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Out Of Place Animals

Peek before you pee - don't pith on the python ... :meh:

Virginia man finds ball python inside toilet bowl
A Virginia man discovered an uninvited snake inside the bowl of his toilet ...

James Hooper said ... he spotted the snake poking its head out of the toilet of his Virginia Beach home and he suspected it swam up through the pipes.

"When I saw the tongue of the snake, I was like, 'wow'," he said. ...

Hooper and his roommate, Kenny Spruill, tied a noose at the end of a fishing pole and used it to move the snake to a bucket outside.

Virginia Beach Animal Control said the officer summoned by the roommates thought the call was a prank, but arrived to find a real snake.

"I don't recall ever having a call or hearing of one for a snake that was actually found in the toilet," Virginia Beach Animal Control Supervisor Rebecca Franklin said. "[It] is one of those things where you think, 'it can't actually happen,' but now it has."

The snake was identified as a domesticated ball python and was later reunited with its owner, who said the serpent had been missing for about two weeks ...

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2018/0...ball-python-inside-toilet-bowl/4661532352649/
 
Egypt’s Central Administration of Zoos denies Donkeys were painted as Zebras

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https://www.egyptindependent.com/eg...f-zoos-denies-donkeys-were-painted-as-zebras/
 
Python found in Leytonstone High Rd yesterday

onlookers had fed the already dead pigeon to the snake. A spokeswoman for the animal charity RSPCA, which was called to the incident, said it did not believe the snake hunted down and killed the bird.

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Also

Blind man finds 8ft Reticulated Python in his bathroom in Exeter

It got in through his bog.

"I was laying in my reclining chair listening to my music when the next minute I heard 'crash! crash!' and things began falling in the bathroom.

"After a while I went into the bathroom to pick them up, I thought the wind from the window may have blown them over.

"A toothbrush and glass, a bottle of bleach and shampoo had all fallen down. When I picked them up I noticed this thing on the floor, like insulation had come up.

"I went forward and picked it up but it was too heavy.

"I rang my support worker on the intercom and said 'I've got a bit of mess ' and over they came. My mate Jason said, 'you've got a snake in your bathroom.'

"It left the bathroom in an awful mess, with gunge on the wall. The whole bathroom has to be deep cleaned."
 
California v nutria: state seeks to eradicate scourge of giant rodents

I've never even heard of these critters before but it seems they're quite a pest.

they are dog-sized invasive rodents with curved orange incisors that have decimated marshes and swamps worldwide and have, worryingly and mysteriously, appeared in California, perhaps 500 miles fromthe nearest known population in Oregon.

Although nutria are native to South America, since the 19th and early-20th centuries they have been raised in North America, Europe and Asia by those who wanted to create a market for their glossy brown fur.

But fur is out of fashion, and escaped or released nutria have proven voracious. A nutria can consume a quarter of its body weight in plant material per day, chowing through the vegetation that holds wetlands together and burrowing through levees meant to prevent flooding. In Louisiana, it has been reported that nutria have converted more than 40 square miles of marshland to open water since 2000. To make matters worse, they are prodigiously fertile. Females can have litters three times a year, producing five or six pups each time.

Successful eradications have been notched in England, where their population was around 200,000 in the 1960s, and in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, where they were removed from over a quarter-million acres. The specter that looms in the background is Louisiana. “I hope we don’t get there,” Gerstenberg said.

An astonishing 1.8 million nutria pelts were produced in the state in 1976. But their wholesale destruction of wetlands has prompted the state to offer private hunters a bounty, currently $5 for at least 7in of severed tail.In the 2016-17 season, they killed 216,000 of them. The state has also tried other methods of stemming their numbers, for instance by promoting them as a culinary delicacy.

“I think they were calling them ‘swamp rabbits’ because they didn’t wanna call them rodents,” said Witmer, the nutria expert. “It just didn’t go over with people and died down pretty quickly.”

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California v nutria: state seeks to eradicate scourge of giant rodents

I've never even heard of these critters before but it seems they're quite a pest.

they are dog-sized invasive rodents with curved orange incisors that have decimated marshes and swamps worldwide and have, worryingly and mysteriously, appeared in California, perhaps 500 miles fromthe nearest known population in Oregon.



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They infested Norfolk but we're supposedly eradicated. However, I swear I saw one a few years ago returning from Holkham In north Norfolk, and Doctor Karl Shuker thinks he encountered one, I think, somewhere in the west Midlands. So perhaps they're still in the UK....
 
They infested Norfolk but we're supposedly eradicated. However, I swear I saw one a few years ago returning from Holkham In north Norfolk, and Doctor Karl Shuker thinks he encountered one, I think, somewhere in the west Midlands. So perhaps they're still in the UK....

A local mad scientist also created human-nutria hybrids.
 
They infested Norfolk but we're supposedly eradicated. However, I swear I saw one a few years ago returning from Holkham In north Norfolk, and Doctor Karl Shuker thinks he encountered one, I think, somewhere in the west Midlands. So perhaps they're still in the UK....

I wondered why I'd never heard of them - Nutria is another name for Coypu & as you say, they were certainly in Norfolk in large numbers having escaped from fur farms & bred.

According to this New Scientist article from 1989, there were around 200,000 on the loose mainly in Norfolk in the late 50s. After a long campaign of trapping/exterminating it was down to about 19,000 in 1975, 5,000 in 1981, fewer than 40 by 1986, & the last breeding colony found in 1987.

It was thought they were the last but maybe there's still a few around..
 
I believe there is (or was) the same problem with mink. Bred for fur, fur goes out of fashion, mink let go to ravage the surrounding countryside.
 
I believe there is (or was) the same problem with mink. Bred for fur, fur goes out of fashion, mink let go to ravage the surrounding countryside.
Mink released by well meaning but ultimately stupid animals rights activists...at least in my neck of the woods it was.
 
The States seems too be a hotbed for unwanted - evasive species. Florida has more unwelcomed visitors than it does native animals. Frickin wild boars and Burmese pythons are the top predators in most of the state, killing everything in sight. Native raccoons, snakes, frogs, deer are taking a big hit. Big gators hold their own but the smaller ones are fair game.

In NYS "where I live" we're stuck with numerous unwanted aquatic pest from across the sea. Zebra mussels, Quagga muscles, Gobies, lamprey ells, white perch, milfoil just to name the ones I've encountered. They've altered the entire ecology of numerous lakes. Try catching a nice trout or pike with damn lamprey's hanging off it, nasty stuff.
 
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Spider found in mans ear

From China

The man in his 60s had gone to the doctors complaining about discomfort while he tried to sleep and said he could hear "noises like something was beating a drum."

Doctor Cui and his nurses were stunned when the endoscope revealed the live spider having occupied the patient's ear canal so deep.

He eventually flushed the spider out by spraying the patient's ear canal with water, later confirming that the man suffered no injuries during the arachnid occupation.

It had spun a web. There's a video.
 
A Wallaby in Wien.

Austrians often lament having their European country mistaken for Australia - which is 14,000km (8,700 miles) away - and a kangaroo sighting there may complicate matters.

The animal, native to Australia, was spotted by residents in the forest and meadows near the small town of Kirchschlag in northern Austria.

Police confirmed multiple sightings over the weekend but told the BBC on Tuesday the mystery marsupial remained at large.

"It sounds unbelievable, but it's true," a local police official, who declined to be named, told the news agency AFP.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45407767
 
Trevor the lonely duck

The remote Pacific atoll of Niue, a three and a half hour flight from Auckland, has a population of 1,600 humans and, as of early this year, one duck.

The duck has since become something of a national celebrity – tourists visit to take pictures, locals drop by with food and volunteers top up the puddle that Trevor lives in.

“Everyone’s familiar with Trevor,” said Kirk Yates, the New Zealand high commissioner in Niue. However, no one knows where the duck came from or how it got there.

“No one could believe it could fly that far,” she said. “There’s other conjecture that it could have stowed away on a yacht, but I think it’s less likely. It’s part of the mystery.”

Given that Niue lacks the wetlands and ponds that are the bird’s typical habitat, Trevor has had to make do with a puddle alongside a track near the airport.

“People are concerned because we haven’t had a lot of rain so his puddle is drying up,” said Bollen. “There’s a collective effort among the public at large to keep the duck in water. People are just going down with containers to fill up his puddle.”

Even the fire service has been drafted in to make sure Trevor’s puddle does not run dry.

Trevor in his puddle.

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Interesting how our winged friend even got there. Perhaps migrating and needed a break. But it does show how new animals make it to out of the way places. The key here is it not an introduced species.

Dunno - do ducks migrate? Not introduced but certainly out of place. Maybe he was blown off course by strong winds and forced to land there.

I just liked that they'd taken to him as a novelty, were feeding him & keeping his puddle topped up. Must be quite a disappointment for a duck not to have a sizeable body of water to do it's thing in.
 
Dunno - do ducks migrate? Not introduced but certainly out of place. Maybe he was blown off course by strong winds and forced to land there.

I just liked that they'd taken to him as a novelty, were feeding him & keeping his puddle topped up. Must be quite a disappointment for a duck not to have a sizeable body of water to do it's thing in.
In North American most ducks - water fowl migrate down south (Florida, Mexico, South America in winter. Some have long migrations spending the summers in artic -subarctic Canada. Starting in late September one can very large flocks of swans, ducks, geese and more flying at higher altitudes on their way down south.
 
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Benny the beluga is still in the Thames & a local firework display cancelled

Been there for about a month now.

About 15,000 people were expected to gather for the annual bonfire night celebrations in Gravesend, Kent, on 2 November to see a display set off from a barge on the river.

Council officials said the Port of London had advised them that the display should not take place on or over the river and that moving it to another site around the town of Gravesend, which is on the river, would still be likely to disturb the whale.
 
Bless this rat, just trying to run up a descending escalator, and terrifying everyone in the process.

 
Seems to be a lot of lion cubs on the loose in France.

Paris police officers found a lion cub in a Lamborghini during a traffic stop on the city's famed Champs-Elysees.

The cub , named Putin but known as Dadou, is less than two months old, according to the French animal protection agency now caring for it. The agency, 30 Million Friends, is suing the driver of the rented sports car, who was taken into custody after police found the cub in the car on Monday. Paris police confirmed the find and the arrest.

The cub is the third recovered by 30 Million Friends in a month and the sixth feline in under a year. It is calling for beefed-up measures against the trafficking of wild animals in France.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/lion-cub-rescued-lamborghini-paris-boulevard-59184918
 
Here's a lovely one from the NY Times, as far as I know the duck is still there happily subsisting on well whatever is in the pond in Central Park. The popular assumption is that it escaped from someone's very fancy garden in New Jersey. (Sorry there are two images, it gave me a choice and then uploaded both with no delete button.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/nyregion/mandarin-duck-central-park-pond.html Photo credit is EJ Bartolazo.

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Here's a lovely one from the NY Times, as far as I know the duck is still there happily subsisting on well whatever is in the pond in Central Park. The popular assumption is that it escaped from someone's very fancy garden in New Jersey. (Sorry there are two images, it gave me a choice and then uploaded both with no delete button.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/nyregion/mandarin-duck-central-park-pond.html Photo credit is EJ Bartolazo.

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I nearly replied to this last night because I saw one one the River Wear a couple of years ago but on checking I found that they are a naturalised introduced species in the UK, so not really an OOP animal here.
Then this morning I opened my browser and the image of the day on Bing.com search engine is -

Screen Shot 2018-11-15 at 08.08.42jpg.jpg
 
With winter coming on, this alligator would be fortunate to get trapped and re-located ...
Alligator makes surprise appearance in Kentucky swamp
A Kentucky man doing duck hunting preparations with his grandson snapped photos of an unusual swamp resident -- a small alligator.

Chris Drummond said he and his grandson, Wyatt, were leaving a duck blind at the Fallen Timber Farms hunting ground in Ballard County when they took pictures of the surprising reptile. ...

The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife set traps in the area in the hopes of snaring the alligator.

The origins of the animal are unknown, but Drummond said Fish and Wildlife officials speculated it could be an escaped pet or a stowaway on a barge.

"We are about a mile from the Ohio River, probably about 4 or 5 miles from the Mississippi River," Drummond said. "Department of Fish and Wildlife seem to think he may have hitchhiked up on here on a barge."

A Fish and Wildlife spokesman said an alligator would be unlikely to survive for long in the area due to the cold temperatures.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2018/1...e-appearance-in-Kentucky-swamp/8441543933939/
 
LOL, I just had an unpleasant experience. I had dinner guests over earlier tonight and I just went to the toilet to pee. Imagine my disgust when I saw what appeared to be the tapered end of a black-brown turd protruding from under the china lip of the toilet? My thoughts were "FFS! How did they even manage to get that up there?" So, with a shudder I flushed it. To my surprise it wasn't a turd at all. As the water dislodged it, I saw a big thick tadpole with legs, roughly seven centimeters long from nose to tail, slip sliding its way down my S bend. It was really big. It's nose was rounded like a shovel, and it was hard to see where the head ended and the body began in the split second before it vanished. Does anyone have a clue who this obscene little intruder may have been? I want her species so I can tell her parents off!
 
The seal was lucky to make it's way inland seeing as it was in Norfolk: if it had been a Cromer garden then it would have meant roast seal for xmas dinner.

A three-week-old seal pup was found in a back garden four miles (6.4km) away from the sea.

The RSPCA said it was found in Terrington St Clement in Norfolk. It said it believed the pup travelled up a drainage system in the hope of finding water or food. Animal collection officer Naemi Kilbey said she was grateful the "incredibly feisty little fella" was found, otherwise he may have died from starvation. The seal pup was taken to the RSPCA East Winch Wildlife Centre where it was checked over.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-46659658
 
The seal was lucky to make it's way inland seeing as it was in Norfolk: if it had been a Cromer garden then it would have meant roast seal for xmas dinner.

A three-week-old seal pup was found in a back garden four miles (6.4km) away from the sea.

The RSPCA said it was found in Terrington St Clement in Norfolk. It said it believed the pup travelled up a drainage system in the hope of finding water or food. Animal collection officer Naemi Kilbey said she was grateful the "incredibly feisty little fella" was found, otherwise he may have died from starvation. The seal pup was taken to the RSPCA East Winch Wildlife Centre where it was checked over.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-46659658
It was trying to find Cromer.
 
It had heard some of the people have webbed feet, so thought it would blend in.

Is it true that Cromerians can smell when someone isn't genetically related to them? if it is, I wouldn't go there in a lean winter.
 
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