The squirrel, the fireball, and the explosion

I hadn't thought about it until you just mentioned owls, but maybe I'm lucky with a continually visiting Great Horned Owl who likes to sit on my fence a few feet from me and just glare ;-) I'm one of the few in the neighborhood not overrun with squirrels.

...Jim Thompson

Noble and industrious, until they build a dam on the stream running through your back yard and put most of your yard under water. Not common, but I did hear of an instance of this happening in an area where beaver is a protected species and the homeowner was not allowed to kill them or damage the dam they built on his property with his trees! (He advises others to kill off any beavers that show up quickly before the authorities notice them.)

And don't forget the second-cutest rodent (after the chipmunk), the bunny rabbit. Cute at least until they devour your vegetable garden. (So far the worst I have seen from chipmunks is a few holes in the driveway, and a bit of chatter when I fill them back in, so they are still cute IMO.)

But I like having most varieties of the evil rodent around since they attract hawks, owls and fox to the yard. A bit of time spent patching holes and replacing insulation deprived wiring in the barn is a small price to pay for the entertainment.

BTW there is a nice video of a low voltage arc fault possibly caused by evil rodents at:

http://205.243.100.155/frames/mpg/XfrmBlast1.mpg

(from http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm )

I suppose no animal is truly evil, we just call them so when we don't like their behavior. We should probably not even blame the cat for having been bred by humans to be a playful killer; we should blame their evil human owners who let them outside so they can kill my nesting female Northern Flicker and a few million other songbirds. But I dislike killing cats as much as I dislike killing rats and groundhogs, it is not their fault I consider their natural behavior to be destructive.

Some few people dislike them, most of us like them fine since they do not live in our backyards :-).

I remember your owl photo, we are both very lucky to have them around. I have negatives somewhere of a baby Great Horned, which a neighbor called me over to rescue after it blew out of its nest in a storm. It was only about 8 inches high, covered entirely with fluffy white down. She wanted a photo of her holding it, and declined my suggestion of gloves because she wanted to feel it. She let out a continual stream of "ow ow ow" while she held it for the photo, with an occasional "hurry up" as I set the apeture, shutter speed, focus, better bracket a shot or two, smile, hold it ... ok. Then she put it in a wooden crate and wiped up the blood. She felt it, all right. I decided to skip that experience :-). Naturally it could not understand that it was being rescued, and it clicked its beak at me continually as I carried the crate 40' up the tree and screwed it to a branch. The original nest was way higher, but mom found the subsitute and the chick fledged sucessfully.

Their fleas can carry bubonic plague, and jump ten feet.