Somedays you get the hawk.. somedays the hawk...

spantini

spantini

COO of me, inc.
There's a straight piece of road running parallel to my building. There's a long sidewalk with a low hedge that runs about 150 ft. The strip of ground below the hedge is covered with mulch.

The area surrounding my building is mostly single family homes, and there is a rather large population of free ranging roosters and their hens. Every day these roosters, each with several hens, work their way down the hedge as if it were a cafeteria buffet. They scratch the mulch away, out onto the nice, clean sidewalk in search of food - worms, assorted bugs and lizards.. much to the chagrin of our grounds maintenance.

Well, a couple of days ago Mother Nature supplied a temporary solution to this messy sidewalk. I was on one of my many daily walks around the neighborhood when I started down this sidewalk on my homestretch. about a third of the way down I spied a hawk deconstructing a hen, just at the base of the hedge. The hawk let me approach to within about 10 ft. then flew off to a nearby tree to perch and watch as I examined the scene. There was the poor hen with a rather large hole in it and many feathers scattered about. I continued on. When I returned several hours later the hen and the hawk were nowhere to be found. Hmm.. carry out.

The roosters still forage on the property along with their hens, but nary a one has been anywhere near that hedge since that day. The mulch has remained nicely mounded and the sidewalk is clean.

The End
 
Well congratulations!!! a possum died under our shed... well half of it was under the shed, its lower half was sticking out like it was trying to crawl into safety when it died. obviously dead possum is gross so i didn't want to touch it. I did what any responsible adult would do and decided to ignore it and pretend like it wasnt there. several days go by and unfortunately dead possum is still just chilling there mocking us. luckily one day it just disappeared. i don't know what creature had the strength to carry away this large fat ass possum but golly i'm sure glad it did. Nature is crazy.
 
grimtraveller said:
Naw. Animals in nature are hungry and know what to do about it !
Click to expand...

i mean i guess given the right circumstances maybe i would be the one to carry the possum off and eat it. might be that you just gotta do what you gotta do in the post apocalyptic covid riddled world.
 
I live in a town 35 minute drive from Manhattan. We have two SMALL parks and most idiots have had all their trees cut down. Houses are fairly close. But, we live in the one house at the end of a dead end with about a 25' downhill wooded area that ends in the Rahway River. Our property goes back pretty far, and we have possum, raccoons, rabbits, a groundhog right next to the house, tons of birds as one our neighbors has bird feeders all over the place, and occasionally fox. There's plenty of stray cats. I feed 2 of them. One, I call Marti has been around since we moved in 2007. The other was intact till something did something to it's back paw, and it shriveled up and fell off. That was a few years ago. We'll be taking her with us when we move next year. Can't leave a 3 legged cat to fend for itself. It barely leaves our property. But, was also have a huge deer population.

I often ask vegetarians, would you rather be shot and killed almost instantly by a bullet or arrow, or be eaten alive by a wild animal? I know what my choice would be.

A little while ago, we had a deer with a broken leg in our backyard. A few nights later I'm on this computer and I hear something splashing in the river. It sounded violent and AWFUL. Because I didn't hear screaming I didn't call the police. That splashing went on for about 5 minutes. Finally it stopped. The next day I saw what was left of that deer in the river, and in our backyard were two coyotes. This is a densely populated area. I lived 36 years on Long Island and never once saw a deer or coyote. Since 2007 I see them almost daily. Hunting is restricted in Jersey and many people insulted Ted Cruz on Twitter because he took a photo of an elk he'd shot this weekend. But, he also took that elk and will have the meat it provides. In Jersey I see between 5 - 10 dead deer a week hit by cars rotting on the side of the road.

I couldn't hunt. I don't have it in me. But, letting the animal population grow to insane levels isn't good for us or them.
 
When I lived in Maryland, many of my co-workers lived north of Wash. D.C... some in the mountains. A major north-south 8-10 lane interstate ran through it all and deer were continually attempting to cross only to be struck down. Any given day saw several carcasses on the roadside, which were frequently removed for food by those travelling to work each morning. It was not uncommon for me to arrive at work and find a gutted deer hanging from the back wall in our shop - one which was killed by a vehicle that morning.

One traveler moving south on that interstate had the misfortune of hitting a deer which was in mid air as it attempted to cross the road. it's hind end smashed through his windshield and it's rear legs kicked so furiously it was like a blender inside. Tore the driver up badly, but he survived and the State Troopers hauled the (deer) carcass away after they put it down. Note: traffic on this interstate moved at 80+ mph, so a collision with a moving deer could be fatal for both it and the vehicle.
 
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