How’s your Monday going?

[The Masked Shadow]

I positively do not have rabies, just ignore the foam around my mouth, it’s from… uh.. root beer! Yes, I had root beer earlier and that’s what it’s from…..

If I ever brought that up in all seriousness at our next meeting either they’d take away my bonus for a while or they wouldn’t let me have any of the food at the meeting. Equally horrible if you ask me.
Hendre Monkeys are evil little savage creatures and I refuse to ever interact with them.

The baboons at the zoo scare the ? out of me! They bark so loud and their teeth are so sharp.

 

[fishhead0103666]

I hope your Monday is going well, and if it’s not then you can laugh at my Monday at least. I found two baby raccoons in a trash can at work this morning, took them out, put the trash can on the side, then one of them chased me. The second one decided my forklift made a great hiding place so I had to scare it away while watching my back for the first one. I got chased by a baby raccoon while my boss nearly died laughing seeing me run away from a tiny raccoon… View attachment 1501163View attachment 1501164

Well damn, first I get chased by a raccoon then my tire blows up because I hit something in the road. Damn it.

 

[jjohnwm]

P

Well damn, first I get chased by a raccoon then my tire blows up because I hit something in the road. Damn it.

Probably a raccoon...

 

[aussieman57]

Dogs rule!

Yes sir.

 

[esoxlucius]

Esox, were the squirrels intentionally introduced, or did they get there as stowaways in some kind of shipping container?

I believe it was the Victorian age when they were introduced, around the mid 1800's. Wealthy landowners with huge sprawling estates introduced them to their gardens, and that was that!

They spread, and spread, and spread some more. In the process they pushed the resident native red squirrel into little "pockets" of woodland. Nowadays I believe the only place you see reds is Scotland, I've never even seen a red!

 

[jjohnwm]

That's pretty much how many species made it to North America as well. We have House Sparrows and European Starlings in astonishing numbers, and they are serious competition for native birds, especially for nesting sites. We also have or had numerous other intentionally-introduced invaders that didn't manage to dig in an establish themselves.

Apparently the two above species...along with several other unsuccessul ones...were introduced at the end of the 19th century by some organized group of nutcases who felt that North America needed to have every bird species mentioned by Shakespeare in any of his works.

Thank goodness that Shakespeare was English rather than coming from Africa or Australia...imagine what might be running or flying around in North America today if he had been!

 

[esoxlucius]

I guess the term "invasive species" hadn't even been coined back in the early days when these well to do aristocrats were introducing species from other countries into their own back yards.

And of course by the time some clever dude came up with the term, it was waaayyyyy to late to do anything about it!

I think the introduction of the cane toad to Australia to try and help with the beetles is possibly the worse example in history. What a mess that has turned into.