And we’re NOT talking “watch your back on Denman street!”
from the Fort Steele Campground
Category Archives: Wildlife
Big Dee Dee Not Home Free!
Rock? Lobster
Canadians from Port Alberni to the Bay of Fundy have been riveted by the tale of Big Dee Dee, a rare LOUS or Lobster of Unusual Size.
Indeed, at a strapping ten kilos and old enough to vote in human elections, Big Dee Dee was unquestionably the king (or queen…I didn’t look that closely, I must admit) of the ocean floor. Until s/he was caught, that is. Caught and put up for auction like a common slave. The biggest bid came from a mysteriously nameless Ontario organization and is this the right time (yes, yes it is) to tell you that my father used to make a pretty penny back in the Seventies shuttling semi-comatose lobsters from the Maritimes to Toronto on condition he not look inside more than the top case, as the coke and pot were packed in between lobsters on the lower levels.
Seafood, particularly live seafood, confuses the dogs’s noses, you see. That’s why every time you see mixed seafood on sale at T&T you can bet that Hastings is going to be wild that night; they can take a bath on the price of the seafood, as it is incidental to the profitability of the actual cargo.
Mysteriously nameless Ontario organization, but we can be pretty sure it wasn’t the Boy Scouts offering a cool five thousand for the meaty crustacean. And, indeed, they would have had their wanton way with Dee Dee, had it not been for Vancouverite and vegetarian Laura-Leah Shaw and her two anonymous Eastern backers, who made a counteroffer of $3000 and hella publicity. It looked as if the lobster were saved, that Dee Dee would once again crawl and flit in the turbid, reversable waters of The Bay of Fundy.
But it was not to be.
t’s bittersweet news for Big Dee-Dee, a 10-kilogram lobster, as the creature has avoided a butter bath on a dinner plate, but won’t be heading back to the ocean anytime soon after all.
Instead, Big Dee-Dee is destined for a coastal New Brunswick marine facility…
Breau said on Sunday that he’s decided he’ll instead be giving the lobster to the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews.
“I thought about it for quite a few hours but I thought it’s best for business to do it like this,” Breau said. “No bitter feelings.”
Au contraire. To those faceless, nameless Ontarians, it leaves a distinctly sour aftertaste. I hope that’s one fisherman who doesn’t end up swimming with the fishes.
Canadian Beaver goes Brazilian and comes out on top!
Canadian Beaver. Friendly!
Beaver. Who doesn’t love beaver, eh?
Okay, so I stole that headline, or most of it, from Vancouver Theatresports when they competed for the world comedy improv championships in Australia. And I had to tweak it from “We’re going Down Under to come out on top!” but hey, it still works.
And who doesn’t love beaver? And Brazilians?
Okay, maybe Christopher Hitchens, but that was a Brozilian and, as such, completely different.
These beavers gone Brazil are still fully-furred. They are fully-fanged as well, and in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the cattle barons and soybean growing enviro-rapists of South America, a government-funded organization has labeled the mild-mannered (and, if anything, excessively polite) Canadian Beaver as the largest single threat to the South American ecosystem.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The document, presented to both governments this month, says only a multimillion-dollar project can protect South America from tens of thousands of beavers gnawing their way through its woodlands…
Fifty North American beavers, Castor canadensis, were introduced to Tierra del Fuego, in southern South America, in the 1940s in order to establish a fur trade. It was a catastrophic mistake. Numbers multiplied dramatically and beavers spread across the archipelago, crossed the Magellan Strait and are now spreading through the mainland….
‘The ecosystem in North America evolved along with the beaver,’ said Donlan. ‘Vegetation there has adapted ways for dealing with it.’ North American trees can grow back from their roots after beavers have gnawed them down, for example.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Now, nobody is pretending that a sudden, unnatural influx of Canadian Beaver is entirely without effect, my ex’s reaction notwithstanding and, indeed, that is why he’s an ex, but it is entirely possible to protect one’s precious and presumably precarious homestead from an influx of aggressive Canadian beaver without taking refuge in expensive governmental flights of eco-fiction.
Just tell her you need to fill your Valtrex prescription, for instance.
So that’s what they’re saying!
All damn day! and all damn night!
I should have bought a shotgun for my birthday pressie.
welcum too Canada eh
raincoaster 