Category Archives: Wildlife

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Sunrise over Condorizon, Yellowknife

This was two house-sits ago, out in what I called Buttfuck Nowhere, which it is if you don’t have a car, and I don’t. Also known as New Newfoundland, for the influx of Newfies: such an influx that the local grocery store carries big white plastic pails of “beef navels”. Those are actual beef navels, not some kind of seagoing bovine, because it’s a popular food in Newfoundland, or so I surmise from the fact that the bucket has a map of such on the label. I found a recipe for beef navel pastrami, but otherwise I’m not sure what you do with them.

While I was out there, housesitting at a far too nice place on a perfectly ordinary road surrounded by condos, Walmarts, and Tim Hortonses in all directions, I decided to take the garbage out. In the middle of the night. Well, normally who cares, right? Only on my way back from the dumpster I saw something move under a car, something doggish-size, and being from Vancouver and used to raccoon and skunks and coyotes and such, I just made growling “giddoudahear” kind of noises and something shot off into the brush.

A lynx.

I knew a woman from William’s Lake who used to go out hunting grizzly bears in the woods, just her and her two bear dogs (the kind they tell the white people are extinct, but aren’t). The only thing in the wilderness that scared her was the lynx: apparently they’re just as crazy and aggressive as wolverines, and will attack pretty much anything.

So yeah. Even taking out the garbage can be a bit of an adventure up here.

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Pat’s Bay Wildlife Slideshow

Parental Eagle is not so much angry as disappointed in you

Parental Eagle is not so much angry as disappointed in you

Time to take a trip in the wayback machine, as well as the puddle jumper! These are some shots I took in June at Pat’s Bay on Vancouver Island, more formally known as Patricia Bay, which is doubtless how it was introduced to the Royals. It is, by the way, a $40 cab ride from downtown Victoria, although thanks to faithful charioteer WestcoastDave on Twitter, I didn’t have to pay.

Ah, social media, you spoil me.

I didn’t even have to pay for the plane ride home on Saltspring Air, thanks to the organizers of Social Media Camp! Since I grew up in planes, I was looking forward to this flight: a true puddle-jump from Pat Bay to one of the Gulf Islands, and then to Coal Harbour in Vancouver, from which I could and did walk home. Nothing like living right downtown! Not only that, but they promised me the handsome ex-Olympian who was also the most polite pilot in Canada. Our pilot was indeed handsome and polite, but as to Olympian histories, well, I thought it was too personal a question to ask. And possibly painful. I mean, what if the answer was, “No, actually my bobsled team was knocked out in the semi-finals and my whole life since then has been a slow, downward spiral, like some tragicomic Bruce Springsteen song.”

Incidentally, the plane we flew in was a 1956 DeHavilland Beaver, a plane of which Canuckistan can be justly proud. I’m thinking Hummingbird604‘s flight home must be the first and only time he spent that long in a beaver.

But there are some good reasons to get out of The Big Smoke occasionally. I think I caught most of them in these pictures.

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Tentacle Wars: Octopus vs Cuttlefish in a battle to the death!

Cuttlefish VS Octopus

Cuttlefish VS Octopus

Yes, we’ve had a lot of videos around these parts lately, but how could I possibly pass up video of a spanner-stealing octopus and what at first seems like a simple bunch of floating seaweed, before breaking loose into All Hell?

and from the diver’s comments:

I was undoing the bolts on the Current Meter housing for routine servicing, when the octopus crept out of the housing, and demanded to have my spanner. I am sure the cuttlefish must have been biding his time on this octopus. But the octopus could not resist my spanner, it made repeated attempts to steal it as I tried to undo the bolts. This game of taking my spanner went on for several minutes. Eventually I gave up on the bolts and took out my camera, which I had with me to record the condition of the Current Meter…

Each year from April to June the cuttlefish off Sydney become extremely aggressive. They often follow divers and sometimes attack them. But they love octopus. I had a repeat experience last year in May, when I again had an octopus come out of its lair to try and take a shiny buckle which was attached to a rope. After a few minutes a cuttlefish attacked the octopus exactly as before. Unfortunately for the cuttlefish, this time the octopus managed to keep half its body free, and after a minute of intense struggle it slipped out of the cuttlefish’s grip, and, I kid you not, sat on the cuttlefish’s head. So there we were, I am looking at them holding my breath, the octopus is sitting on the cuttlefish’s head, and the octopus is looking at me with a “Can you believe it” expression. After another minute of stillness, the octopus shot off in a cloud of ink, leaving the cuttlefish confused and exhausted. Unfortunately I did not have camera handy.

So, word to the wise: as we’ve said before, ANYTHING in the sea could be a hungry cephalopod, so just stay on dry land, why doncha?

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Yellowknife Commute at Rush Hour

Yeah, so this is what it looks like when you walk downtown at rush hour from Buttfuck Nowhere, AKA New Newfoundland, out by the Walmart.

Not too bad, eh? Well, except for Arkham Asylum up on the hill there, overlooking the Plateau of Leng and the escaped loon in the foreground. Apparently we’re also not far from Kadath in the Cold Waste; Sarah Palin can see it from her house.

Particularly after the second mushroom.

Note also that the Warm Up Station closes when it gets really cold. I see bureaucrats the world over have the same logical handicaps.

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Arctic Fox

Arctic Fox is bouncy, bouncy

Arctic Fox is bouncy, bouncy

When I put the word out I was moving to Yellowknife, Bob Garlick made a concerted effort to talk me out of using “icecoaster” and into “Arctic Fox” but I told him some toothless barfly with a sideline in keeping miners warm had probably registered that name back in the fifties.

Alas, seems not.

In any case, last week our A/R/finance/accountancy/money-handler-type-person came into work somewhat wide-eyed. She’s almost as new to the North as I am, and so had been rather startled to have her morning run interrupted by a, yes, fox, trotting coolly across the road for all the world as if she was gonna stop and give way to this lean and lithe critter that stood, if it had stood still, no higher than her knees, and lo that fox must have been gifted with the Second Sight for she did exactly that. And when it was out of sight, she turned around and ran back home, perhaps somewhat faster.

And the other day my roomie and I were sitting in the living room, sharing some Sauv Blanc and gossip, when she fell silent and pointed out the window, and there, trotting down the gravel driveway as if it owned it, was a tall, red fox. So now I have an answer for all my friends from the South who keep pestering me about my first wildlife sighting.

Now, these things, these arctic or sub-arctic foxes, they are not like the foxae that surrounded my town when I was growing up in Ontario: those Ontarian foxes tend to be stubbier canids altogether, resembling more the Jack Russell than the whippet.

Red Fox. Not Redd Foxx.

Red Fox. Not Redd Foxx. Comedy skills unknown.

The foxes around these parts tend to be leggier critters entirely, and much more coyotean to boot, thusly:

Alaskan Red Fox. I TOLD YOU they were taller up North

Alaskan Red Fox. I TOLD YOU they were taller up North

Neither of which is an Arctic Fox, technically speaking. Technically speaking, this is an Arctic Fox:

and he looks really pissed off about third billing

and he looks really pissed off about third billing

Which reminds me of the question that has often occurred to me since I arrived: what is the biggest predator in the Northwest Territories? I have come to the conclusion that, until I lose thirty pounds, it’s me.