Respect your local wildlife
Respect your local wildlife


Respect your local wildlife
As the local "weird possum girl", they are very intelligent! They shouldn't be!
See, opossum have smooth brains. This isn't normally linked to a high intelligence. Yet, they can remember if a food is toxic for up to two weeks after ingesting it, can learn and remember how to operate different sliding locks, and can solve simple puzzles with the right motivation(food)!
They can also form bonds, remembering people they like and dislike. Which is kinda funny to think about, because their babies spend a period of time riding around on moms back before they're big enough to waddle off on their own. If one falls off, she may very well trundle off, leaving the little one behind, who may hitch a ride on a totally different jill that happens to walk by.
goodness how i wish there was a weird possum girl in my locality
i would buy her lunch
not to eat with her as some creepy implied commitment to a date but because free food is an appropriate gift for opossum enthusiasts and I am just as happy for her to enjoy it without me if she so chooses.
(but to be fair i would prefer if she'd join me so i can listen to her talk about opossum facts)
Two weeks doesn't seem like all that long before forgetting that some food was toxic lol
Tell that to lactose intolerant people who love cheese. -from the very same.
Yeah and that part about losing babies and walking off unawares doesn't seem so bright either
It surprisingly is at their overall brain capacity. They're intelligent relative to their brain mass.
This gal possums.
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I wish having possums wasn't illegal without a very burocratic license in my country (Brazil). My ex once found a trio of babies, after the mother was run over by a car, I wish she'd kept one. She gave them to the environmental police
Street koalas
Oppossoms are better than merely smart. They eat HELLA PEST INSECTS!
now, Geese...
Geese are fiercely protective of their families and flocks and are amazing at guarding territory; they cannot be bribed or ingratiated. In brazil, a prison has provided a habitat for geese around the facility between the inner fence and the outer wall which has been surprisingly effective at discouraged escape attempts.
Can't be bribed? What if you could get a clutch of goose eggs to imprint on you? Then you'd be part of the family and invincible with your goose army! You could go goose-stepping across the continent!
Let's make a deal:
You go ahead and try to get close enough to a clutch of goose eggs that you can incubate them to hatching;
I'll point and laugh as their parents and all the other geese in the entire flock swarm you in a solid frenzied wall of honking, hissing, biting, bludgeoning, implacable white-hot incandescent fury.
You are proposing to fuck with a force of nature, my friend. I can't stop you. But they can. X3
I used to work at a MSFT facility whose parking garage was built in a reconfigured wetlands.
The geese would just hang out in the parking garage. They would not move for cars, people, anything, and would attack you as you walk by them.
To my knowledge, a decade later, this problem still exists.
and are amazing at guarding territory
My favorite game is Untitled Goose Game.
Nothing comes close to making my children laugh as much as that game. I love when they play it.
My 5 year old loves playing with me. The couch coop is insanely fun.
Absolutely, my daughter had sore abs from laughing so hard. Such a cute game.
The title of that game is a paradoxical lie.
It's kinda accurate because it wasn't officially named when introduced, they just used that label planning to give it a real name but then everybody thought it would be hilarious to keep "untitled goose game" so they stuck with it
No way. Maybe I should play it then. I thought it was a joke game that would only be fun for a few minutes.
You will love it. I play with my wife and kids and it's a hoot.
Squirrels aren’t just good climbers, squirrels are professional circus performers who are constantly putting on free shows for everybody.
Squirrels are hilarious, they don’t get enough credit.
My neighborhood squirrel hung upsidedown on our bird feeder holding the top with his feet while he ninja'd seeds out of the feeder. I was more impressed than anything.
I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.
Actually owls are really stupid. Like surprisingly stupid
Yeah. Three licks my ass.
To be fair, the dumb owl cheats.
How so? I thought they're great hunters?
Compared to say, a crow, an owl is a certified fucking moron
I'm a falconer. Basically no one uses owls for falconry because they have poor generalization intelligence. They have a really hard time transferring knowledge from one situation to another. So you get them flying to you inside and they are nailing it, then you move outside and it has no idea what to do. Every new situation needs to be trained. They are fine for shows and stuff when they are doing the same thing over and over again but constantly putting them in new situations like hunting would do is a recipe for disaster. A "lot"(maybe a dozen a year in US lol) of falconers try to use owls but very few are successful with them.
Yup. They are lovable dum dums...
And by lovable I mean they will like exactly one person and wish death on everyone else. Just because you can have one as a pet and it will be your bestest friend doesn't mean it's a good idea. Owls do not understand vacations or sick days.
Cobra Chicken. That is all.
Hey!
Geese make a great defensive line.
Owls are very wise geese.
Tbh that's not wrong
Does that mean geese are very reckless owls?
This guy gooses owls.
Geese are TASTY
Very tasty and when cooked properly at the right time of year are more like a roast beef than poultry.
I've had it roasted whole over a fire, roasted like a turkey in the oven, boiled in stew, pan fried, split roasted over a fire, smoked, seasoned and preserved in salt, pork fat and goose fat. I grew up eating it with rice, potatoes, carrots and dumplings. I could drink the gravy like an energy drink. I used to sit with my mom every spring to roast dozens of gizzards and hearts while I helped her pluck, gut, prepare the birds for smoking and eating.
In the wilderness I'm not afraid of geese because i see them as food. In the city I'm afraid of geese because if I killed one to eat, I'd be arrested for some kind of law and sent to be evaluated for a mental disorder.
I smoked one for Christmas. Delicious. Oh, and smoked goose fat is amazing.
I like their fatty livers.
Give me a few years, I'll have a fatty liver
You got a problem with Canadian Gooses then you got a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate
Those are Canada's fucking gooses!
Thanks for the reminder! I totally forgot to marinate that goose.
I don't think you're scarier than the geese
When I was growings up, we'd be lucky to even have canada gooses. Now yous got so many, yous wanna start killin' their babies. Must be fuckin nice!
I found the best way to walk through a crowd of geese is to avoid eye contact at all costs. Pretend it's an empty field and you'll most likely be safe.
It's like an extreme sport but without the price tag. Although I would not walk through a crowd of geese if babies are present, no matter how cute, fluffy and snuggly they look.
What about crows? Crows are pretty cool
They'll remember that they were slighted in this post and make the Nebraska Humane Society pay for this insult
I think my retirement plan is to try to train crows to be absolute menaces to society. Like, teach them to pick locks or the best kinds of rocks to break glass (to get into vending machines).
No, deer are rats with hooves.
Rats are cute and intelligent.
Some of them also have spiky heads.
Deer are delicious rats with hooves
They'll also eat absolutely anything, including other deer, and many are infected with CWD which basically turns them into zombies 🤔
Nobody thinks of the poor possum holding it down for marsupials in north America
Turtles are SURPRISINGLY FAST and also have SHELL ACCESS so every Linux geek should appreciate them
Geese will kill you for looking at them funny
Ravens make this gurgling throw up noise which is pretty cool
They also form symbiotic relations with wolf packs for hunting, even forming bonds with pups by playing with them.
No wonder theyre associated with Odin, smart, tricksy, assholes, likes wolves.
Ya Raven calls are so cool
Inside a goose's mouth.
That's all I have to say on the matter.
Cobra chicken
nothing says "you looking for trouble mf?" better than red bordered eyes and a tongue filled with tiny razors
geese nutz
Gottem
Clever
quivering beef curtains.
My owl friend has returned to my neighborhood and I can hear him hooting at night. I've never met, interacted with, or seen this friend, but I love him all the same.
I haven't heard my owl friend yet this year. I hope he shows up.
Try leaving out some tootsie roll pops.
You might be able to draw it closer by finding a YouTube video of calls by the same species and playing it when your owl buddy is around
Geese are evil flying snakes. They'll even hiss at you.
Angry noodle necks.
why is squirrel spelled like a professor from Hogwarts?
Because they are Professors at Hogwarts.
Same reason Voldemort's name is a riddle and is actually Riddle: JK Rowling is lazy. She's also a TERF piece of shit, but that's unrelated as far as I can tell.
We have geese here and basically come in during spring and literally take over. They are all over the beach, shit on every grass patch and generally have attitudes when you walk by. Some even posturing up like they are going to charge.
They are the assholes of the bird kingdom. They sit on roof tops and beak off from 4am to 7am, honking like a meteor is headed right for us.
They are unlovable!
Just because they do not take shit from humans and are violent avian insurrectionists that absolutely will ruin your day doesn't mean they are unworthy of love.
Those most needing of love are the hardest to love.
Geese are uh well...geese
I think I had a username geese kicker somewhere .
< BITE! >
"Squirells"
It's a crossbreed of squirrels and Purell
At least they're clean!
Geese saved Rome!
(Of course, having the city infested with geese instead of Gauls might not have been a particularly preferable outcome for its citizens, but at least they were already used to the geese, inasmuch as one can get used to geese.)
They're also citizens, native-born.
Imagine how elections would go if animals coukd vote.
Perhaps we should have designated human voters to represent animals.
In the Netherlands, we have a political party to represent them. It’s called the Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the animals) and they’re a green left wing party.
Opossums are my favorite animal. They're so cute!
I'm from Nebraska and volunteered for them a few times and I feel like they've probably got a rough position being as Nebraskans seem to hate wildlife in every context but hunting and fishing.
Edit: also the geese seem pretty passive there, never personally had nor witnessed a negative interaction with them.
My very anecdotal theory is that those seeing humans frequently get used to us (up to a point) and usually just end up hissing when we get too close.
Where I live geese are omnipresent in parks and people are cycling, jogging and walking through their flocks. They will certainly act inquisitive, hiss and act like they own the place, but I've never seen them attack.
However, maybe a flock in a place less busy with humans and less used to seeing them would be more willing to attack.
Nebraska has possums? Thought those were only in Australia
Hey now, Oz managed to introduce possums into NZ too.
But if you're genuinely wondering, what we call opossums are called possums in the US
I was just being facetious. Opossums are the ones in the U.S. and many people say "possum" for short, but that's an entirely different animal from another continent.