Critters and Pets

[Boom Boom]

No snow on the ground here, and none in our forecast, and that's fine by me. Usually we will have our skidoos out by the first and certainly by the second week of November.

[sparqui]

Tons of snow here, 25 or 35 cm total over the weekend. Some places north of Winnipeg had as much as 65 cm. But with the snow came the sun. Supposedly we only had 5 days of sun over a 6 week period.

Fearless tested the first dusting of snow on the balcony and refused to go back out when the main snowfall was happening. The Weasel, on the other hand, was not fazed by the amount of snow and I had to retrieve him when he started burrowing into the huge snowdrift near the balcony banister.

[Boom Boom]

Environment Canada said over a month ago that November here - all the way to the Arctic Circle - would be warmer than normal. Right now, our week long forecast is for sunny days with highs around the 3C mark. Today is was so warm and sunny I had to take my sweater off to work outdoors on my housing renovations. No snow on the ground at all. And it's mid-November!  We may have the kind of warm winter we had about five or six years ago - I was able to drive my truck all winter without any roads here having to be plowed at all. Bad for the environment, though - the bogs and marshes here need substantial snow cover in order to have sufficient moisture to continue being bogs and marshes. Has an effect on the berry crop too - our cooperative berry pickers are seeing a drastic fall in berry yields over the past few years.  I'm on the Board of Directors for the Coasters organization, and I get all the reports of co-operative ventures sponsored by the Coasters - there's a lot of them -  here on the Lower North Shore of Quebec. I've been reading about 200 pages pertaining to Non Timber Forest Products (NTFP) and the long section on berries (and mushrooms)  is just fascinating.
 
ETA: Just read another Coasters report - this one says the fishers are concerned with the warmer waters here - they're seeing species of fish now that they've never seen this far north.
 
ETA: I think there's not much doubt that climate change is impacting other species than our own. I think migrating birds are especially confused.   
 
ETA: Environment Canada also has a long range forecast for November-December-January showing above-average temps for my area.
 
 

[Toedancer]

*polar bear fight*
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/polar-bear-cam/


http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/polar-bear-tundra-buggy-cam

[Boom Boom]

Saw this on my Facebook page:
 

 
Rescued stray dogs in New Zealand learn to drive

[Toedancer]

Sera puked up green ribbon. 

[Toedancer]

How the heck can a squirrel climb up 6 stories? I put peanuts out for the bluejays, they come and go as they please and Sera shoots straight across the room in her stealth position to watch. Pleasure for me coz I get to watch birds and cat. Today a bushy squirrel was up gorging on them. Sera shot across room and they went nose to nose on slider door, obviously the squirrel can't see her. But how the squirrel knew there were nuts up here and how it got up I have no idea. 

[Holly Stick]

I've seen a squirrel go straight up a wall; I guess there were enough bumpy bits for its little paws to grab on to.

[Boom Boom]

I often see squirrels go to the top of wooden telephone poles, and cross on the wires themselves.

[Toedancer]

In Alberta, the province systematically corrupted and brutalised by the oil curse, and whose polluted politics are now corrupting public life throughout Canada, the government plans to carry out a mass killing of wolves by shooting them from helicopters and poisoning them with strychnine.

The reason, ostensibly, is to protect the woodland caribou, a subspecies of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus caribou), whose numbers have been diminishing rapidly. This, according to the Alberta Caribou Committee, is because wolves have been killing them.
]So what is this Alberta Caribou Committee? As you might expect, it represents all the usual environmental organisations,such as, er, PetroCanada, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Koch Petroleum, TransCanada Pipelines, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries and the pulp company Daishowa Marubeni.

Between them they have decided - and apparently convinced both the provincial and federal governments - that the problem afflicting the province's caribou is not the fragmentation of their habitat by seismic lines, pipelines, roads, oil platforms, timber cutting and the transformation of pristine forest into wasteland by tar sands operations, but the natural predator with which the species has lived for thousands of years.    (Strychnine?)
Wolf Killings

[lagatta]

Horribly depressing, Toe.

[Toedancer]

I LOVE it when I find out something I never dreamed of!


Giant Camels originated in North America 


Which says a lot about global polar shifts.

[Holly Stick]

That is cool, isn't it. I love the illustration.

[pogge]

Good day. I'm under instructions to post the following. Determining whose instructions they are will be left as an exercise for the reader. (And unfortunately, there's one piece of sad news in this.)

The Great Kitty Status Update

Minerva, born 13 March, 1996. Now 17 and just fine if audibly bronchial and semi-deaf.

Mathilda, born 13 March, 1996. Died 11 January, 2013 (very quietly).

Guinevere, born March 1997. Now 16 and will never quit.

Olive and Philibert, March 1999. Now 14 and in remarkably good shape if semi-toothless (ferals) and missing Mama Tildie.

Gracie, March 2007. Now 6 and a pure delight. Maybe a bit overweight. Strongly resembles my wild bunnies.


Remember Dunblane, 13 March, 1996 and plant snowdrops.

[Debra]

catnip to all kitties still with us.


So sad to hear about Mathilda