March 02, 2003
Beasties
Alas, Michael Viney's weekly nature column, written from his home in Westport, is not freely available online.
This week, he describes the chutzpah of a stoat that has a habit of stealing food
intended from birds off his kitchen window still. It reminds me of a stoat that
used to appear openly in the backyard of our farm to steal food from our
sheepdog's feeder. Later, the same dog delivered a stoat (probably not the
same one) on our doorstep, unmarked but quite dead. Courtesy of a neighbour
whose hobby is taxidermy, the stoat is visible all the time now, on a
mantelpiece.
He also mentions an Email that he received from Canada from
a colleague describing how wolves, cougars, coyotes and bears are coming into
contact with urban dwellers more and more (because it is easier for them to
scavenge food). Viney makes the point that it is one thing to see a fox in town,
but the prospect of bumping into a cougar is something quite different.
I remember going hill-walking in Georgia (as in the US state) some years ago. After an hour or so, I got back into the car,
and had only travelled a couple of hundred yards from the car park when I
turned a corner to find a family of Eastern black bears sitting in the middle of the road.
Only then did it dawn on me that I could have encountered them while I was out walking.
It's just not something that one has to worry about when out walking in Ireland
(the odd wicked dog and shotgun-wielding farmer notwithstanding). When I lived
in Sweden, there was usually at least one report every year of a wolf that had
wandered down south, towards Stockholm. Most of the time, the best place to
see a native beastie in Stockholm is in Skansen.
