chrishansenhome

...was an urban fox, in broad daylight, on Swan Street on my way to a meeting at the Cathedral. It probably lives in the bushes on the corner, behind a fence. It was just standing out in the open, staring at me. I've seen him before on that corner, but only at night.

We are surrounded by fauna here in the centre of the city.

You may think that cat purring over in the corner or rubbing up against you is a cute little thing. However, according to this article, Puss may be a secret weapon.

In Sudan, homosexual activity is severely punished. However, this story shows that the Sudanese are kind to their animals, at any rate.

I got up this morning, performed my ablutions, made sure that the world hadn't ended (ie, listened to the news), made breakfast, woke HWMBO up, and started on my toast and coffee.

HWMBO came downstairs, entered the kitchen, and screamed "A snail!" There was a very long sinuous slug on the kitchen countertop.

Now when I started making breakfast I folded up the rag that we use to wipe the countertop, and saw a trail across it, but of course didn't believe it was a slug or a snail--how could such a thing get into our kitchen when we hadn't had the door open for ages. I just thought it was some artifact of the last time we wiped the counter, and thought no more about it.

I thought of putting salt on it, but HWMBO would have been even more squicked out by what happens to slugs when you salt 'em. I didn't think of taking a picture beforehand, drat. I opened the back door, took a piece of cardboard, scooped up the slug and slung it into the garden.

Compared to the slug, the rest of the day ought to be fairly sedate.

From YouTube comes this story about the candiru fish that we all thought was just legendary...

I got up this morning later than usual as I hadn't slept well in the middle of the night. I looked out the back door onto our rather unmowed back garden (=yard for the UK-challenged). There had been an orange candle in the garden and I had put it on the windowsill rather than throwing it out (you never know when you'll need a candle, I guess). It was on the patio this morning. I thought "Wind's blown it off the windowsill" and put it out of my mind as I started to make breakfast.

HWMBO came downstairs, we ate breakfast, and then as I began my morning trawl through the emails he called me to the back door and asked what had happened to the candle. I told him that I thought it had blown off the windowsill. He said, "And there's something else in the garden. Get the key and take a look." So I did. As I opened the door, what should we see but a fox, streaking out from under a shrub. We only saw his tail in our garden, but then he climbed over the fence between the next garden and the one next to that, and we saw all of him. He was about as big as a largeish cat (overfed cat) or a smallish dog (underfed dog). I picked up the candle and it had toothmarks all over it. So the wind hadn't blown it off the windowsill; the fox had jumped up thinking the candle was edible and been disappointed.

I hear about urban foxes quite often, but have never, until this morning, seen one.

HWMBO hopes that the fox hasn't eaten our squirrels, as they've been scarce lately.