photo by Manav Gupta
Or You’re Not Safe Anywhere…
Thanks to a reader for sending this story from WTOP titled Local lobbyist repeatedly stabbed by wild buck .
“A Maryland lobbyist was attacked by a deer outside his home and says the buck repeatedly stabbed him with its antlers, before he was able to wrestle the animal to the ground.”
Thanks to Katie for sending in the following photo and note:
“My husband was walking down Buchanan St. when a man said, “Looks like he’s tryna cool off too.” He pointed at someone’s front porch where a squirrel was cooling his belly on the concrete. My husband snapped this photo on his phone before the squirrel got annoyed and scampered off.”
I’m glad to know the squirrels are taunting others besides me… For those who have been pushed to the edge it may be worth reading this piece from the New York Times titled Peter Rabbit Must Die.
After a lull in battles from the infamous car fiasco the squirrels have launched their Summer offensive on PoP headquarters. As I came home last night this squirrel was all sprawled out, just chilling. And daring me to do something. So I of course walked right up expecting him to flee the moment I got close. Ah, but these are a special breed of squirrel. They are fearless. This one scooted around the corner of the porch and as I followed this was the scene:
I am embarrassed to admit, but, I retreated. Damn that’s squirrels two – PoP zero.
Dear PoP,
I just moved to Petworth this past weekend. I got a warm welcome from a family of raccoons last night. I heard animals fighting in the alley and it sounded louder and bigger than cats. Sure enough when I looked out my window, there were two HUGE raccoons standing on my fence. I’m concerned because they were walking around my car and my patio. I also have a small dog and I don’t want them to attack him when I take him out at night. Has anyone else seen raccoons in the neighborhood? Are they dangerous and do they run away when humans walk outside?
Thank you!
Concerned
Dear Concerned,
I am unfortunately all too familiar with Procyon Lotor also known in certain circles as the Tahitian villain or the Eastern rascal. Of course I’m talking about the common raccoon. I called Dr. Paul Bronstein of the Rockville Centre Botanical Gardens for more information. As I suspected Dr. Bronstein confirmed that raccoons are usually harmless although can be quite dangerous if they are rabid. Ed. note: Dr. Bronstein is a figment of my imagination and since he is presumably a botanist I’m not sure how helpful his advice would be anyway, but I’m fairly certain that raccoons are indeed quite dangerous when rabid. However, in my personal experience raccoons simply saunter away when I’ve encountered them. I believe you are mostly likely to encounter raccoons after dark so I wouldn’t worry too much about your dog in the day. Again, even at night I doubt they would attack your dog unless rabid. Now having said that if you suspect they may be dangerous I would urge you to call animal control. Perhaps calling 311 would help. Also common in the city are the raccoons slower and stupider, but no less repulsive, cousin the possum. I too believe they are of no danger unless rabid and usually flee, albeit slowly, at the sound of humans. As I dabble more in botany perhaps some of the readers will have better suggestions.
Good luck and secure your garbage cans!
PoP
I can’t believe I didn’t get a photo of this. I can only blame it on the fact that I was in the middle of watching the Big Lebowski and I was in a very Dude like state. At any rate I’m just at the scene where Jesus is explaining what he’ll do if a piece gets pulled on him in the semi-finals when I hear a banging on my door. It was a neighbor with a big smile on his face. I should say that today for some reason my car decided that the window will no longer roll up for no particular reason. I think the electric window somehow got off track and now it only rolls up about half way. So my neighbor tells me that a squirrel had just jumped into my car. Argh, I’m destroyed that I didn’t get a photo of this, it was insane. So a squirrel immediately pounced on this opportunity and jumped in the window. The squirrels and I have officially been int a state of war for over five years now so I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
A quick aside, this is another reason our neighborhood is so cool. A squirrel had attacked my car and was running around for not more than 30 seconds when my neighbor noticed it and knocked on my door. That is phenomenal.
So back to the story, sure enough there was a squirrel doing laps around the interior of my car. My neighbor was laughing and I was cursing…and laughing. I mean this squirrel was psycho. It knew what it was doing. It wasn’t even looking for a window to escape from it was just running in circles taunting me. So I open one door and I’m pretty sure at this point I heard the squirrel laugh at me. It just ran to the other side. So I open the passenger door and after exchanging some harsh words, the squirrel finally left. But he didn’t run. He kind of sauntered off, knowing he had won the battle.
So then my awesome neighbor spends about 20 minutes with me trying to help me fix the window. We were unsuccessful but my neighbor’s kindness reminded me of what I love best about living here…despite an unprovoked attack from the gray menace boys.
As regular readers of this blog know, I’m often taking photos of interesting lawn art/sculptures that are often animals. So as I was walking up 11th Street near R I wasn’t too stunned to see what I thought was some more lawn art. Alas, what I saw was very different. And I’m still a little shaken up so forgive me if I curse a little bit in recounting this experience. So I’m admiring this “art” when I think to myself this is really an odd spot to place the piece. At this point I notice some feathers flying and I think “hmm this is weird.” Then the “sculpture” turns its head towards me and I jump about 10 feet straight up in the air. Holy shit, that is a freaking HAWK. Yeah, you read correctly a hawk…on 11th Street! When I fell back down to the ground, I rubbed my eyes and took a closer look again. At this point the hawk is staring at me and I could easily see from it’s eyes that it was telling me to back the fuck up. And back up I did. You see at this point I saw that it was sitting on something and I was like “damn it’s a mom and is sitting on its babies.” Uh, no. That was not the case. The hawk had just killed a pigeon…on 11th Street. A hawk. Insane. After the jump are a couple more photos one with a better view of the recently deceased. (more…)
A while ago I shared our little secret of mice in the neighborhood. So I got a cat, Dingo, and since I got Dingo I haven’t seen any more mice. Now I was sitting on my porch the other day and I saw a stray cat walk by with a mouse in its mouth. And I thought – awesome! Why don’t we let nature run its course. Now don’t get me wrong, I like my cat and I’m glad Dingo has a nice home but would it be so wrong if we had dozens of cats on the street to take care of our mice problem? Wait, would we then have a cat problem?
No, don’t feel bad for me. I just googled Flock of Seagulls lyrics and found this one. So why am I quoting Flock of Seagulls lyrics? Besides the fact that I am a fanatical Flock of Seagulls fan, well, I couldn’t help but notice a ton of seagulls on Georgia Avenue this past Sunday. (I wasn’t quick enough with the camera to get a good photo so the one above will have to do.)Why the hell are there Seagulls on Georgia Ave.? I thought seagulls hung out in Atlantic City? Seriously, what is going on here?
Where is the sanctity of Halloween? You can see this innocent pumpkin was violated by some sort of creature, probably a squirrel no doubt. Who’s the 4D Commander again?