Some animals

The past two weeks have been a little surprising regarding animal sightings. All photos courtesy of flickr.

Sighting #1
Driving to work means passing through the prairie preserve, aka former farm land. You can still see short stretches of trees in straight lines scattered around the preserve. It's what remains of the natural borders farmers planted way back when. A longer stretch of thorny Osage orange trees line the road.

Up ahead, it was a little before nine, I saw a huge mass in the my lane. I slowed down and moved into the right lane. Coming closer I could see it was a young buck lying on its side and still kicking its legs in a futile fashion. I hoped that either animal control or the police would stop by soon. A few months back R was driving back with the rest of the band from Bumfuck, Wisconsin when they hit a buck on the road. It was 3am and they had to wait for another half hour with a writhing deer before a cop finally came by. The deer was still alive so the cop drew his pistol and shot it in the head.

In the right lane, up ahead was a stopped car. I assumed it was the one that hit the buck and switched lanes again. Passing by, I saw that the front left corner was crushed and then chuckled as I noted the familiar hood ornament. Jaguar.

Sighting #2
Went biking with Dad last week. Our destination was the prairie preserve for a short ride, but we had to pass through our old neighborhood to do so. I was ahead on my Specialized Hardrock (circa 1997!) when I saw a pigeon standing in someone's front lawn. At least I thought it was a pigeon, with my crap vision. It was abnormally large though, and when I got closer I noticed it was a raptor of some sort.

I circled back and drew up on the sidewalk to get a closer look. It stood in the grass - which needed a mowing pretty badly - rather stoically. Typically I'll see the local falcon and hawks perched upon powerlines or lightposts, so this was a new sight. It wasn't afraid of me at all so I got bored waiting for it to fly off and went away.

Later I learned through the magic of Google that it was a Cooper's hawk, which have adapted to human invasion and take it upon themselves to thin out all the fat robins and chickadees who have forgotten to be afraid in the middle of the suburbs.

Sighting #3
Was biking in the preserve again the other day. Came across a curve when I noticed an oddity in the middle of the "prairie." I stopped suddenly, which nearly threw me off my bike, and looked down. Here is a riddle:
- "Why did the crayfish cross the gravel path?"
- "WTF, there are crayfish in the prairie???!!!"

Granted, there used to be a stream in the area but the rangers filled that in with boulders. Plus we were aways from the stream. Unless there was some secret stream I couldn't see, I'm assuming that this was either an abandoned pet - a Crustacean Homeward Bound of sorts? - or a dropped dinner. It paused when it encountered my foot and tried to siddle around. Then I tried to pick it up but it wasn't very willing and I wasn't willing to get pinched. Used my glove to scoop it up but it wriggled loose. Finally I gave up and watched it cross the road in a defiant sort of manner.