This squirrel is drinking out of a water feature the mister built in the backyard, just off the tiki bar. He (the mister, not the squirrel) dug a hole in that flowerbed, sunk a large trash bin in it, filled it with water and submerged a pump with a hose to send a gentle stream of water up through the bottom of a decorative pot. Then he surrounded the whole thing with limestone rocks. Wah-lah, a squirrel fountain!
The mister is extremely handy: He also built and wired the tiki bar, which would probably withstand a Category 4 that would wipe out our little shitbox 70s-era house. And he built the little fence pictured above with bamboo he grew himself. Yet try to get the man to repair a screen or finish installing baseboards!
Oh well. There’s still no one else I’d rather be stuck on a deserted island with — he’d have papaya fermenting inside an hour and make me a complete set of coconut cocktail glasses, even though we would hardly be expecting company. He’s a keeper.
What are you up to today and the rest of the weekend?
UPDATE: Here’s our friendly neighborhood white squirrel:
Suffern ACE
I’m heading to the House of Mouse in Florida this weekend. I like to think I’m too cool to care, that I’d rather go to some far away exotic place and eat insect based delicacies with the locals and come home to berate my friends with their middle brow tastes, but I just want to be somewhere warmer than here for awhile.
Smiling Mortician
Marriage can be a very cool thing.
Aimai
Jeez, send him up here, betty! My man is not a handy man.
The Pale Scot
I saw this a bit ago on Craigslist and thought of you, Free Chickens Hillsborough
But I figured you’d let us know if you had a population problem.
Betty Cracker
@Suffern ACE: We’ve got some great weather waiting for you!
@Smiling Mortician: Yes, it can.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
I saw the blogpost title, and knew it would be you.
Adding a baby sloth bear to the mix: liked this pictorial in the WaPost. Squeee.
schrodinger's cat
Is that a baby squirrel? The squirrels in New England are gigantic compared to the one in the photo above.
Xantar
I know I shouldn’t expect much from the Slate Political Gabfest, but this week they had Megan McArdle on. I used to at least be able to listen to them for entertainment value, but at this rate I’m going to have to stop for the sake of my blood pressure.
jo6pac
Just came in from roto-tilling the garden & mowing the lawns. Then later make sure the starter plants in the greenhouse have water. It’s going to be 77f today in my part of Calli.
schrodinger's cat
Serenity now and insanity at 3 a.m.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: No — that’s a big fat one for down here. Our squirrels are puny in comparison to Northern squirrels. The first time I visited Boston Common, I was sitting on a bench, and a gigantic squirrel ran by, and I thought, sweet Jesus, that’s an enormous squirrel. And then another behemoth lumbered past, and then another, and I finally caught on — squirrels are BIG up there!
schrodinger's cat
@Xantar: What did she have to say?
Schlemizel
@Aimai:
“Remember, if the women don’t find you handsome they should at least find you handy.”
Gin & Tonic
My wife is traveling, so I will probably drink beer and watch basketball. I know, an ambitious plan.
realbtl
I’m cursing the Montana weather for jerking me around. Over the last few weeks the ice has melted but just I get ready for the first motorcycle ride of the season it snows. Not a lot, just enough to make me decide against riding. A day later and I’m thinking “All right, tomorrow.” More snow. This pattern has been repeating for the last week or so. Sigh.
Cassidy
@schrodinger’s cat: I didn’t like Insanity. It was too harsh on my knees.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
This one looks really healthy compared to the ones we had on the ‘space coast’. The poor little things always looked bedraggled with bad fur. I assumed it couldn’t be a lack of food like up north it must be parasites or something.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Puritan squirrels are positively Tunchesque in comparison.
Xantar
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m not risking my sanity by listening. However, she apparently has a book to sell.
Jennifer
I loves the squirrelys. I have two of them tame enough that they will jump up on my knee while I’m sitting on the back porch. Also they come when I call. The two tame ones are Squirrelykins and Grampa Munster; Squirrelykins will come up and stand at the back door and look in if I’m not out there; will also step in the back door to grab a peanut or pecan from me. She chases the cat, too. There are 3 or 4 others who will come up on the porch when I’m out, but they won’t just walk up to me and take food out of my hand.
pamelabrown53
Your water feature is wonderful, Betty! Nothing like the sound of water to sooth the soul. I can’t imagine having such a spousal asset that can build anything so beautiful and creative. Hell, I feel like the “Home Repair Goddess” because, this week, I changed the water filter in the refrigerator ( a 5 minute job that took an hour) and I drained a hose and cleaned a filter in my washing machine because of some water leakage.
P.S. Love the little bamboo enclosure.
P.P.S. If you have any tiki bar pics to post would love to see them. As a fellow Floridian, the weather is spectacular and I have visions of tiki bars dancing in my head.
dexwood
Bamboo is great stuff. I grow two kinds, one spreads, the other doesn’t. The spreading variety is a lot of work to keep manageable. I planted it in large strong, buried containers, but it still breaks through. Easy to grow in our arid climate and it makes a great privacy screen. I always use the bamboo I thin out to make additional privacy screens, wind blocks, and plant stakes.
Schlemizel
We will be going to a viewing party for the NCAA playoff that matters. Minnesota will be playing Wisconsin in the semi-finals of the womans hockey championships. The winner (minnesota) will meet the winner of Clarkson/Mercyhurst on Sunday for the trophy. Because the games are in CT. and not carried on broadcast a bunch of us are going to a local sports bar that will have the game on big screen. I will be resplendent in my gold pants and maroon gopher jersey as is my Friday habit. Sunday it will be maroon pants and a gold 1958 UoM jersey with #5 (Herb Brooks). If things go as planed out women will hoist their 3rd consecutive natty champion hardware on Sunday.
scav
Water feature for squirrels, fermented papaya feature for Bettys, am I detecting a theme? I’d personally rather enjoy a personal bubbly papaya fountain with bromeliads in a tiki theme. Anyone here care to explain the fascination of baseboards anyhoo? (chair rails and dados excepted, those have an odd charm).
chrome agnomen
wisconsin senator ron johnson says we (obama and the liberals) are weak, so i’m just to vote wingnut from here on out, so we can have another manly W type in charge again. tired of bin laden and ghaddafi pushing us around, too.
pamelabrown53
@Schlemizel: Florida squirrels, both large and small, tend to look healthy because they can find food all year round. For those of us who love to feed the birds, squirrels are our nemesis.
? Martin
Does he have a nailgun? If not, get one. That’s the hardest part about installing trim, and they’re pretty fun to use.
ericblair
@? Martin:
Seconded. Makes things unbelievably easier, and you can get away with a puny compressor. Make sure you have a little bit to practice on first to get the power right, so you don’t get a nail either annoyingly sticking out of the trim or blasted through the wall into the next room (I kid).
Poopyman
Had Bob Schiefer on the local (DC) CBS radio station (WTOP) this morning to discuss Stuff That Matters, and among other inanities he managed to equate the incursion into Crimea with a missing airliner in importance. Then he told us he’d have Mitt! Romney on Face the Nation on Sunday to help us sort it all out. He and the radio guy were speculating that Mitt might have a different take on things than Obama.
I think I should be congratulated for not driving off the road at that point.
Ruckus
@Poopyman:
I think you should be congratulated for not driving over to the radio station and using your car as a bulldozer.
Poopyman
@scav: Baseboards allow you to munge up the bottom of your drywall/plaster job and then cover it with a transition to the plane of the floor. Then you nail the quarter round to the floor instead of the baseboard to make sure no gap forms at the floor level when things start to settle and shrink.
HTH
Poopyman
@Ruckus: It’s only a Jetta.
Of course, they call their studio the “Glass Enclosed Nerve Center”, so there actually may be an opportunity for something spectacular.
catclub
Wah-lah, a squirrel fountain!
So not quite the same as a chocolate fountain.
Poopyman
@scav: BTW, dados are merely a cross-grain groove. Is that what you were referring to?
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Them thar’s an eating squirrel! (what we would say up in the hollers of KY)
Poopyman
BTW, Has anyone commented on other threads about the Newmax headline?
So I guess you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Petorado
John Oliver’s crew already parodied the GOP hipster dude ads. Number 1 and number 2. Humor’s well-known liberal bias rearing it’s beautiful head again.
Fuzzy
Betty, thank you for using the word “mister”. Some think it is OK to use “spousal unit” to refer to their husbands. It is not a nice term and if I was called that my retort would not be complimentary.
Ruckus
@Poopyman:
You didn’t have to actually hit the building to do good.
A Jetta would be more than adequate.
Suffern ACE
@Poopyman: Since Romney’s “Big Insight” on the Crimea is that there were “Missed Opportunities for a positive outcome” I’m sure Big Bob will be on the case to explore what those “Missed Opportunities” were. I mean, Russia is responding to what it percieves as western agression in staging a coup in Ukraine and indeed the State Department appears to have been involved in that action. I’m sure Romney will be calling for the US to take fewer agressive actions like that in the future.
Because if there’s one thing Putin admires, its people being aggressive toward him. He’s known for having soft heart for even the most violent and unwarranted criticisms of his government.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
Northern MN squirrels are little guys too not much bigger than the chipmunks. I have a had time telling them apart unless they slow down and I get a good look at them. Southern MN squirrels are noticeably bigger. We had our dogs with us during a trip south and they were beside themselves when they saw the bigger cousins of their squirrels.
Ruckus
@Poopyman:
Maybe he doesn’t need the training, he knows the tricks. All of them.
One has to be responsible and speculate.
? Martin
@Poopyman:
No quarter round. Whatever value you added to your home with the baseboard you just lost with the quarter round. Most homes have level enough floors that you should be able to gently bend the baseboard to also match the floor. If you are painting your baseboards, you can also use a water soluble spackle like Crackshot to fill the gap with the floor, and then prime and paint, which you need to do anyway to cover the nailholes.
The baseboard isn’t really to cover up the drywall job. It was popular with plaster walls as well. Its job is really to make it easier to clean the floor without damaging the wall, the baseboard usually being more durable and easier to touch up, and to keep your furniture from banging up the walls. That’s less of an issue, but it used to be exceptionally common for your furniture to be moved all the time – tables pulled out into the room for meals, etc. Because we can’t be bothered to burn those 37 calories, we’ve instead opted to add 1,000 square feet and $200,000 to all of our homes.
p.a.
@Schlemizel: Dumb luck some years ago working nights in downtown Providence hit a bar full of Wisconsin Women’s Hockey fans here for the finals. Fun crowd, especially once they graduated from beer to liquor. And they all graduated. Work that night did not go well.
jharp
I shoot the squirrels in my back yard. They do and have done a lot of damage. Thus all squirrels must die.
And last year I killed 64. And I live in a neighborhood in the suburbs.
Tommy
First warm day here. Just went outside and it would seem a few squirrels decided to dig up the mulch in front of house.
The Dangerman
*waves goodbye to Duke*
ACC is overrated.
Steeplejack
Uh-oh, suicide watch for Burnsie. Duke upset by Mercer.
I heard on the radio that after the opening-round upsets yesterday about 85% of the people in the billion-dollar bracket competition have already been excused from further participation.
Tommy
@bemused: I used to play in a tennis league that played in Olney, Illinois. You know they have white squirrels. Playing tennis in the park and having white squirrels running around was kind of strange the first time or two.
the Conster
Brackets being blown up all over the place – sayonara Duke! At this rate, my UMie team could.go.all.the.way.
greennotGreen
I was a bit thrown by part of the title of the post (“Afternoon Open Thread”) because it’s 2:20 a.m. here, and I’m not used to being so out of sync with the front pagers (in time or anything else.) That’s because I’m in Guilin, China! Later today, my group will take a tour of the city, including a city park that is the habitat of a species of a particular kind of plant (gesneriads) that we’re in China to see. You know how people go on birding trips? We’re going on a trip to look for gesneriads in their native habitats, and the day after tomorrow we head out into the countryside for the remainder of our two weeks. It’s very exciting, and I’m with dear friends and our new Chinese friends, but I can tell that after two weeks of Chinese food, I’m going to be dying for a burrito. You can follow our exploits here.
BTW, the Great Firewall of China blocks the strangest places. Schrodinger’s Cat and Southern Beale, I guess I’ll see you when I get back!
Tommy
@Steeplejack: I wouldn’t say I am an anti-Duke guy, but talking to my father a few minutes ago I could hear my mom yelling in the background Duke was getting beat. I might have done a little happy dance.
Oh and my LSU Tigers won in the NIT (yes I am reduced to the NIT).
The Dangerman
@Steeplejack:
There are a few people out there that probably picked Mercer based on the experience level (all those Seniors)…
…but I’d guess we’re pretty close to 100% of the billion brackets are now done. On Friday, first game. Pretty amazing.
Dirk
Finishing up the installation of my new and improved computer and laughing/weeping at the President of South Africa as he blindly steers the country into crisis after crisis.
Compared to South African politicians even Chris Christie / Rob Ford are models of decorum, dignity and competence.
Schlemizel
@Poopyman:
I congratulate you on having the strength not to drive to the station & beat them both into an even more senseless pile of crap!
edit: @Ruckus: YEAH! like that exactly!
bemused
@Tommy:
I hadn’t ever hear of a town full of white squirrels. The rare white one, yes, but not that many.
Tommy
@Dirk: LOL. I am looking at the super expensive computer desk I bought the other day and thinking I don’t have the ability to put this together. I can build you a computer but looking at this desk and the instructions and I just don’t see how it goes together. It is kind of embarrassing to be 44 and have to call your dad and ask him to come over to help.
Schlemizel
@p.a.: We have had some bad experiences with Wisconsin fans at hour house but when we go to Madison I have had nothing but good interactions. They are very good people. Womens hockey fans don’t seem to have the anger issues mens fans do, not sure about other sports.
Poopyman
@Schlemizel: To be honest, Bob Schiefer was calling in from an undisclosed location, so the reward wouldn’t have been nearly worth the trouble.
Tommy
@bemused: Well that is your weird Southern Illinois fact for the day. And why I mentioned it, cause there is in fact a town of white squirrels, and this post might be the only time in my life where I can use that little fact.
bemused
@Tommy:
I looked up the white squirrels of Ollney on wiki and what an interesting story. Dogs and cats are not allowed to run loose to kill the squirrels. The squirrels have right of way on all streets and there’s a $750 fine for running one over. Nice life those critters have.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: There is a white squirrel in our neighborhood (I’ve posted pictures here). It has given me all kinds of insight into the range of squirrels since it stands out.
schrodinger's cat
@greennotGreen: I hardly ever write about China, I wonder what they find objectionable?
Schlemizel
@greennotGreen: Whats the air like? JMN from around here worked there this summer (Chendu I believe) and his description of the smog was scary.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I have seen some jet black squirrels running around here, mutation or invasive species? I don’t know.
Tommy
@The Dangerman: Makes you ponder small schools being better than the traditional powerhouses. Wichita State this year. Bradley in previous years. You know have a team that plays together for more then a year or so.
Botsplainer
@Tommy:
Ton of albino squirrels at the University of Louisville, which unlike Duke, is still in the NCAA hoops tournament.
gvg
@Tommy: There are white squirrels in the Itchnetuckee State Park inside the Ocala National Forest here in Florida. I first noticed them 40+ years ago as a kid camping. They were still there about 8 years ago and some were actually pinto’s too. I presume a small population of genetic white’s.
Florida squirrels appear to be smaller but I’ve noticed that the norther ones have much thicker fur especially on the tail. Northern types also looked fatter just before winter and lore is they bury nuts for winter so I would think nature would encourage fat building before winter where needed. Here fat and fur would be useless and nuts buried would sprout or rot. I haven’t seen much burying. It’s also worth mentioning that our bears and deer don’t get as big and the bears don’t hibernate here.
flukebucket
I do not know if you guys have seen or discussed the parody of the hipster Republican but they are really good
tybee
@Poopyman:
i suspect he already knows how.
ETA: and i see Ruckus beat me to it.
The Dangerman
@Tommy:
If anything can be better than seeing Duke go out early, it’s seeing a team with a bunch of Seniors taking out the 1 and Dones. Having a bunch of Seniors taking out Duke early is just about as good as it gets (and if I hear the “afternoon delight” commercial one more time, I may have to buy a new TV).
The Dangerman
@Tommy:
If anything can be better than seeing Duke go out early, it’s seeing a team with a bunch of Seniors taking out the 1 and Dones. The Twofer of having a bunch of Seniors taking out Duke early is just about as good as it gets (and if I hear the “afternoon delight” commercial one more time, I may have to buy a new TV).
ETA: I did NOT post twice; FYWP!!
Tommy
@bemused: I didn’t know that, but it is an entire tourism thing, so those laws make sense I guess. I am pretty sure if you are a squirrel person it is a required trip.
Botsplainer
Unlike Duke, North Dakota State is still in the NCAA tournament.
Unlike Duke, Harvard is still in the NCAA tournament.
greennotGreen
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t know. Maybe they think you’re a theoretical physicist.
@Schlemizel: Here in Guilin it seems fine, but it was very overcast today, so a layer of smog might not be apparent. We had a six hour layover in Beijing but since we never left the airport, we didn’t notice a problem there, either.
The real issue is that there are no restrictions on smoking, and a lot of people smoke. I skipped an evening jaunt to a park last night because I was so miserable after our meal at a restaurant with lots and lots of cigarette smoke. Getting out into the countryside should help that a lot.
catclub
@The Dangerman: “Seniors taking out the 1 and Dones”
on the one hand, the one and dones mean they are being denied the right to sell their services to the NBA on their own schedule. On the other hand, the big, most abusive ( of student athletes) programs also have the most one and dones.
On the third hand, the 4 year teams are not paying their ‘student’ athletes for 4 years.
on the fourth hand, is Burnsy on suicide watch?
Tommy
@The Dangerman: I just hate the one and done thing. Look I want to be clear. If you are 16, legal working age, you should be able to make a living playing in a pro league if you have the talent. I just don’t need folks coming to college for a year, and that is the system we have now, just to go to the pros.
Maybe I am getting old. I don’t know. But I went to college on a Division I sports scholarship. IMHO there is something to be said for being a student athlete. It was a lot of work. It gave me back rewards I can’t really explain.
Steeplejack
We have some black squirrels here in NoVa. Very chic. Apparently brought to the National Zoo (from Ontario) in 1902. They were released on the grounds and thrived, and eventually some of them busted out and legged it across the Potomac.
White squirrels are rare enough that one got a big newspaper write-up in Alexandria a few years ago.
Anoniminous
@Schlemizel:
Never ran into any problems at volleyball games. Women or men.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I’m nursing a cold and a grudge, as the cold is going to make me downgrade my traditional Shabbat meal of popcorn and beer to popcorn and cough syrup. Feh.
I’ve never seen a white squirrel, but black squirrels are so common where I went to college that the college just down the road adopted the critter as its mascot, which struck me as pretty lame. On the other hand, our sports teams were the Mawrtyrs. How’s that for a ridiculous nickname?
Steeplejack
@schrodinger’s cat:
The black ones and (most of) the white ones are color variations of the gray squirrel. The true albinos have pink eyes.
Comrade Mary
You want squirrels? I send you squirrels. Also raccoons, because almost as big as moose and easy to catch. /Natasha
Comrade Mary
Lucky girl. You totally bagged The Professor.
Betty Cracker
@gvg: Ichetucknee Springs used to be one of my favorite places on earth back when you could float down the river for hours with a cooler, have a picnic and swing into the river from a rope swing.
Last time I went by car rather than boat (years ago), the parks service had ruined the damned place by herding people onto trams and refusing to allow you to carry so much as a stick of gum or bottle of water.
I get that assholes were fouling the river once it got “discovered” by littering and breaking their stupid drunken necks jumping off the bridge. But damn, I’d rather have sniper nests every hundred yards to shoot the litterbugs than spoil it for everyone else.
The Dangerman
@Tommy:
Exactly. Not to pick on Jabari Parker, but since he’s a Dukie, he probably stopped going to classes after Fall term. Don’t even get me started on Calipari and Kentucky.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: You keep standing your ground Betty. The NRA is going to make you an honorary member.
Deep question! Why do dogs always bark up the wrong tree?
Comrade Mary
I think I’ve mentioned Toronto’s white squirrels here before, but this article is new. That specific squirrel is an albino, but the Exeter squirrels are morphs,
Tommy
@Comrade Mary: I don’t mind squirrels. Kind of like them. But I live in a rural area and raccoons and possums. Not a fan.
Oh and if you could develop a squirrel proof bird feeder you might makes billions. I have one. Such a thing I took it from my grandparents house when they passed away. I can only assume they paid a fortune for it. I could hear the squirrels laughing at me at I put it in.
Mocking me …..
Schlemizel
@schrodinger’s cat:
We have the usual gray ones, but there are black ones which I have only been seeing that last few years. I assume they are mutants! We get quiet a few albinos too. I assume someone in the trees has the gene for it & throws one or two every year or two. They don’t seem to last to long. I wondered if the white & black versions might come from some odd set of parents but if other people see a lot of black ones maybe not
Gravenstone
@Tommy: I don’t know if they are still there, but there was a herd of white (not albino) deer that roamed the grounds of Argonne National Labs back in the 80’s. very cool to see during our visit there back in the day.
scav
Fink, I missed the baseboard enthusiasts during a momentary distraction by things that must be done (including having to attack several of the dratted baseboards with a tooth-brush, the molding being a trifle enthusiastic, hence my grumpiness with the beasts). For some reason, I thought the chair rails were the obvious ones at chair-back level (with or without wainscoating) and dados were the odd useless ones higher up, the technically useful ones being picture rails. Only it looks like dado may indeed have more to do with the general molding raily bit, although I’m not sure about @Poopyman‘ cross-grain groove. O! fun, more techie vocabulary to ferret out. I think I’ll also have to root out if wainscoating turns into panelling if it goes too high.
bemused
This MH370 thing is weird. I can’t believe that there aren’t some images of something when the flight went awol.
Mnemosyne
I got zero sleep last night (note to self: DON’T take the stupid 24-hour decongestant! It will only keep you awake!) so now I’m all zonky at work. Two of my co-workers are debating how long it’s going to take to repaint someone’s office today, and the line that keeps going through my head is, “Hitler… there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in ONE afternoon! TWO coats!”
Schlemizel
@Anoniminous:
That is actually comforting to know. I get really down on sports sometimes because so many of the fans are such obnoxious bores, drunks and jerks. Maybe its just the ones where you can make a bunch of money turning pro.
OTOH – I get dirty looks sometimes because I do some of the same cheers at the womens games that I do at them mens (clean versions only – it bugs me that people have no problem with sexual or vulgar cheers when there are kids at the games). But I know the women think of themselves as hockey players and so I think they deserve the same sorts of cheers, pro and con, as all hockey players get. Too many people seem to only want to golf clap because “they are just girls you know”
Socoolsofresh
Are any of you FPers going to talk about the various NSA stories that have happened this week, or have the balloon-juice nutbar tribalist brigade successfully shut down any talk or criticism of our current surveillance state? Here is a link to a story about a major conference being held today:
http://gawker.com/the-story-of-our-lives-at-the-sources-and-secrets-con-1548888732
scav
Oh, and I think the Black squirrels tend to be aggressive invaders here (first heard of them in Kent OH), odd, because our Grays are the aggressive invaders against the poor Red squirrels in the UK. International Fluffy-tailed Conflict under our very noses.
Tommy
@Gravenstone: That must have been amazing to see. I live in a place that if I sat on the roof of my house I could shoot deer. They are everywhere. Heck my parents and other folks I know don’t even like to drive rural country roads at night, cause they might hit a deer.
Gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Only place I have seen black squirrels is at Haverford University, but I am pretty sure they imported them from somewhere.
Suffern ACE
@Steeplejack: My parents have a few blonde squirrels living in their backyard. Living off their bird feeder. I haven’t been able to get close enough to see if they are albinos or white squirrels. We aren’t certain what happened to the black squirrels. For awhile in the late 80s and early 90s they were fairly common. But as far as invasive species go, they appear to have stopped being invasive and started retreating.
Schlemizel
@Socoolsofresh: We love you too!
Last I checked nobody here has ever successfully shut down any conversation about anything. You may get ridiculed if your post is particularly stupid but you are free to continue being stupid as long as you can stand it.
But you keep trying honey, you’re getting there
Comrade Mary
@Gene108: Black squirrels RULE Toronto. Greys are relatively rare.
geg6
If this isn’t the worst story I’ve been following this week, I don’t know what is.
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2014/03/20/police-stolen-dog-euthanized-at-neighbors-home/?src=fb
Betty Cracker
I updated the post with a picture of “our” white squirrel. The kids call it “Salty.”
Steeplejack
@Schlemizel:
Black and white (non-albino) squirrels are “melanistic varieties” of the Eastern gray squirrel. Each kind has one or two copies of a mutant pigment gene for its respective color. According to Wikipedia, gray mating pairs cannot produce black offspring, but “in areas with high concentrations of black squirrels, mixed litters are common.” I presume it’s similar for white squirrels.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: An open thread is just that. An open thread. I’ve only been here a short time but I don’t think I’ve seen an exchange, if you post facts, that doesn’t go well for the person saying said things.
I saw the new NSA stuff. I have this thing called the Internet. They blow my mind. But to assume that there are folks here that don’t want to address these topic, in some organized manner, well I think you are shit all stupid.
the Conster
@geg6:
Then I guess you missed the story about the dog rapist in FL. The second one caught in FL. I can’t even.
Schlemizel
@Steeplejack: Cool! Thanks. We used to have whites where we lived but around here they are all albino. We do get the blacks which I had never seen so it is nice to know where they come from.
Saw an albino deer today – a young buck with pink eyes. He was not a yearling so he is hanging in there anyway. Its pretty spooky to see a white “ghost” flash off into the trees.
schrodinger's cat
@greennotGreen: I was studying to be one.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
Ah, I assume you are talking to the other doofus, I was sort of saying the same thing you just said.
burnspbesq
@Schlemizel:
Occurs on Memorial Day.
Better enjoy that women’s championship. The men’s trophy is going to either Chestnut Hill or Schenectady this year.
schrodinger's cat
@Schlemizel: The black ones are outnumbered by the gray ones.
burnspbesq
Oh, yeah.
Congrats to Mercer. They were the better team today, and deserved to win.
geg6
@the Conster:
No, I saw that, too. But to steal the poor guy with Stage 3 cancer’s dog, hold the dog hostage for months at a time and then have the dog euthanized when she came under suspicion??? For no reason, apparently. The guy doesn’t even know her. I just…can’t.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Invisible squirrel is invisible.
ETA: I can see it now, I had to adjust the angle of my monitor.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: Mine are all brown.
Schlemizel
@burnspbesq: I have no problem with that. The mens teams are also filled with 1&dun guys in hockey now. the mens college game is often not worth watching because of the lack of effort. Michigan could not be bothered to play for 2 3/4 periods last night in the B1G tourney. They finally decided to play in the final 7-8 minutes & tied the game at 1. Lost in OT to a not really that good Penn State. MN tried that same trick a few years ago & lost to nobody Holy Cross in the opening NCAA game.
burnspbesq
@Socoolsofresh:
It’s a big internet out there, boyo. If you don’t like the editorial decisions of this blog, I’m sure there’s another one out there that you will find more felicitous.
Feebog
We have a permanent family of squirrels living in one of our palm trees. They eat oranges, which are plentiful in our neighborhood (we have a dozen). The problem is that they spread the rind like confetti, and only take a few bites before discarding and moving to the next piece. Tree rats on the other hand, completely eat the pulp, leaving only the rind. We used to have a three legged huskie who was fast enough to nab a careless squirrel who wandered too far from the nearest tree. Our current mutt gives it a try now and again, but he’s just too slow,
Cervantes
@Socoolsofresh:
Reasonable question. There were a couple of CIA-related discussions.
No one pays attention to “the balloon-juice nutbar tribalist brigade,” whatever that is, and neither should you.
For example:
Thank you.
geg6
@Socoolsofresh:
You know, you could start your own blog and discuss it all you want.
Or you could email Cole. I heard he loves to hear from readers about what they think he and his fellow FPers should write about.
catclub
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Bryn Mawrtyrs?
Fighting Quakers represent.
Xecky Gilchrist
I always wondered how to spell wah-lah.
geg6
This video is my antidote for the bad feelings that dog murderer story gave me. Smartest dog ever and a video I must never, ever, ever let Koda watch. She’ll get ideas and we don’t want that.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=644554645582213
Steeplejack
@Feebog:
Don’t know if it will help, but you might try making a water source available for the squirrels (e.g., birdbath tray on the ground). They tend to be fruit (and tomato!) nibblers when they’re thirsty.
Gin & Tonic
Since this is an open thread, it now appears that Mustafa Cemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatars and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, is being prohibited from entering Crimea by the Russians. This will not go well for Russia.
geg6
@Steeplejack:
Yup, that’s why we put a water feature in our back yard, right next to their tree and feeders.
Botsplainer
Duke lost. First round.
I just enjoy saying that.
I think it would be awesome if a front pager put up a post with just those two words as title and article.
http://www.diddukewin.com/
Eric U.
@Fuzzy: as long as it’s not mentioned that the spousal unit is an LRU (line replaceable unit), I figure it’s ok. I belong to a forum where the approved term in LOML, which is nice
barbequebob
@Betty Cracker:
Bergmann’s rule
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Bergmann’s rule is an ecogeographic principle that states that within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions. Although originally formulated in terms of species within a genus, it has often been recast in terms of populations within a species. It is also often cast in terms of latitude. The rule is named after nineteenth-century German biologist Carl Bergmann, who described the pattern in 1847, though he was not the first to notice it. Bergmann’s rule is most often applied to mammals and birds which are endotherms, but some researchers have also found evidence for the rule in studies of ectothermic species[1][2] such as the ant Leptothorax acervorum. While Bergmann’s rule appears to hold true for many mammals and birds, there are exceptions.[3][4][5]
Also, there are a few different species of squirrels in eastern USA. The most familiar is the grey squirrel, pictured in the post, which also comes specialty “flavors”, melanistic – the all black ones, and leucistic, the white ones. You can see lots of melanistic ones in Manhattan and the Bronx, for example.
In the mid-west there are also fox squirrels, which get bigger than gray squirrels
Villago Delenda Est
All this “Sayonara, Duke Mofos” Schadenfreude in the thread is damaging my meter.
Calouste
@Gin & Tonic:
Will be interesting… The Crimean Tartars have some back up from Turkey (the Tartars are Turkic as well), and the Turkish PM is a bit of a megalomaniac who has just tried to ban twitter in his country. This could go anywhere.
danielx
Going out to enjoy weather while it lasts and before it drops back into the 30s this weekend and next week.
Fuck winter. Sideways.
**Twenty years from now, if I last that long, I’ll probably be saying “remember when we used to have that white stuff called snow? Actual ice crystals that fell from the sky?”
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Purrvana.
Villago Delenda Est
@Xecky Gilchrist: Voilà
Villago Delenda Est
@Socoolsofresh: No.
Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a.
Paul in KY
@Schlemizel: A lot of the Southern squirrels in Summer get botfly larva on/in them & they can look pretty gross (IMO). Doesn’t seem to affect them, but they look like squirrel lepers.
Jebediah, RBG
@JPL:
Who’s to say we know better than the dog which is the right tree? (Perhaps we think it is the wrong tree because we mistake their purpose for barking in the first place.)
Paul in KY
@jharp: Exactly what ‘damage’?
Ruckus
@Tommy:
I live in an industrial/residential/run down area and we have racoons. Big fat ones. The two of them run all over the roof of my room every night or drink out of the swimming pool. Sounds like they weigh about 30 lbs and are doing unspeakable things up there. I only say unspeakable because I’m not getting up in the middle of the night to watch racoons fuck.
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne: Samahdi pet me.
2liberal
LINK
Death Panel Truck
Wah-lah. Seriously?
I guess it’s not as bad as “Walla.” A columnist at the Idaho Press-Tribune in Nampa used “Walla” in a piece about fifteen years ago. As a lifelong Washingtonian who lives 47 miles from Walla Walla, I found it equally amusing and annoying.
Tone in DC
@Ruckus:
Big time LULz.
We have oversized bandit-faced scavengers around here. They are, to quote a certain sailor, disgustipatin’.
shelly
Headline:
JEB BUSH PRAISES ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AS ‘RISK TAKERS,’ DEFENDS COMMON CORE
********
And the Teabag-a-verse goes nuts!
Ruckus
@shelly:
Ahhh, jebby going in for a little progressive support. I get the feeling that that last name is going to strangle his possibilities from anyone in the 73% and now he’s insuring that he won’t get any more actual support from the 27% than if he ran for dog catcher in a small town.
Gravenstone
@Ruckus: The neighbor who lived next to my parents was an elderly widow. Since she lived alone in a big, old farm house for 30+ years after losing her husband, she only used the lower floor. After she passed, they took a look upstairs, and found several generations of raccoon had taken up residence over the years. The cleaning was likened to mucking out a stable.
Ruckus
@Gravenstone:
In my teen years I had a friend whose dad lived in a ski resort town. He bought a house and we helped him move in in the middle of winter. Of course we had to remove all the old carpets and such. Floors stained with cat piss. And the old owner had told him that her cats always went outdoors. Later on another friend was a carpet layer. Whenever he went into someones house with a pet he always asked them where the pet had peed or crapped. He always got the answer that the pets never, ever did that. He said every time he’d pull up the old carpet and find evidence that they were very, very wrong. We get trained(or most of us do) to find a proper room to use for those delicate matters. Animals don’t really care, wild animals don’t care at all. They go where they are when they need to. They also do the other thing comes naturally when and where they feel like it. They don’t feel shame for that either. Some of us on the other hand are capable of feeling shame for things that we shouldn’t and seemingly have no shame for things we absolutely should.
Ruckus
@Gravenstone:
Also should add that I know someone who recently purchased a commercial building that at one time had been used for raising and housing rats used for scientific experiments. Some of the rats escaped over time and most of the walls had to be opened up and cleaned out of dead rats and their exhaust products. I have almost no sense of smell left and it was rank in there. Didn’t ask but I hope he got a good deal on the property.
J R in WV
@Schlemizel:
West Virginia University’s Rifle Team won their 16th NCAA Championship just the other day – hard to believe, but there it is.
skwerlhugger
It’s curious that whenever an internet thread turns up mentioning squirrels, there’s always, always someone who boasts about how many they’ve killed.
I’ve known a lot of squirrels– seriously, known them as individuals with recognizable behaviors and personalities– and I’ve never known one as filthy as any dog I’ve ever met, nor as cowardly vicious as most cats.
Cervantes
@skwerlhugger: A friend and I once buried a squirrel whose neck had been broken by someone’s pet dog. We did not know it at the time but it turned out he made a habit of letting his dog off the leash so it could kill.
We buried the squirrel in the shade of a tree. The tree is still there. I visit it sometimes.
jharp
@skwerlhugger:
I am one of them. I have had squirrels do a lot of damage to my home and vehicles in the past.
$1,000 of dollars in damages. And the risk of damage that could lead to my house burning down and killing my family.
jharp
@Paul in KY:
Whilst on vacation a squirrel somehow got down my chimney. And proceeded to chew the fuck out of the French doors leading to my deck. Then scratched the fuck out of my windows leaving permanent marks on said windows.
Then somehow cut itself and bled al over the furniture, carper, and house.
None of it was covered by insurance. Same as termites or ants. It ain’t covered.
Another one was when a squirrel building a home in one of my vehicles chewed the fuck out of some wires costing me lost work and repairs.
Paul in KY
@jharp: A nd you kill 40 of them due to freak accidents caused by 2 of them?
Thank you for responding.