"Noah was a brave man to sail in a wooden boat with two termites." - Anonymous

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Yes, I Had to Stop Working to Post This...

So, living in Calgary, smack dab between peaky (is that a word?) mountains and bald-ass prairie, we get some interesting wildlife within our city limits. The city deals with skunks, gophers, rabbits, deer, and coyotes on a regular basis, and the odd cougar to spice it up a bit. Porcupines can be common too. And, every now and then one of the peacocks escapes from the zoo and ends up terrorizing some urbanite.

The type of wildlife you see is usually dependent on where you live:
  1. Near the large provincial park within the city limits
  2. Near urban park spaces or the river
  3. In the suburban outskirts (we had a salamander vacationing on our back porch when we first moved in)
Now, having live in or just outside of Calgary my whole life, I've seen quite a bit. Deer, bears, and cougars are regular visitors out by my parents' place.

Working downtown, the most common sighting is the Canada Geese. Around now, they are setting up home, laying eggs, and soon will be wreaking traffic havoc as they push the babies out of the nests (commonly built on the second floor roofs of the office complexes, and apartment balconies), and hustle them across streets and down sidewalks towards the river. It's an awesome thing to slam on your brakes during your morning commute to allow a mother goose to herd her babies across the street. They don't like to be confined by crosswalks, you see.

But I've never, ever, seen this.

Fantastic. 'Nuf said.