginia, Peoria IL, Ava Missouri, and Muscatine Iowa. The latter was my grandfather's home town, and his last relative still there was a wizened great aunt, with a framed portrait of Black Jack Pershing, WW1 general in her tiny living room. I was really interested in WW1 at the time, building bi-plane models and so it made an impression. She also made her own sauerkraut in great ceramic vats, and she told of the process, how it lasted for many weeks, while the cabbage fermented. I wanted to take one of the vats home, but that was out of the question.
What made an even greater impression was a casual meal with kin in Ava. Our host, at a diner, with unsuppressed glee recounted the tale of how he and his fellow citizens had taken matters into their own hands, when a Black family had moved into the community. "We lynched em," he said under his breath but clearly audible. I saw my grandfather's dumbfounded expression. He could not react and make a scene, but it clearly hurt him, he was a sensitive man. I have always hoped it was just bullshit and never happened, that Doc wasn't a murderer, just a distant relative we stayed with on an adventure.
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Post by bluedemon25 on Sept 15, 2021 1:39:16 GMT
Wow. That latter part must have been challenging to deal with. I'm not sure I can accurately imagine quite how I'd react were I in that position.
The traveling with grandparents sounds overall though really nice as well as seeing the World's Fair. I regret that I was not comfortable enough traveling far and far to accept a similar offer to travel with my grandparents that I adored when I was rather young.
If I may ask what brought forth that memory? Do you recall any particular exhibits at the fair?
My grandmother told me she was at one I believe around 1939 and doesn't remember much having been pretty young but did see the exhibit of TV. That must have been mind blowing or at least fascinating.
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Post by miles on Sept 15, 2021 4:24:51 GMT
At the time I was living with my grandparents, they raised me from age 4 to about 14, when I went hippie and they bailed. It was a fascinating trip, also full of sheer boredom on the long drives. So I read comics in the back of the van until I got carsick.
As I now recall the incriminating phrase was, "We strung them up." But memory is faulty, to say the least. I was shocked absolutely. If it was true, it was too horrible to contemplate. We were staying with them for a week.
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Post by Mare on Sept 16, 2021 23:41:48 GMT
miles, I am sorry you had to go through, what to me would have been a shocking and devastating situation, when you were so very young. That is a very harsh bleeping reality and knowing it was a relative must have made it even worse. Dreadful! I envy you on your extensive trip with your grandparents, though! All across Canada and then New York City and Washington D.C. really sounds like an adventure! Yes, the stays with relatives throughout the trip is familiar to me...my Great Aunt Mary scared the crap out of me...never married, no kids-I somehow knew to be on my best behavior around her, with no sassing back. All the relatives would show up at whomever's home you were staying at and the group would split up into ladies, men, and kids. The worst part of it all was being crammed into a car without air-conditioning in the Summer with both my parents and all five of their offspring. Still, there was much laughter with my cousins, bareback horse riding (clinging for my life onto my younger cousin who knew how to ride) and picnics, the Midwest and how different it seemed from home. Mostly, we went to see my dad's older sister first just up the hill in Redondo Beach and later an hour away from home. I remember those cousins the most, but I was able to be in touch with other cousins on FB and that was great. In all this contact, there was no talk of racism, hatred or anger until I met up with my ex's family. Jimminy Christmas! Shocking. I don't care who is in the rowboat, I should have said...shut the bleep up! Instead, I just stopped going. My mom told me my dad's father was prejudiced against left-handed people. Then, he found out his best friend was left-handed.
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Post by miles on Sept 17, 2021 19:42:03 GMT
Very probably that trip gave me a dismissive attitude toward "The Heartland," that was one-dimensional in retrospect. The more I consider it, I think Doc was just pulling a prank on the Californians. But what a way to have fun. I'd like to think that anyway.
As a contrast we stayed over a week in Peoria Il, home of my grandfather's sister, her daughter Fran and husband Bob. He was big executive at Caterpillar Tractor, and was (or appeared) very wealthy.) They had a giant house on a vast grassy hill, that Bob mowed with a riding lawn mower, which was novel at that time. He took us to restaurant and ordered frog legs for everyone, that was also novel. I had been building these small WW1 airplane models during the trip, and he insisted on buying one of them from me. It was a tangible realization of how he wanted people to like him, and thought money was the shortest route.
So my impression of the region was formed via the peculiarities of my family members: eccentric, racist and possibly homicidal, shallowly materialistic, judgmental etc. This being 1967, and me living in San Francisco, the contrast was blinding. We undoubtedly had plenty of those qualities back in California, I just wasn't exposed to them in a similar way.
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