Category Archives: Wildlife

pic o’ the day: Gramma’s got a gun!

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Gramma's got a gun! Everybody duck!

For those of you unfamiliar with the raincoaster gene pool, here is an introduction.

This is my grandmother, age ninety-something and legally blind in both eyes for more than ten years, blind in one eye since D-Day, enjoying an afternoon’s shooting out at my cousin’s house. That is my cousin helping her hold up the rifle. The family that slays together stays together.

Note, if you will, that the propane tank is between the muzzle of the gun and the turkeys in the next field she is aiming for! Let it not be said that we are a race of namby-pamby risk hedgers.

pic o’ the day: Giant Pacific Octopus

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One of the commenters over on Pharyngula suggests this imade from Speigel is actually a shot of an octopus bringing home groceries, but I prefer the other commenter’s suggestion that the diver is giving some heavy cephalo-oral. Click to enlarge, if you dare! Taken off the Queen Charlottes in BC.

Giant Pacific Octopus

Hinterland’s Who’s Who: the black bear

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To make up for the fact that Crack Spider Dude has disabled embedding, I went in search of a replacement Hinterland’s Who’s Who video for ya, and look what I found: The Black Bear.

Actually, this one looks more like a white bear to me.

Hinterland’s Who’s Who: Spiders on Drugs

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This is a blast from the past for Canucks, who probably grew up watching those ridiculous Hinterland’s Who’s Who interludes from the NFB. We may not be good at asserting ourselves, but buy god we know our black footed marmot from our white footed one! Stole this from the House of Hunt.

UPDATE: bitch has gone and disabled embedding. Bloody princess; 300,000 hits in ONE DAY and now he decides he doesn’t want to be famous.

UPDATED UPDATE: he says:

Your wish is my command, raincoaster.
Spiders for all!!!

and has re-enabled embedding, yay! Now he’s less than a thousand hits away from 700,000, at two and a quarter million views, which is undoubtably the highest-ranking Canadian nature video ever to hit the internets.

It’s the “100 centimeters” that slays me. TOO Canadian! 

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Cobra Hunter: Toronto!

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king cobra. Your majesty is welcome here.Riiiiiiiiiight, you’re thinking. But it’s true: Toronto, capital of Ontario and of banality, is host to a professional reptile hunter, and yet he hasn’t even touched the ones in Bay Street.

Let’s enter the squamous, deadly world of Josh Feltham, Canadian Cobra Hunter. Crikey, Steve Irwin would be so proud.

Aside from a few sightings more than three months ago, the deadly scaled fugitive has vanished without a trace.The hunt for the venomous snake has shut down the rooming house, sent its five tenants packing and left the landlord, Philip Belanger, $20,000 poorer from lost rent and damage. Belanger says he’s heard estimates that the City of Toronto has spent $100,000 in its bid to find the snake, calling in the police, fire department, paramedics and experts from the Toronto Zoo and Animal Services. The city will not confirm any figure.

“The thing about snakes is they’ve evolved to be elusive,” Josh Feltham, a reptile expert, says. “If I was that snake I’d be having a great time in that house. There’s food around. It can explore. What more do you need … A female maybe…”

Think like a snake; there’s your first step. Politicians and bankers looking for alternative career choices are perfectly adapted for this option, and we should all do our best to encourage them to become cobra hunters. Let’s start with Stephen Harper, shall we?

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