Fauna of the NW

Why do rats cause such dismay and hatred? They are some of the best pets on the planet. Very smart affectionate and if they had hair on their tails they would be cute. Come on let the mountain beaver live.

I thought it was a rat too because of the beady eyes and very uncommon savage reaction from my puffball dog, but realized it was something different: something without that hideous darn ugly naked tail! THAT's why people don't like rats, Soferdig! If they had furry tails, they'd be much more widely accepted.

We have only seen one other mountain beaver in the 15 yrs at this house, placidly hanging out by the wood chopping area behind the garage in no hurry to escape our presence.
I always take pity on the wild creatures and got the dog in, after much effort and let the little guy amble back to his digging.

No damage to any rhodies that I can find yet, Wannadanc, other than weevils chews.

We do have a friend who live traps them a few miles away and drops them off closer to OUR locale because they burrow so much in his yard that he caved in about 1.5 ft walking on his grass one day. Perhaps we need to discourage this relocation program.
http://dirttime.ws/Notebook/Aplodontia.htm

Hating to disappoint Soferdig, I cannot wait til my Rat Zapper arrives any day now. We do feed birds and goats and we do have rats but loathe trapping or poisoning them. I hope the rat zapper is humane and effective because I can muster no affinity for the little rodents without tail fur.

I had a roll top desk with all the cubby holes and my pet rat cheddar lived in the desk. Every time I sat down to work he would come out and climb on my head and then down to my neck to look into my ear and to eat his cheerios as a treat. There was an occasional doo doo but it made good compost for the house plant in the office. His facial expressions were of any human on earth.

POOC,
Ummmm, the rat zapper IS A TRAP, hun, lol.

Best;
bluelytes

Well fine. Now I picture you a highly educated man with Cheerios in your ears. All credibility is shot! LOL!

I must admit that Cheddar is kind of cute. I know people speak highly of the rat as a pet. My daughter being a real rebel managed to adopt a mouse during her freshman year at college. No pets other than fish are allowed in the dorms.
She named the mouse Flounder, prepared a vast argument that it was KIND OF a fish if busted by the dorm patrols.

Flounder did well in his freshman year, flourishing in his cage under her bed, keeping active on his wheel, enjoying attention from petless students. On the drive home from southern California in May, I forbid her to leave the poor guy in a hot black car for a minute. Well, the $2 mouse from Petco enroute back to WA got to tour Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, SanFransisco Bay, China Town and stop at a tulip field in Oregon-- all in the confines of a 16 oz coffee cup with some kleenex thrown in for nesting LOL! He's logged more tourism miles than I have in years. And he seems to be having a good summer in a house of five cats- no less!

Yah Blue, it's sort of en electric enclosure- let's call it. Not the horrible bloody maiming snapping jaws of death of your traditional rodent trap. I won't go any further on the subject as my stomach turns thinking of so much as a papercut let alone a far more serious injury, no matter who the recipient.


Moles have been tearing up our yard in so many places for months and yet I felt a little pang of sorrow when I saw one dead in the woods the other day.

Very cute picture Sofer!
We had a pet rat for 2 years. They are actually very clean animals. I named him Lucky the day he came into our house in a cage because he was lucky to be alive in my house! He loved being out of his large cage and sitting with the kids, snuggling into their arms and getting scratched behind the ears and under the neck. He didn't even mind our 115 lb. dog and would sit on the couch above him as the dog sat on the floor and they would just sniff each other. The few times Lucky escaped from his cage, we would find him in our daughter's bed, not making any sort of mess at all, just snuggled under the covers with her.
We had guinea pigs too, and what a treat they were! They would carry on soft squeaking, cooing conversations with each other (always buy them in same sex pairs!).

Hey I know this picture has already been explained but I just wanted to show you another picture of the cougar and how I used it to make a new image. It is really easy for someone with any digital art skills to put the deer and the cougar in the same image. I did this in about 5 minutes and didnt even bother making sure everything lined up or colours matched so you can imagine how easy it would be if someone put the time into it. I know its a really cool picture but sadly it is a fake. That being said Poochy you got to see a cougar in real life ( I still havent seen one =( ) and I would have loved that. I have seen bears galore and even seen a Bobcat which is rare in this area but no cougar ( probably good cause they are the most unpredictable predator we have ).


Anyways the picture below is the same cougar and the original picture Poochella posted. I took the deer from the original picture and put him beside the cougar in the new picture. In this version the deer runs away cause the cougar is to busy being angry and glaring at the paparazzi!

Argh uploaded wrong picture!

This message was edited Jul 14, 2006 1:23 AM

Hehe opps wrong picture. Here is the one I made using the above picture.

As you can see it isnt lined up or shaded properly but that is easily fixed if someone spent any amount of time on it. As it is in 5 minutes it is still difficult to tell if you aren't looking for it.

Well, I'll be.... That isn't the same cougar though! Yours is facing us menacingly and standing upright. The first photo is a low, slinking cougar. Or did you find an upright cougar photo to work with? Looks pretty convincing to me and it's amazing how photographs can be amended to look so convincing.

Yes,It was very cool to see the cougar sitting right outside our garage. And I understand to spot one is rare because "they're shy" until they are sinking their canines into your jugular! Unfortunately, the house and garage are situated so I had very limited visibility of where it might have gone to once it moved to the far side of the garage and I had to go outside to round up our animals before they became Cougar Pate`.

Even now, several years later, I don't turn my back to the woods long. And going INTO the woods late at night looking for a missing pet cat was far more terrifying than any daylight walk there. The sights and sounds of nature suddenly took a Twilight Zone twist with every leaf fall, twig snap, and rustle of grass. (The cat was found safe after spending the night snoozing in the suspended ceiling of our basement. Could have killed her myself for all the worry and hunting we did on her behalf.)

It is the same Cougar but different photo. He has turned around to face the camera after the flash went off and caught his attention ( at least that is what I believe). I couldnt find the original slinking picture without the deer and only wanted to do this quickly but I am sure if you kept looking for it on google it would turn up. You get the idea though.

I like cougars a lot but yea they are certainly unpredictable and very very good at stalking so I am probably pretty glad I havent actually come across one.

Glad your kitty turn up in the basement. Even here in the city we have to worry about Coyotes running off with cat's. No cougars though =P.

WEST,
Isnt that the deers ummmmm, backside sticking out from behind the tree?? looks like they are running away from EACH OTHER, lol

Best;
bluelytes

As far as I know we have no cougars in close proximity over here but we are close to cougar (WSU) territory over here! My next door neighbor has a family of owls living in their pine tree and they are beautiful. We saw an incredibly large raccoon up the same tree just last month. I never did here how it got there or how it left. We live within city limits but there is a ton of new construction going on in every direction. West Richland is a very fast growing community. The thing that got me was the size of the squirrels over here. They're the size of small cats! Seriously, they're huge. Deer and jackrabbits are a common sighting especially where my husband works out near Hanford. It is just flat with nothing but sagebrush for miles. Tumbleweed country; I didn't even know until moving here that WA had tumbleweeds! LOL. We also had a bull snake under one of my son's outdoor toys. My husband, being from TX, thought it was a young rattle snake. It's like living in Wild Kingdom some days, LOL.
Reading the post about bringing the coyotes to eat the bunnies but they don't eat bunnies but do eat fox who eat the bunnies reminds me of a similiar situation in Hawaii. In the late 1880's, mongoose were brought in to control the rat population that was eating the sugar cane. Well mongoose are out in the daylight and the rats at night. Now the mongoose eat the eggs of nesting birds and they have taken care of ALL the snakes. Kauai is the only island w/o the mongoose. By the way, they are really neat looking creatures and their babies are darling.
-Stacey

Designmom, it's stunning how barren the center part of WA is, isn't it? I never knew what it would be like and was just floored the first time we drove across. Now, I just FLOOR IT to drive across and get it over with! Some people like the desert but I like greenery every once in a while.

Mongoose come in any variety of colors from the search I did and they really are sort of cute. I myself am smitten with meercats since Animal Planet has the new show about them.

I am accustomed to so many, pesty little fox squirrels here. They have chased away all the normal gray squirrels and chatter unendingly about their success. Recently,something furry caught my eye, large and gray- a monster gray squirrel (comparatively monster) has been trying to re-establish some pecking order at the feeders. He looks like cat size too compared to the little ones. I welcome them all. Even saw a rabbit which is rare here with predators on the loose.

How big is Richland's population these days would you guess?

We've only lived here for 3-and-a-half years and I am just know starting to get used to it. The Tri-Cities is a little more desert like than the rest of E. WA but some say it's beautiful. I have to say though Spring is so fantastic over here. It stays in the upper 60's to low 70's and there is usually a warm breeze. It is not a wet, soggy spring like over there. I grew up near Olympia so I really like trees and green. It was a big shock to be able to see for 20+ miles at a stretch.
You know, I am not sure what the population is over here and it is one of the fastest growing areas in the state. Richland is sort of staying at a fairly even population but West Richland and west Pasco are growing by leaps and bounds. West Richland is a town all its own and we just recently got a wonderful grocery store (Yoke's Fresh Market if you've heard of it), two whole stop lights, and a middle school. I think the population in our little town has nearly doubled in the past 3 years alone. There is so much new construction it makes your head spin. But that brings we to what I hate about the Tri-Cities, the dust! Oh my goodness is it dusty here. We get several dust storms a year to the point you can barely see your neighbors house. I'm not a big fan of the desert but I'm dealing with it (finally, lol).
A funny thing about desert vs. green: my in-laws came to visit us when we were stationed in Honolulu. They're from the Dallas, TX area and really like AZ and NM. My mother-in-law lookes at all the gorgeous green of Oahu and says "I can see why people like it where it's green". It was a shock to think she didn't like green before! LOL.
-Stacey

House cats are always in jeopardy around Issaquah.

I used to work for a vet in town and one of our clients was watching his large pet cat in the back yard when a cougar bounced over his tall fence, picked up the kitty and bounced back over the fence. Bingo -- no more pet! Nasty area.

MzWeazelle

Poochella & all,

I believe that the gray squirrel was introduced to Washington State from the east coast. If I remember correctly, a few pairs were brought to the grounds of the University of Washington. The gray squirrel usually outcompetes our native squirrels for food & habitat. Is this correct or is this an urban legend?

Herpst, they were just talking about native wildlife including squirrels on NPR's wildlife show this a.m. on the radio. There are a few native squirrels' left here, though their name escapes me.

Menawhile, Mr. Black Bear has risen again and torn down two separate bird feeders here, two nights in a row. That's a first for us- and the dog didn't so much as woof even though this is 20 ft from the kitchen.

Ms Weazelle, which vet, bet I've been there, and YES cats don't stand a chance overnight out here between the bobcat, cougar, coyotoes.

Poochelle, I worked for Dr. Hildreth at the Lake Sammamish Vet Hospital on Newport Way.

MzWeazelle

I'm enjoying this discussion very much! Here's my contribution. I'm so glad the recent earth-movement didn't frighten them away.

By chance, does anyone have a good source for salt-licks?

ESTRAYA;
Do you have a "Dels Farm Supply" near you?? Or any good feedstore should have them.

Best;
blue

MzWeazell Dr Dave was a good friend of mine in the 70 and 80's. How is he doing? I haven't been around there much lately. When did you work there.
Poochella you need to do what I did with the bear in my bird house. Run out there after rising out of bed and dress only in a red bathrobe and charge out. When arriving the bear rises to its feet and growls. The only thing I had was a bathrobe so I raised it over my head and off he went running and never to return. This is true. Something scared him. LOL

Soferdig - so size IS important :)

It is between 2 bruins like us for sure. LOL Oh when my wife heard my reasoning behind the bear being frightened her comment was "Yeah, right".

This message was edited Jul 19, 2006 10:37 AM

HERPST,
LOLROF

Best;
blue

And I see that you also want large "spheres". Hmmm.

Just for my dinosaur tree. It takes large spheres to scare a bear out of your garden. Hee Hee

well, I could use some Tupperware to come up with large spheres, but ...... I'd rather use strategy! I gave up my big red robe years ago or I'd try Soferdig's tactic. I'm going to use the ignore strategy as long as possible on the bears.

Ah-Dr. H- I know him Ms Weazelle, and I have a funny story: He came out to check on a sick goat a few years back. I had to call to make sure he had ample wheels because it was snowing hard and we are uphill from everywhere- he did. What he didn't have were traction soles on his boots and he fell down the slope on the way to the barn. We giggled like kids LOL. I commented that he needed better traction and the next time he had to come out he had brand new boots with treads that could conquer Everest! I should talk, I have my favorite shoes worn down to flat nubbins and often slip even on only wet asphalt...

Soferdig did you know Dr. Max Nicholls at all? He was our alltime favorite vet and still grieve that he is gone. A genuine love for animals, he had.

Estreya, that is a beautiful mama and baby! Yes, feedstores have salt licks. I have to look up Ridgefield now, so many towns/cities in this state that I don't know. Our neighbor has a doe and her two twins frecuenting her yard. She terrorizes me regularly with photos; meanwhile I spray Liquid Fence religiously- so far, so good.

Poochella,

I bet we could trade some humdinger Dr. H. stories. I've had a lot of jobs but I think I enjoyed that one the most, and I certianly learned a lot about animals.

About squirrels - the native on the western side of the state is the Douglas squirrel - quite a bit smaller than the gray.

Before I had cats, I had a LOT of squirrels visiting in and around the windows and decks. Now - I let the squirrels find their own food before they become cat food.

Wanna, how can you tell a Douglas from the Fox squirrels? Theone you have pictured is that a Douglas?

Yes I knew Max he was a special person. You can see why I don't do large animal any more. Everyone laughs at the vets slips, slides, falls, kicks, bites, and other maiming animal get evens. I was sorry for Max's demise.

Poochella - yes, that is the Douglas - half the size of a Gray - and the link here takes you to a photo of a fox squirrel - w/ commentary about its being larger than the gray.

http://www.gpnc.org/fox.htm

For me, it would be a matter of range - as far as "I" know, the fox doesn't live here - but this photo doesn't do much to point out differences.

Here is another link

http://www.dto.com/hunting/species/generalprofile.jsp?speciesid=358