Tell her the best defence against the cockroaches is either a bandage wrapped round the top of hte head and under the jaw, or duct tape over the mouth (surprisingly peaceful side effects too)......

a guy I used to work with got caught by that one on his first trip as a Merchant Navy cadet....was told the story about the previous cadet choking on cockies at night, and spent his whole 4 month trip going to the ships medic every night to get his mouth bandaged shut before turning in. true story

Oi, shut it. I know where you go for coffee....

Oops

Went for a bike ride out west of here yesterday - saw a lot of snakes. In 50 miles I think we counted 7 or 8, all dead, at the side of the road. I don't know what this is saying about the snake population, given we normally see one every couple of months. Also counted 3 dead rabbits, 1 bobcat and what looked like a squashed coyote. The flattened Armadillos were too numerous to count!

Had to spend 4 weeks in the Texas hill country outside of San Antonio for some USAF training. I was not prepared for the armadillos having never seen one. The amount of them was amazing. Saw all kinds of critters those 4 weeks, including several kinds of snakes. The scariest thing was the most violent T-storm I have ever experienced, real golf ball size hail.

Yeah, we just had some of that hail in January.... The roofing companies thought Christmas had come again already ......

Here in Virginia the the spring and fall are considered the most dangerous times as the cool evenings make them slow in the mornings.
I can attest to that as I walked right by a black snake yesterday and he or she hardly moved.

There's a salamander walking around the bottom of our pool.

Are you sure it's not just a dragon tattoo?

No it's moving.

Some stupidos on my street called NYC Animal Control this morning because they saw a baby raccoon in their front yard. The animal control officer was thrashing around like a madman trying to catch the wee critter. I feel sick to my stomach imagining its fate now.

Normally animal control just relocates a racoon to a wooded area away from heavily populated areas. Racoons can be very dangerous to pets and normally have a fairly high probability of rabies.

I was at an animal shelter about a week ago and there was a cat with a missing eye due to an encounter with a racoon.

I thought if you saw one during the day it was probably rabid.

You are correct plus they can be in the docile stages of rabies which is very dangerous for children as they think the rabid animal is tame and will try to pick it up.

I live in Manhattan, but I am hoping they took it to Central Park. The thing though it's a baby; how's it going to survive without its mother? And pets don't rule here; wild creatures have just as much right to exist among us as people's pets.

So untrue. We have them in our backyard and they are perfectly harmless if people would just leave them be. Besides which, the one this morning was a baby, probably scared witless.