OT July Chit Chat

[Pegakafarmgirl]

I have eaten raccoon,, possum,,snake,, and I will never ever eat it again,, yucks,,

[Virginia]

Ugh Peg! You must have been real hungry!!

Howie, earlier this evening I had thunder and cloudiness. I thought I would kept a thunder storm, but I guess you kept the rain for yourself. I didn't see a drop.

[Howie]

Don't blame me Virginia, I got the same thing. Thunder, but not a drop of rain. I'll get Sam to do her little rain dance. Or maybe we could get Peg, and have her eat a snake while Sam dances.

[nuthatch]

Well, it's interesting to hear other's feelings about various animals. In my experience, most animals are not aggressive unless cornered or they feel threatened. Where we used to live we fed our feral cats on the deck, just outside of the dining room slider. It didn't take long for the raccoon, possum and a skunk to find the feeding place. On hot summer nights I would be sitting at the dining room table with my laptop and would hear crunching, only to look up and see a critter or two, happily munching on the dry cat food. I'd talk to them in a soft voice to let them know I meant them no harm. I enjoyed seeing them every night.

Cooper, one of my cats, often would be out there (at that time she was too skitterish to come in the house if you were gonna close the screen door) and would sit about 4 feet away and just watch the wild ones eat. No one was ever attacked, no fighting or growling. Maybe it was just Cooper's nature. My other cat, Sparky, who has a totally different personality, would growl at the raccoons if she was inside and there was a screen between them! If she was outside, she would just give them space. She didn't seem to mind the possum at all.

We also used to keep a bucket of water outside the slider. The raccoons washed up and made it muddy daily. One hot summer day I noticed a raccoon laying on it's back with it's front hands dangling in the water bucket. It must have been a young raccoon by the way it was just playing and didn't seem frightened when I came up to photograph it. Below is a picture of it. The next day we bought a new litter box and filled it with water for the raccoon to cool off in. She came back the next afternoon, got right in and laid down in the water. Then she stood up, reached over into a pot that I kept my gardening trowel in and pulled the trowel into the water with her. She played with that trowel for half an hour! It was so cute.
Raccoons can be fierce and have very sharp teeth. So do possums, cats and lots of other animals.
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Also posting a pic my brother sent of a possum family he photographed on the wall in his back yard, in L.A.! There were six babies riding on her back! Did you know possum are good to have around because they keep the tick population down?
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[nuthatch]

Good advise, Cat, about mushrooms. I recently read a news article about the increase in deaths from eating mushrooms, harvested by people who don't know which are edible and which are poisonous. There was a big increase because of all the rain California got this year. Seems some people saw it as free food and went picking!<br>
I remember my mother warning us kids to not even touch any mushrooms growing wild! <br>
They're beautiful to look at though.<br>
<br>
Here are a couple of pictures my daughter took of mushrooms that she's seen in her neck of the woods. The brown one is beautiful but that black and red one screams "EAT ME AND DIE!"<br><img src="http://www.braintalkcommunities.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4811&amp;stc=1" attachmentid="4811" alt="" id="vbattach_4811" class="previewthumb"><img src="http://www.braintalkcommunities.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4812&amp;stc=1" attachmentid="4812" alt="" id="vbattach_4812" class="previewthumb">

[Howie]

My next batch of pasta will have mushrooms, but store bought only. They aren't expensive, so why would anyone take the chance of gathering them from nature?

Howie, come have some pasta with mushrooms we just picked this morning, cooked in butter, and they are to die for!

[Catdancer]

The white mushrooms you usually see in the store are good. And now a lot of store are selling the brown Portobello mushroom... but there are some wild mushrooms that are very flavorful.

[agate]

This area must be fond of mushrooms because I've seen lots of varieties of them in supermarkets: portobello, chanterelles, cremini, morels, shiitake, enoki, etc. They're pricey but very much appreciated.

[Howie]

See, I don't know enough about mushrooms to trust myself picking them in the wild. All the ones you can get at the grocery store are grown and harvested in quantities by folks who farm mushrooms.

And there is a variety of mushrooms even at the grocery store I go to. I would feel safe eating any of them. But mushrooms picked in the wild, I would have to pass on. The person picking them in the wild may know EVERYTHING about mushrooms, but I would still have to pass.

[agate]

See, I don't know enough about mushrooms to trust myself picking them in the wild. All the ones you can get at the grocery store are grown and harvested in quantities by folks who farm mushrooms.

And there is a variety of mushrooms even at the grocery store I go to. I would feel safe eating any of them. But mushrooms picked in the wild, I would have to pass on. The person picking them in the wild may know EVERYTHING about mushrooms, but I would still have to pass.

I feel the same way. I was always taught never ever to eat them even if Alice in Wonderland did nibble that tasty-looking toadstool in the story.

[agate]

nuthatch, that photo of the raccoon on its back is remarkable! They're interesting to watch.

They sometimes walk along the fence in the back yard here, which is a very long fence but they teeter along the entire length of it, sometimes three of them at a time, all looking as if they're about to topple off it at any time. But they never do even though they're rolypoly. Those hands of theirs are truly amazing.

[Sunshine]

If I knew how to shoot a gun, I might have shot a raccoon. They brazenly walk around my wooded home, during the daylight, they stare me down, they do not leave even if I make loud pot banging noises, or throw a rock at them. They stared at my kids when the kids were growing up and playing outside. No other wild creature in my area showed such brazen behavior with humans.

They killed two flocks of chickens and eviscerated one by pulling it three wire enmeshed runs.

They find a way into my nearly air tight garbage shed and scattered the trash all over the place repeatedly. Until we hot wired the bin. They quickly learned to stay away from the trash shed.

Some may find raccoons cute. Just like they thought ted Bundy was handsome, until they found out who he really was...

[agate]

They're cute to look at, with dear little faces, but I don't see feeding and pampering them as some of my neighbors do. They're so in love with them that just ooh and aah when they see one.

They're the ones who have put huge gaping holes in people's trash bags in the dumpster here, leaving trash spilling out into the open. No other animal around here could have made those holes. I don't know about the possums and coyotes who are also around here--maybe they could have but I prefer to blame the raccoons.

"Handsome is as handsome does," I say. They've cavorted around on my patio, upsetting plants and plant stands and digging in the dirt in the plant pots, while I look on and try to chase them away by making loud banging noises and they just go right on, having a wonderful time wreaking havoc.

[Cat Dancer]

When TC and I first married, I was a city girl -- knew NOTHING about being "in the wild". I had never camped, fished, been in a small canoe or boat, cooked over an open fire, none of that.

So for our honeymoon, TC took me "primitive camping" .... where you brush your way in to a "suitable campsite", the lake over there is where you bathe, the tree over there becomes your toilet, here's the tent, here's the sleeping bag, set up the tent while I (TC) go find some firewood. And of course I just sat there, dumbfounded, until he returned.
There were many years there where, while I learned to love camping, he'd bring back a bunch of mushrooms for dinner...and I'd make sure the car was pointed in the direction of the road in case I got lost...and then I'd cook the mushrooms and feed them to him. If he survived, I'd try them the next day.. :)

Yeah, some of the larger city grocery stores have all sorts of varieties of mushrooms. In our local store there's variety, too -- white mushrooms, whole or sliced. :) We have to travel to the "big city" (65,000 people) to get any better variety. I do like the Portobello ones -- we've grilled them and put them on hamburger buns with all the rest of the
"fixings" for hamburgers....but without the burger. They're also good stuffed with a variety of things. Or sliced and sauteed.

[Howie]

CAN'T SHOOT A GUN??? Oh my goodness, you poor child. I grew up shooting guns of all types. We had a shooting range in the back yard, with the target area cut into the hillside, then several layers of short logs, and the targets attached to those.

You shot from a picnic table and bench, with several sandbags to rest the gun on as you were shooting. Gun safety was always the most important rule. It was so fun for us both. My dad had the equipment to reload the bullets of every gun we shot.

From about 75 yards, I could put 5 shots in an area on the target no bigger than a quarter.