animals

Lobster Obsessed

4 Comments Posted on by Snoskred
close up of lobster underwater
Photo by Roger Brown on Pexels.com

I started watching Leon The Lobster not long after he was first brought home from the grocery store. I am obsessed. But the most recent video has me completely shook – did you know lobsters MOULT? I had no idea!

Speaking of crazy crustaceans about which I had no idea, have you ever heard of lawn shrimp? We’ve had a few weeks of very wet weather here and one day we discovered a bunch of pink bugs that looked exactly like mini shrimp in the laundry. I googled “shrimp bug” because they looked like shrimp and discovered there is such a thing as lawn shrimp!

Normally found in forests and suburban gardens, where they live under logs, mulch, and leaf litter. Each summer on warm moist nights, following periods of rain, they often emerge in large numbers to invade low-set homes, pet’s bowls, swimming pools, and other alien human environments only to dry out and die with the morning sun. Queensland Museum.

So there you go, two things I never knew about until now. Only one person I have asked had ever heard of lawn shrimp before. Did you know about them? Did you know lobsters moult?

animals

Goodbye Miss C

8 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

DCF 1.0

Earlier this month Adelaide Zoo said goodbye to Miss C, the oldest known Hoffmann’s Two-toed Sloth in the world. She was also the last sloth in Australia.

It had been my plan to go through our old photo directories in order to put some of the older photos into storage, taking out the better shots for posting on Fridays here, for the rest of this year. I was planning on working on it, soon.

But then Hailey from Discourse of a Divine Diva went to meet some sloths, and she mentioned Miss C passing, and I thought if I set myself a time limit maybe I would Get Some Photo Viewing Done. And I did!

I still have a lot of directories to go, and Miss C was not the most photogenic of zoo animals. I have found these shots, thus far.

As zoo members, we could drop into the zoo for a short visit or a long visit, show our membership card, and go in for “free” – you pay a yearly fee which is some very low amount of money in my opinion.
Minolta DSC

So whenever we got there, we could choose – which way will we like to go today, which animals do we want to visit. There were times we went for the whole day and walked the entire zoo and took a lot of photos, and there were times when we dropped in first thing for a half hour to check on the new lion cubs or to see a specific animal.

We no longer live close enough to a zoo to be members. If you do, you should check with your local zoo and find out how much it is. Most of the time in Australia it is around $2-4 a week across the space of a year, and you may get some benefits like free entry to other zoos and the ability to volunteer or go behind the scenes, discounts in the zoo shops, and other unique experiences. You can find out more about Zoo Membership on the website for your local zoo. :)

animals, zoo

Snoskred On Holidays – National Zoo & Aquarium

Posted on by Snoskred

lion1

Here is a memory from a past holiday.

National Zoo & Aquarium in Canberra has this great tour called Zooventure. It is not cheap but it does contain some unique experiences, such as having a brown bear lick a gooey mixture of weetbix and honey directly from your hand. You get to see a lot of animals being fed.

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Here you see the male lion. I think you can tell, he was super hungry!

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Remember, Snoskred is on holiday at the moment. Comments are turned off.

animals, Snoskred On Holidays

The Catching

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

chooks2

We have a bit of a rodent issue in our yard. Some people would say that chooks and rodents go hand in hand – in our case we have two very elderly people who live at the back of our block and their block is completely overgrown, full of weeds and rodents. If we can’t fix that, it is very unlikely we are going to fix the rodent issues on our own.

If you go out there at night, you can hear the rodents scampering and squeaking on what was once a tennis court belonging to the elderly people but is now an overgrown mess..

Traps do not work for these creatures, either because they are way too smart or they don’t like what we’re putting in them. Usually peanut butter has worked for us in the past. Maybe we’ll give cheese a try.

However the other half bought an ultrasonic pest controller which might be stopping the rodents from going near the traps at all.

What we are catching instead – without even trying – is some very poisonous arachnids. And here I will put a read more for those who do not like eight legged creature tales to come as a surprise. Click through to read a fascinating yet terrifying story.
Continue reading →

animals, Chickens, fears, Home, spider

Allowed VS Aloud Part 2

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

fw2
~ Image credit to DoodleWithGlueGun on Deviant Art ~

Perhaps you have noticed our Fail Whale art has taken an angry turn. That is because the following post makes me see red. Allow me to rage momentarily..

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So, you got a kitten and loved it all through the cute kitten stage, and now you are going to turn the life of this poor kitty completely upside down, take it away from the home it knows and send it.. who knows where as long as they pay you $200.

Perhaps you were not *allowed* a cat to begin with and now you have been found out, the poor cat is the one who has to suffer.

I wish the best to the poor kitty. I truly hope you found a home in which you will be loved the way you deserve.

To the owner, I wish you never, ever have another pet. Plus, I wish some other bad things for you which cannot be printed out loud on the inter webs or even spoken *aloud* in the world. :( Typing Aloud instead of Allowed is the least of the bads you have done here.

Angry Snoskred, animals, Fail Whale, wrong world

They Travel In Packs

5 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

All the times we have been kayaking, and the other day out was the first time we saw these guys.
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Beautiful little blue crabs with orange legs. They seem to travel in packs. When we pedal by, they run away.
sandy1
In other news, some sick twisted person decided to play a Sopranos marathon over the weekend. Easter weekend! Shouldn’t that be illegal or something?
Regardless, I was glued to the teevee. ;) Still am actually, there’s like 50 eps I recorded on the Mystar. Plus they had Dexter season 3 on all day today. It’s not exactly “wholesome” teevee, but I have to be honest, I like it that way.

animals, kayak

A day out..

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Today we went to do a few chores and also for a nice drive through the mountains. I thought I would share a couple of pics from today with you. We went to a lookout at the top of a local mountain and just as we got out of the car we spotted this scratching around in the bushes.

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chooky2

It is a lyrebird. We’ve seen a few since we moved here and the last time we drove up in the mountains one ran out in front of us, luckily we missed it. Back in our Zoo days we used to sit and eat lunch in front of the lyrebird enclosure and many times we were treated to the amazing mimicry calls from the lyrebird nicknamed Chooky. You could call him and he would turn up, and often launch into his little dance and song. It was very difficult to get a photo of him as the lyrebird prefers to hide in the rain forest, so I am happy we got these shots today. ;) This is a male, the female has a much shorter tail without the beautiful feathers.

animals, country life, photos

Ghostly visions.

2 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Last night after the usual Chinese dinner, the other half and I chose to drive home via the new town we want to live in, just to see what it is like at nighttime. It was a beautiful night, with a big almost full moon and occasionally fog over the cow pastures. I wished I’d had my camera because the cows were spooky out there in the fog.

When we got to the town we parked in a carpark overlooking the sea, turned off the car, and aah the silence and peace. It was really lovely. I’ve already moved there in my head. I’d heard that often there are kangaroos in the streets at nighttime there though we didn’t see any on our travels through town.

We did the drive like a big round circuit and the drive back to the town we live in now was down a road only recently completed. We drove down that road when we first got to town, it was a dirt road through forest back then and we got the car absolutely filthy. The first part of the road has a lot of reflectors, it’s almost blinding because they are new.

Then out of the darkness at the side of the road, a ghostly vision appeared – it was a very large kangaroo, standing there looking at us. The other half slowed right down – you never can tell what a roo will do, which way it will hop, or even if it will stay perfectly still. The first one did not move.

A little further down the road we saw the second one, again we slowed down. This one looked at us for a bit and then took off away from the road. A bit further down the road we saw a fox standing there. A few more roos, and we were back to the main road. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them at night.

animals, country life, driving