The Bluestocking: All You Need to Know About Risk Assessments, Jazz Hands, Battenberg and Sourdough (But Were Afraid to Ask) - and gerbils. Lots and lots of gerbils.

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the perfectly overblown, gloriously chaotic all-women’s pub where you can have a bit of a lie down if you need it.

Expect serious debates on musicals, cake and knitting, and whimsical musings on women’s rights and why the world’s on fire (again), all under the calm supervision of our support staff: gerbils, capybaras, and the occasional quokka on secondment.

The alcohol won’t get you drunk, the pastries won’t make you fat, but the conversation will digress, and that’s the point.

Remember to namechange before posting if you’re sometimes someone else.

One of my beloved offspring made the pondweed/grass mistake too. Fortunately it was just a single step towards the mire, but required a complete change of clothes. He probably would have complained if we'd thrown him into a pond to clean up.

Pity you didn't film the emerging offspring - 'The Creature from the Green Lagoon'😁

Reminded me of a poodle we had before the collie. She did the duckweed pond trick too. She absolutely hated water so froze up to her belly in this, fortunately, quite shallow pond. My dad had to fish her out. She also tried to run across a cattle grid.

It's still pumpkin season though, isn't it?

That is an excellent flashback. Truly that was a good day.

Many years ago I was watching a big dog and a little dog in a flooded and frozen field. Little dog trotted through the (to her) almost chin deep snow and carried on, onto the vast frozen puddle alongside the hedge. Big dog decided to follow. He weighed at least 3x what she did and every step broke the ice. He could NOT work out what was going on, as the shortarse trundled happily on....

Although I'm not a fan of anthromorphing...anthromorphosing... anthromorphosiz/sing* animals...bar gerbil could I have fresh cuppa? Cheers!...I absolutely love this picture. It's a fascinating snapshot of animal behaviour; who knew great tits could be so blood thirsty? The snow keeps it uncluttered but gives a sense of place and fills in the backstory. There's tragedy; the poor vole. Comedy; the direct, defiant look to camera. It's just brilliant.

*delete as inapplicable or substitute a correct spelling. I clearly have no idea.

I don’t think it’s quite fair to label an opportunistic tit as being ‘blood thirsty’! (Agree it’s a great photo though!).We’d be up to our necks in corpses if animals didn’t scavenge. The excellent bird flying display at Muncaster castle has some characterful vultures who the handlers clearly love and they point out that despite our ‘yuck factor’ reaction, they kill nothing and perform a very valuable environmental cleanup service.

GREAT tit. Birdies never ate my tulip bulbs,

Or my cucumbers.

Voles are shockers, but at least they're nutritious.

I’ve seen blackbirds digging in my pots - maybe for worms etc and the bulbs are just collateral damage.

that sounds as though you personally eat them. How many skins would it take to make a cape?

That's true. I think the vole may have actually been killed by the bird though rather than scavenged. Although tits aren't known for being vegetarian. Invertebrates are living things too.

I’m not sure many birds are truly vegetarian, not British ones anyway.

I'm never sure whether I skin them to make the cape or use the effort required for them to do synchronised hand-holding living-cape creation to keep them from their depradations elsewhere.

I am aware of blackbird depravity, there's a beautiful berry laden holly tree beside my gate, being guarded by a shiny black yellow-beaked personage who I just know is going to eat all the fruit the day before I go out to pick some to decorate the house.

Monster. But beautiful.

All this wildlife friendly gardening and being kind makes for terrible faff.

Love vultures. There's a bird of prey place close-ish to me that features them. The numbers of wild vultures has plummeted because of a cattle medicine (possibly called ivermectin) that is lethal to them. This has seen their numbers decline by over 90% in India. This has caused all sorts of weird fall outs. Feral dog numbers have increased, they're scavenging carcasses that vultures would normally tidy up. There have been people attacked, even killed, by packs of these dogs. Rables is increasing. Diseases carried by these dead cows, that vultures would just nom, are instead getting the opportunity to spread. I think there's been some increased friction with the Muslim people who are cleaning up these carcasses. The religious sensibilities of the Hindu majority preclude many of them from doing this. There's obviously more to this, I admit to being too ignorant as to the ins and outs to really have an earthly.

In Africa too the numbers of vultures are steeply declining. They're big birds and they breed slowly. Even assuming the causes of their decline have been resolved it's going to take decades for their numbers to recover.

I'm faintly annoyed that Amercans call their vultures, buzzards and their buzzards, hawks. I'm not an expert on taxonomy though so that's really a 'me' problem.

Vultures are really efficient. Content warning.

A woman fell from a hike in Spain or similar and was killed instantly. It took 45 minutes to hike down to where she had fallen. Her skeleton had been picked clean in that time.

That is efficient and rather scary.

I used to know someone who had the deep joy of a vulture through the windscreen.

Apparently badly splatted vulture absolutely stinks.

The declining vulture population in India is apparently a big problem for the Zoroastrian community - their religion hasn't traditionally allowed burial or cremation, so they rely on vultures to dispose of the dead.
Tower of Silence - Wikipedia

Urbanisation isn't helping them out much either. People in tower blocks in range of Zoroastrian... vultures... balconies... Yes, well.

Hard to keep up the practice in the urban sprawl of Mumbai. Maybe the rural communities in Iran do better, though they face their own pressures.

Interesting stuff, thanks Foxy.

Popping in to say that it’s Thanksgiving today so I’m thankful for the glorious silliness and wisdom of this thread. We are off to DS2’s SIL for Thanksgiving lunch at 1ish, taking with us a ham, a pot roast, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, a strawberry cream pie and a pecan pie. She has the turkey, some other veg, a pumpkin pie and an apple pie. There will be 14 of us at the table but there will be copious leftovers no doubt. We’re heading back home tomorrow and dropping DS1 off at the airport in Boston en route. I love my children and grandchildren but nonetheless the peace and quiet of home is beckoning.

Enjoy Thanksgiving with your family, Britinme. The menus sounds wonderful - save me some of the leftovers from the sweet potato casserole and the pecan pie please😄

I've been busy most of the day - various household issues, I was going to write 'emergencies' but as I've told you all a million times, I never exaggerate😁
and I come back to find that the topic of the moment is.... vultures!

I'm going to lower the tone by quoting a t-shirt I saw, two vultures sitting on a dead tree, one of them saying
PATIENCE MY ASS, I'M GONNA KILL SOMETHING!

And there was a Gary Larson cartoon with two vultures circling over someone lost in the desert,

'It looks like he's going to make it to the water'
the other one is holding grand piano in its talons
' Oh no he's not'
😁

Alfred Hitchcock says Happy Thanksgiving