A bit of a tragic note to make a return post on.

This morning, a lady came to the door asking us if we owned two rabbits which were out on the street. Mentioning we had two cats, so no, not us, we left it at that. About 7pm tonight, another lady came to ask us about the rabbit which was now under my car. We put away X's two cats since a) the rabbit might become an issue there with two cats b) her little cat was out there, and X's two can be quite territorial. We go out, and attempt to capture this rabbit (not a feral, clearly a pet (I believe it was a Lop)). No luck, and it ducks over the road into a very dense garden.

While doing this, the little cat is sitting back on the other side, meowing. A car turned the corner, and she bolted towards us. About 2/3 way over, she doubled back, and the car hit her.

I was already running over to her in her last moments; X was quite devastated, crying and upset. The lady seemed very calm, to which I can only attribute having experienced this before, or being in shock. X asked if she wanted us to drive her to the vet (there was nothing to be done at this point, but still.) but no, she would go herself. I tried to take X back inside, although she had to stop and sit in the driveway for a minute. Inside, we tried to settle back in.

Conflicting emotions rose, between sorrow, that whole "if only" state of mind, and some anger (if the lady had kept her cat indoors while trying to catch the rabbit, if the driver had slowed right down*..)

It was a very sad, terrible end to an otherwise wonderful day. Please, if you have pets, do all you can to ensure their safety. Don't just let them out into the street; make sure you check on them if they're exploring a bit. If you have cats, consider converting your yard into a large outdoor run, and go with them if you're going out the front. If you have a dog, make sure they're trained not to run across a road. And if you're driving, and you see an animal on the side of the road, just err on the side of caution. Accidents happen, but assume the animal is going to run out - just anticipating that worst possible outcome might slow you down enough to avoid it.

The street X lives on is becoming troublesome, as people turn the corner and put their foot down. We're going to look into petitioning local council to install more speed humps in the area (the feeder road already has them before you get into her street); not just for the animals, but there's a children's playground just opposite her house as well.

RIP Penny, 2009. I didn't really know you, but I'm so sorry how your life ended.

BEARS EAT MONKEY IN FRONT OF ZOO VISITORS


AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Bears killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors, witnesses and the zoo said Monday. In the incident Sunday at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park, several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned.

It recovered and fled onto a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and mauled it to death.

The park confirmed the killing in a statement, saying: "In an areawhere Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexistedpeacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbedduring opening hours on Sunday."

"Of course the habitats here in the safari park are arranged in sucha way that one animal almost never kills another, but they are andremain wild animals," it said.

Witness Marco Berelds posted a detailed report on the incident,including photos, on a Dutch Web site. He said one Sloth bear triedunsuccessfully to shake the monkey loose after it took refuge on thestructure, built of crossing horizontal and vertical poles.

Ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it, the bear climbed onto ahorizontal pole, and, standing stretched on two legs, "used its sharpcanines to pull the macaque, which was shrieking and resisting, fromits perch."

The bear then brought the animal to a concrete den, where three bears ate it.

The zoo said it "usually wasn't possible" for keepers to intervene when an animal killed another.

The park plans now to move the Barbary macaques — which are largemonkeys but often inaccurately called "Barbary Apes" — to another partof the park, it said.

And they got PICTURES.

I was gonna do a huge cut-hidden post of the 60 or so images I took at the zoo.. and then I realised how much HTML I'd be doing, and I doubt I'll have that long here at work.

So here, have a link directly to the gallery.



I've only uploaded the better images of the batch, and there's no image-editing software to adjust light levels, etc, in the images. WYSIWYG.

Hrrrm.

Anyone have access to a nice hi-res (eg 1024.768 or so) image of the following?

Plesiosaurus
A tuna fish
An owl
A pterosaur of some kind
Flying fish


I need them for a class exercise/activity on cognition, and I'm trying to illustrate Piaget's concepts of schema.

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In other news, we're getting a repainted Transformer, named Cannonball. He's a pirate. As in, YARR MATEY type pirate, even down to skull and crossbones motifs.

( So then Avias and I totally geeked it up talking about other ideas for his pirate crew. )

So, yeah.

Here's some select photos I took (late last year? Early this year?) when I went to the zoo with Milena.

( Thumbnails behind the cut )

And if people have a particular one of these they'd like for desktop images or anything, just reply and/or email me, and I'll send you the originals, which are much bigger.