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Israeli Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir’s statement that the “Yellow Line” dividing Gaza will be Israel’s new border shows that Israel’s Gaza policy is a continuation of its history of redrawing its borders through ethnic cleansing and land grabs.
HEALTH SECRETARY Wes Streeting has been accused of “cruel and calculated” scaremongering after claiming doctor strikes could collapse the NHS as its grapples with a flu outbreak.
"Can we have some festive music for a change rather than your noise" Say they
Awrite, how's aboot this wan en? It's no exactly festive but it's a mellow folia.
"You are obsessed with those three chords" Say they
Ay, well, oor a hunner an fifty composers huv bin obsessed wie that wee tune, so ah must be obsessed wie genius, plus ah cin play ye couple ae bars ae that if ye want.
you're a great one, Mistress Nyx you really rock the heels you're a cuddly squishy octopus you fill me up with zeal, Mistress Nyx you're an incredibly kind woman with incredible appeal
you slay monsters, Mistress Nyx your heart makes the world whole your brain is full of spiders you've got forcefem in your soul, Mistress Nyx I just hope you don't drop me in a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot hole
you're all stylish, Mistress Nyx you have definitive guile you have all the tender sweetness of an autogynephile, Mistress Nyx given a choice in how to describe you perhaps I should have gone with "hemophile"
you're a dour one, Mistress Nyx you're got a unique funk your taste is one that really rocks you're basically a monk, Mistress Nyx three words that best describe you are as follows and I quote "pink, black, punk"
none are hotter, Mistress Nyx you're the queen of stoatful bots your heart's full of yuri you've watched where girls are bound in knots, Mistress Nyx your soul is an amazing fun heap overflowing with all the most graceful assortments of incredible insights imaginable expressed as the most thoughtful thoughts
you calibrate me, Mistress Nyx you're the most delightful boss you're the greatest microceleb that i've ever come across, Mistress Nyx you're a three decker estrogen and slimegirl sandwich with ketamine sauce
Giving adolescents living with HIV high-dose Vitamin D and calcium supplements can help improve their bone density and reduce the risk of fractures, a new study suggests.
We'll be folking around and warming everyone up on this cold December morning as we get you ready for @Darren and the RnR PreShow followed by No Agenda!
The results of the UK GE1918 weren't announced until 28 Dec but #OnThisDay, 14 Dec 1918, Constance Markievicz becomes the first woman elected to the UK parliament.
Markievicz was a member of Sinn Féin, an Irish republican and a suffragist. At the time of the election she was in Holloway prison for her political activism.
The Sinn Féin MPs refused to take up their seats at Westminster and instead formed the first Dáil Éireann in Dublin. Markievicz became the Minister for Labour from 1919 to 1922.
a part of me hopes that gta VI doesn’t remove some of the classic stuff like going to a strip club or paying for sex JUST so i can do it with the female protagonist
and then they are “forced” to add male variants and the male one can do that too, a woke gta
i mean, not like I’ll play it because cough console only release in 2026, absolutely nonsense, and locked to 30FPS despite no one that plays games liking not having a performance option
Members of Blood Tribe's locations are revealed including via information provided to police in Arkansas.
*Good practice is to do ground scouting and rock solid address verification w/ local x approximate to the area Antifa groups before making community calls.* arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/202…
LRPD initially said that none of the men were from Arkansas, but Helton corrected that Tuesday and said that one of the men in the truck moved to Arkansas late last month from Colorado.
Unlike what Trump claimed, the American soldiers were killed by one of the security forces of the regime that's now in power in Damascus. The same extreme religious fanatics that the US is supporting now, not by ISIS. It's what the Syrian interior ministry admitted.
TURQUIE. Deux prisonniers rejoignent la grève de la faim contre les prisons de type « puits » kurdistan-au-feminin.fr/2025/1…
"TURQUIE / KURDISTAN – Deux prisonniers détenus à la prison de haute sécurité de Çorlu ont entamé une grève de la faim illimitée pour exiger la fermeture des prison de type « puits ». (Des milliers d’otage kurdes croupissent dans ces prisons.) Les prisons de haute sécurité dites « de type puits », créées […] L’article TURQUIE. Deux
nicki minaj hopping on the maga train only after trump was dropped by a lot of the amerikkkan right wing for being a gay pedophile just makes too much sense
Mine probably helping wildlife rescue folk sedate and treat an emu that'd stepped on a hypodermic needle and been walking around with it in its foot in pain for weeks. Truly dinosaur stuff.
I’ve had a few exciting moments with bears, and met a cougar uncomfortably close once, but for some reason the one that stands out to me was the time a large skunk crossed the street in front of me. It was the middle of the night, and we were both walking under a streetlight.
I was out smoking a cigarette on a park bench in San Diego, it was a cool night and I was wearing bed clothes; lounge pants, slippers, that sort of thing, any stars that might be visible all blotted out by smog and light pollution, when a skunk trotted right up to me, sniffed my leg, then brushed me with its whole body like how a cat would, tail curling around it for a second before walking off. I didn't risk it spraying by trying to pet it but I wanted to.
Swimming in a waterhole in Kakadu when my two year old daughter who was facing in the opposite direction to us all said "look, mummy, a very large lizard is having a swim, too".
It was a roughly 1.5m goanna, rather than a roughly 1.5m freshie.
Was with my sister and brother in law at the time who were both park rangers and were confident that were were in a safe swimming hole, but still...
ok this doesn't quite count as "wild" but I'm gonna tell the story because it's too funny not to.
wife and I were out on a walk at night. I glanced across the road, and... wtf? is that a frickin' ferret?!
and yes, not only was it a random ferret going for a midnight walk down the street in the middle of a city, but two cats were also following in its wake like an entourage, occasionally stopping to look deeply confused.
Mountain biking when a group of deer crossed the trail as we were riding through. I was chased a few hundred meters by a big buck down the trail. My friend got crashed into and went to the hospital with a ruptured spleen.
That and the one time growing up and I opened my front door only to be eye to eye with a sandhill crane. For real dinosaur vibes there.
camping out in the forest, had wild boar running past the tent in the night.
Also, we once had a mouse in the kitchen which, upon being discovered, chose to flee into our toaster. We resisted the temptation to switch the toaster on, flipped the mouse into a salad bowl instead, and released it in a nearby park.
I almost got bitten by a very large snake as a teenager-- I was pushing thru a bunch of trees to retrieve a ball, pushed a branch aside, and heard this "hiss, bang" as the snake launched itself at the branch I had just moved. Thank goodness for its poor eyesight!
It was like two meters long, but probably not seriously dangerous-- probably a rat snake? Would've delivered a pretty nasty bite tho.
wild boars searching around for food just outside of our tent. Quite scary. And meeting them again, a day or two later, when walking a path in the moonlight.
That was in Sardinia, and the time was right that they might have had little ones; which makes encounters more problematic.
(1) Driving home one day on a narrow mountain road. Spotted a coyote on the road ahead; it disappeared up the steep hillside. A few seconds later it reappeared, falling back down the hillside onto the road. Ungraceful.
(2) At a friend's house, a skunk is in the kitchen munching on the cat food. One of the cats walks into the room and spots the skunk. I don't know if you have ever seen a cat do a double-take, but it is hilarious. This cat knows all too well what a skunk can do and freezes before retreating slowly out of the room.
for me it was when i went out to feed a few of the neighborhood cat (nowadays it's just the one that likes to hang around, she doesn't get along with the others so), and i just saw an opossum sitting on top, with that very cat (who's name is butters, btw) just looking at them
as soon as the possum noticed me, they nonchalantly flopped off and out of the way, scurrying away quickly enough to where i couldn't find them with a flashlight after
haven't seen 'em since, but i still think about that creature. ...definitely influenced my choice of sticking with a possum fursona lol
Monkeys in Costa Rica, either the loud hooting of the howler monkeys or the wave of cute titi monkeys that swept through the forest around and above us.
I was hiking in Swedish Lapland with a group of friends. Early morning, everyone is sleeping, I get out of my tent and I find myself face to face with a young reindeer. I could almost have touched him. He looked at me, curious and calm. We stared at each other silently for a minute, then I crawled back into my tent to grab my phone to take a picture of him. When I came back again, he was gone. I will never forget this moment.
My spouse and I did a small boat tour of the waterways in Kerala in southern India. The boat had pulled up to a section of wooded shore so we could get lunch. While there I spotted two cobras fighting (or mating) about four feet from where the boat had pulled up. The boat crew very hurriedly pulled the boat away from shore.
@NanoRaptor: During my studying times I was parking my 2CV with open roof on a forest parking. When I came back I noticed something moving near my gas pedal. It was a tiny bat with injured wing. Despite it was Sat., I brought it to the Biology dept. of my university. Someone from there drove with me to the vet who is also caring for their and the zoo's animals. He splinted the wing with a match. As the bat was squeaking, he told me to put my thumb there. So I can say I have been bitten by a bat.
I was reading in my back yard and heard a commotion 10-15 feet up in a tree. I looked and Grandmomma Fox was tussling with something. She jumped down and I saw it was a very large squirrel that wasn’t quite dead yet. She finished it off, paused to catch her breath, and carried it off. At which point a young fox kit appeared out of nowhere and followed her around the side of the garden shed, positively bouncing with excitement.
What a great topic! My contribution is pretty modest.
On a lunchbreak in Mountain View, CA, I watched a family (I assume) of crows teaching the young'uns (again, assume) to soar from one building roof to another. They started all clustered together, and one crow at a time would try soaring across, and they were all cawing encouragement to the one that was trying it, then there was much triumphant cawing when each one made it across.
Around 2000, me and my wife driving home around midnight across a mild 600 something meter mountain pass in the densest fog. Suddenly, for a few seconds, the headlights fall on the hugest red deer stag you can imagine, antlers and all, calmly standing less than a meter from the side of the road. We still talk about this 25 years later and reassure each other that we didn't just hallucinate it.
had a few close encounters in Swedish forests with roe deers, but once we just walked around a bend in a thick forest and I was suddenly staring at a male moose in a few metres distance. Fair enough, he was staring as well. After what felt like an eternity we both decided to part in opposite ways and I immediately face planted in the muddy tracks.
Snakes eating toads, I've seen it happen twice and it's just a very weird interaction. They don't chew or anything, just open mouth until they can swallow something bigger in both dimensions than their head.
hiking the "Great Ocean Walk" and passing sunbathing tiger snakes half a metre from our hiking trail, gently hissing at us ... ? It looked a bit like the classic 4-person "wake up the snek, scare the snek, get bitten by the snek, take pictures of dancing p3" cakewalk but no-one got hurt.
hmmm I've had a few great ones but among them .....
One was a grizzlybear cub, on the Kassiar Highway- Alaska Canada border area... it was crossing the road slowly so my father stopped the car & it began sniffing around the car, hubcaps mostly--- following parents instructions I grabbed a loaf of 7 grain bread, opened the window & threw it out to the cub, who began eating it pretty immediately, as my my mother took pictures from inside the car , before my father continued driving...
Most recently, this. I was walking in the little park in my neighbourhood and there was a fox mother with a few cubs waiting by the footpath. I turned around and moved slowly to grab and switch on my camera and was lucky they didn't immediately run away. When I walked past after taking a few snapshots they hid in the bushes and mama fox glowered warily at me. pixelfed.de/p/carbeck/81527562…
I was hiking a trail called Berry Picker when I heard rustling in the bushes. I started talking loudly saying we're just passing through, don't mind us, keep doing what you're doing. After about 50 yards, arguing about who would look behind us, we both looked and saw a large bear slowly walking towards us on the trail. As we stood there, he sat down and we somehow pulled it together enough to keep going without looking behind us. Never did that trail again but it's super popular.
I had a baby squirrel (a rescue that an organization of people who know what they are doing were taking care of) climb on me and sleep in my arms earlier this year.
1/ was the last night on the trail at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. we were too lazy to pitch tents so we just put out sleeping bags on top of ground cloths. woke up in the middle of the night and heard a low rumbling noise, thought it might be a bear so i held very still. the rumbling never went away, so i rolled over to look - and it was of our adult leaders snoring.
In 2009 I visited my sister who was working at the Meerkat Research Project in the Kalahari desert in South Africa (the Meerkat Manor show was filmed there).
I went out with the researchers in the morning to weigh and measure meerkats (adults and pups). They're wild but habituated to the researchers.
One will climb up on the highest (still) thing to look out for predators.
I got drunk on Ireland's eye with my friends and ended up alone on a tiny beach talking to a seal that was just lying there and arfing every once in a while
Leatherback turtles returning to the sea after nesting on the very same beach that David Attenborough visited to film a scene for his nature documentaries youtu.be/Hj2CyRq__Z8
Grande Riviere beach (north coast of Trinidad) is a high density nesting site for leatherback turtles. As many as 100 turtles may nest there per night during...
a coati walked up to me and put it's front claws onto my shorts and I didn't know wtf to do. Then it was pulling and my shorts started slipping and it was starting to look dodgy but it lunged for my ice cream and ran off with it.
Then there was about 12 coati having an ice cream feeding frenzy.
It was at Foz de Iguaçu and I suppose the tourists had them ruined.
I met a moose once. I was in a canoe in a shallow, windy creek. Rounded a corner and there's a moose, standing ankle deep, and I almost bonked the boat into his shin. It was stunning, I felt like I was looking up and up and up forever and it was just moose and moose and moose, all the way up. I've never before felt so small and fragile, nor at the mercy of such power. He was chill about the whole thing. Nice guy.
eating bewwies on a park bench and a birb landed right next to where i was sitting. i looked into it's eyes, it looked back into mine, we had a nice whistling convo (altho the birb was rather quiet and mostly looked confused as birbs tend to do) and when i finished my bewwies we both got up and parted ways :3
I'm gonna say the bird landing on my head while I was doing tai chi and staying there thru the form. Although the mouse charging me and my dog was pretty memorable...
During a year living in Peru, a couple of us kids found a sloth just minding its own business, so as tween boys do, we managed to get it onto a stick and carry it around to show friends. Despite the stereotype that sloths are slow, they can lash out with a quick vicious swipe with those several-inch-long claws. Fortunately none of us were hurt and we returned it to the forest where we found it. But it gave me a newfound respect for sloths. 🦥
diving with friends one morning a baby harbor seal took a shine to me. They're often curious, but a little shy compared to sea lions. This one kept coming back to me, peering deeply into my lens, and scratching at my legs. I fell in love, such a beautiful creature.
My most vivid wild animal memory is definitely the rabid fox that chased us into the house.
There's a longer story here, but the part that's seared into my brain forever is when it was peering through the sliding glass door at us (looking all cute) and then slowly started beating its head against the glass like it was trying to break in.
I survived meeting a bunch of Canada geese and their goslings on a trail by just standing very still and making only soft movements and making eye contact while the parents gave me serious side eye. The turkey family later on wasn't nearly as menacing. youtu.be/FhoE4n5jJv4?si=std7Qa…
Taken in May 2021, shows Canada Geese and their goslings and a Wild Turkey and her poults on the Black Tupelo Trail at Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge. Vid...
Toss up between hand-feeding kitten milk to an adult male lion (and having to literally clench my butt cheeks to avoid defecating when the milk ran out and he roared at me) and the first time I saw squirrels in real life.
I would love to brag about all my cool close encounters in deep rural australia, but I'm not going to lie, it has to be the bin chicken that took a bread roll out of my hand in a suberban car park when I was 2.
Went to Mi Madre's in Austin TX for Sunday brunch one morning and sat on the patio outside. When a neighboring table left, grackles came to pick over the food left behind, like they do. We saw one grackle pick up a tortilla chip in its beak, DIPPED IT IN SALSA, and flew away.
so, this one time growing up we were keeping bees, and a half-full 55 gallon drum of honey got left out overnight
I was surveying the extraction area and heard something. I tracked it to that barrel where a woodchuck had somehow gotten inside and was inside the barrel desperately treading honey.
I put the open end of a catch-live trap down in there, which it happily climbed into, then I tripped the trap closed and took it outside.
And it was the saddest looking thing you've ever seen, drenched to the shoulders in honey, so I hosed it off and set it loose
A while ago, a friend became involved in dingo preservation. For anyone unaware, they’ve been interbreeding with domesticated dogs, so “purebred” dingos are rare in the wild now. This group is trying to spread small populations around as a hedge against dingoes disappearing.
He imported several to the US, and brought one to a charity event we both attended. I got to spend several hours catching up with him while an adolescent dingo sat in my lap gnawing on my arms.
1. A raccoon on 16th street about a mile north of the White House waiting patiently between parked cars, checking traffic before crossing the road.
2. A mature buck in the field north of the Carter Barron tennis stadium lowering its head and antlers with spread legs in warning as I took its picture from tens of yards away.
The family had come out from the park (Rock Creek) as I was standing there and I must have been the first person it realized had seen them.
When I was very small, probably seven or eight, a bird somehow got itself stuck inside our screened in back porch. My dad said something like "hey boy, go out there and catch that bird!" Now, adult me looking back is sure that he thought watching tiny me run around the porch chasing that poor bird would be no end of amusement for him. What he didn't foresee was that I worshiped the ground he walked on and I caught that little fucker in about 2 minutes flat and was clutching it in both hands while it pecked the living shit out of me trying to get free. As I turned to the back door, enduring the beak ceaselessly hammering away at my hands, thinking I'd find him beaming with pride at me for so expertly executing the task he'd given me, I was greeted instead with a full-grown man reduced to tears from laughing so hard.
many years ago, we were at my ex-in-laws house for Thanksgiving. Everyone is dressed up, lots of drinking, food, etc. One of my ex-wife's siblings lives next door, so they have a shared yard where the kids would play and dogs run around.
We spot a groundhog in the bushes between the houses and decide to attempt to relocate it, so that the dogs don't go after it and tear it up.
We manage to surround the groundhog, and I pick it up from behind by its generous love handles. It immediately starts trying to bite my fingers and I decide there's no way I make it across the street to the woods before it manages to squirm out of my grasp and/or take a bite out of me. I set it back down and we keep it surrounded while sending someone off to get a cardboard box to transport the groundhog more safely.
So we wait for the box to arrive while hyperfocused on keeping the groundhog surrounded. Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone arrive and attempt to pick up the groundhog from the FRONT. They get bit, yank back the hand and try again.
This is a bad idea. This is why you pick up groundhogs from behind. They've even got built-in handles!
On the second try, the groundhog latches onto a finger, and the arm attached to the hand starts swinging around, trying to shake off the animal. The arm belonged to my ex.
She decided that we didn't know what we were doing and decided to come 'help'. After finally shaking off the groundhog, the box arrived and I put the rodent in it. I took it across the street and released it.
30 minutes later, in the emergency room, we were relieved to find out that groundhogs don't typically carry rabies, so no additional attention beyond getting the finger stitched up were necessary.
If you can help it, don't pick up groundhogs. If you have to, put on gardening gloves, grab them from behind by the love handles, and use a pet carrier to move them.
But probably just don't touch nature, it can touch you back.
The deer in Nara were quite memorable - especially the one which stole my friend's tourist map and ate it. She tried to retrieve the map, but the deer had a very firm grip on it...
I sat in my folding chair along a hedge of blackberries, sketching. A bear came up behind me a gave a disapproving snort for blocking his way. Or maybe it was finding a tiger in parking lot in Vancouver.
when I was a child, maybe 8 years old, we went to Pitlochry, Scotland on holiday. Very near where we were staying, deer were known to come down into the valley every evening. We walked to the road they'd be crossing. We saw many deer coming down the hillside. One stag came down onto the road in front of me. It stopped maybe ten feet away from me and for a moment we just looked at each other. Then it continued on its way.
Being chased by a farmers pet camel in Oz. I climbed the fence into its paddock with the farmer and it thought we had brought it some food treats and came running at us full speed. It was so very excited and just wanted to be friendly but all I was seeing was its big front hooves flailing around excitedly as this bloody thing was coming at me. Then I noticed the farmer was already back over the fence. Fuck. I turned and ran and lept and fell over the fence and the camel was like OK which one of you got the treats? Farmer was uh yes he does gets a little excited.
I once spent five minutes sitting on a park bench next to a six foot tall wasp. Just hangin out, looking at the view over the city. (Prospect Terrace in Providence, 2:00 AM or so.)
It WAS high school, so there might have been LSD involved...
More recently, a flying squirrel snuck into my place and I spent a day trying to catch it before the cat could. (I caught it, put it outside, it came back, the second time my cat won the race. Alas.)
At one point it glided over me, which was great. Eventually I cornered it in an empty server chassis. So... this is probably the best photo you will ever see of a flying squirrel hiding in a Sun E4000:
sitting, waiting for a rideshare after my shift at an inner-city bar. i’m looking idly at the raised train tracks across the road, when a little fuzzy head pops up. i can only see the glinting eyes, until it scampers down a girder, leaps onto a sapling and down onto the ground.
“hey, little one,” i say. “what's up?” i don't really expect a response. the possum looks around, then scampers across the road, right at me. i freeze, not sure what's about to happen. am i gonna get bitten? do possums get rabies? am i gonna get rabies!? it stops about a foot away, and looks up at me.
then it closes the distance, taps the toe of my boot then sprints back across the road and up the tree, up onto the girder and away.
darnedest thing. like the little bugger did it for a bet.
I was assisting for a photographer doing a shoot for a swimwear catalog, at a nature preserve. We were doing shots of bikini-clad models with baby tigers and one of them gets playful and starts to shred my sock and shoe. (a tiger, not a model 😅) I ended up fastening my shoe back together with gaffer tape for the rest of the day.
Not many people can say they were “attacked by a tiger” 😆
I'm from Australia so I am privileged to live with wildlife every day.
I think my highlight is when animals examine me, then get on with their life because they don't see me as a threat (echidnas, galahs, cockatoos, crocodiles, koalas, magpies, rainbow bee eaters, emus, cassowaries, kangaroos, wombats, dingoes, eagles, lyrebirds, golden orb spiders, cicadas, dolphins, turtles, platypus, wild horses/camels/donkeys, newly emerged butterflies etc etc)
Getting eye contact and smelling the breath of a whale was pretty cool too -
near Princeton, New jersey in 2006, a yearling deer was in the middle of the road, having a hard time getting up and staying up on its feet on wet pavement. A crowd of asshole tourists didn't help. "Should we call the police? Should we call Animal Control?"
I got out and got on the pavement next to it, talking calmly and letting it use my foot as a chock to get up and STAY up, and once it was stable, it went bounding off into the woods and traffic resumed. Yay.
When I was digging in my garden, a battered thrush kept weaseling between my legs to gather the worms I had uncovered. It was a dry summer, so the bird was desperate to feed its young.
Once I was swimming on Pensacola Beach, Florida. We were down at a secluded end of the barrier island, and it was a hot and bright August day.
I was standing in about chest-deep water, just looking around at the lovely scenery, when a sizeable little fish slammed into my midsection. It wasn't the toe-nibbling fish. Something about it made me uneasy. So I started walking through the water back towards the shore.
When I was at about waist-level, the person I was with (who was relaxing on the sand) jumped up and started shouting and pointing behind me. I turned around. It was a pod of about twenty bottlenose dolphins not ten meters from me, swimming right through the spot where I'd been. The fish that hit me was trying to escape.
They slowly swam by, hunting fish. They were totally indifferent to my presence, even though the closest one was maybe twenty feet from me. Their many glistening backs curved in and out of the water, as they dove in this rhythmic pattern. I couldn't move. It was just the most incredible experience. We watched them until they were way far down the beach. I'll never forget it, it was like a peak moment in my life.
in 2012 we went to Iguazu national park in Argentina, and a gang of coatis stole our grapes - one ran up to me and ripped a hole in the bag that had our lunch. When the grapes fell on the ground, a dozen coatis swarmed in from all sides to grab them.
In 2019 we were at the same park and a monkey jumped onto my wife's shoulder and stole her crackers.
I walked down a trail on top of a desolate mesa, until I reached a tree. Not a big tree: it was quite dead without a single green leaf, and about twice as tall as myself.
On the tallest branch of the tree, a Raven was perched, looking directly at me. They kept making a sound I cannot forget: a weird gurgling noise. Reminds me of a sink draining fast.
I stood there, saying words to the Raven, trying to talk to them, which kept responding with the same type of noise. After ten minutes or so I moved on, further down the trail, and the Raven switched calls: a classic "Kaw kaw!" that corvids are known for.
Two more Ravens, hidden in the brush, took flight just ahead of me. They circled the tree I had just walked past several times, waiting while airborne, as the first Raven took flight: they had posted a sentry. That gurgling noise was "All Clear, he's not close"
I watched all three of them form up, and glide down the side of the mesa together, in a tight formation together like fighter jets.
Meeting this tiger snake on a solo hike was my biggest fear moment. So glad I saw it first! A beautiful red-bellied black snake uncoiling like a rope on the track by my house. So many brown, tiger, red-bellied black, copperhead snakes sunning themselves! Being woken up by kangaroos munching the grass right outside my tent at night. Their ears silhouetted by the moonlight. Wombats chasing each other comedically around campsites. A daddy emu and his too-cute chicks, protecting the path in front of me. Took me an hour to be able to pass them safely! Watching wedge tailed eagles and white-bellied sea eagles swoop and soar.
While on a hike, a mountain lion chased a feral pig across the trail about 400 feet (130 or so meters) in front of me. I wasn't that worried because it had chosen its meal and it wasn't me.
Camping in Alaska when this friendly creature strolled by (this is the worst quality picture I got, but the best content because how often do you see a half-ton creature blep)
Ex-husband used to leave his bathroom window open for his cat to go in and out at will. She determined I was a very stupid but very lovable kitten, and that she needed to teach me to hunt. She brought all manner of animals in, half-dead so I could get some good training in. This inevitably led to disappointment for her as I always let them go. But this nearly led to me peeing on the floor in one instance.
She brought a baby possum playing dead into the bathroom one night. I went in, needing to use the facilities. Instead, I made a very horrible noise and then left in a hurry. Thankfully it was fine and ex successfully reunited it with its mother, but I was a bit rattled for the rest of the night.
I was standing at the riverside - doing some streches after a 5 km run in the early morning hours - dark and winter... Suddenly there was a beaver 2m next to me. For a second I was scared and moved a bit. That scared the beaver and he sprang into the river.
when I was a child, I think at my first school (I was 7 or 8) we had a day trip out to Whipsnade zoo, UK. It was a miserable grey, wet day. None of the animals seemed happy many hiding out of sight to escape the damp.
Towards the end I remember seeing a rhino in it's enclosure with the rest of the class. At one point it's penis began to flinch and then a monstrous, unending flow of p*ss showered out of the animal, it seemed to take forever. I was mesmerised and suddenly what had been one of the most pointless and depressing of days became one of the most profound.
I must have been around seven when, visiting Spain, we encountered a large preying mantis sitting low on a garden wall, facing up. I went to the other side of the wall to look over the top and see the mantis head-on. Which I did—only it had gone up the wall in the meantime and so was mere inches from my face. Let’s just say it was notably less scared than I was 😀
the fox that looked curiously in through our dining room window after sleeping up against it. after a bit i came over to the window; still curious. i put my hand up to the glass. she booped the glass with her nose where my hand was.
The squirrel that shot out from the greenery straight into my bike’s front wheel, spun round a few times, shot back whence it came *and then straight repeat into my back wheel* rates highly in the „memorable“ stakes…
(As far as I could tell it lived, sufficiently unhurt that I couldn’t intercept it to check up on it)
During the night I heard sniffing on our tent. I woke up my mate "yo I think there's a bear", birds were chirping very differently. He turned around and mumbled something like "hmm no way night night".
In the morning I told the story to everyone, no one believed me. We prepare for our hike and walk 20 meters when we see the bins trashed. Guess I was right.
A friend and I were backpacking in the Sierra Nevada. We sat on the ground to eat lunch, and as we were eating, I looked to my left and noticed a good-sized rattlesnake casually slithering up as if it wanted to crawl into my lap for a little cuddle. I said, "Nice snake, I'm going over here now," and slowly moved several feet away. Snake decided I was just no fun at all and slithered away.
About ten years ago, working in transport, I was out west somewhere near Kalgoorlie or Norseman I think, we look ahead and see a bird in the road pecking at some roadkill.
I was about to slow up when it occurred to us just for far away from it we were, and then it took off... A Wedgie who appeared to have one wingtip over the fog line and the other easily over the center line.
Absolute pteranodon of a bird, just freakishly large.
I was walking home with my kid after a roam around Golden Gate Park when we ran into a great blue heron on the path. My son was pretty unfazed, but the heron stood stock still and looked pissed. I was more scared than I needed to be, but it's still absurd how big these guys are.
One evening about 20 years ago I was cycling back home from sports training along the Main-Donau-Canal. No traffic and easy rolling along, so quite relaxing.
Suddenly I saw an owl flying to my path about 20m in front of me, apparently with the intention to fly across the canal. I thought "You should gain height or we'll collide." The owl didn't read my mind.
No, we didn't collide. Two arms-length before hitting my head, the owl changed course.
Not necessarily most memorable, but right up there, we were walking in the hills when we heard a cheeping noise. It was a baby otter, all alone, abandoned by her mother. The experts thought the mother was new, & hadn't counted her pups properly while moving them from the natal holt. Under instruction from the otter sanctuary & our countryside ranger, we went back to lift her, & she spent the night in our kitchen before we took her to the sanctuary. She was released a year later.
birds come to me, tap on the window when they are hungry. Then keep coming. This is Smiley, a Butcher bird. I’d feed them bits of meat and leave a tiny bit of fruit, half a berry. Smily would finish the meat, grab the berry, turn and tweet thanks as she left.
i was 14, taking the dog of my mom out for a walk. She was a middle sized mixture of many breeds 10-ish kg. She found on a slope covered with bushes, a buzzard with a damaged wing. I manged to rush down the slope, take my jacket out, separate the dog from the bird , wind the bird in the jacket and come up the slope holding the dog by the collar with one hand and the bird under my other arm. When back on the path I was lucky to meet a lady who new the nearest wildlife rescue place and offered to take care of the bird. 40-ish years later it is a Mystery to me how I could do that and I am not sure this was the wisest move. But it wored out fine for everybidy and the bird got cured and released.
It was my birthday in October. We were having a late night walk around the nearby green hilly area with scattered pine trees. Faint light from street lamps on the gravel path, quiet. Suddenly an European hare came running head over heels from my side of the darkness, hit my leg, and was gone again.
Smelling the breath of a Lynx at about 5cm distance. Fortunately we were separated by a fence. The lynx was about my size as it leaned against the fence, standing on its hind legs. Smelled like it hadn't brushed its teeth that day.
I'll never forget that moment when we went for a walk in the forest, and just when we reached the end of the forest and stepped out into the open land there stood a large black bull with a shining metal ring through his nose. Well behind a fence, but still... He must have heard us approaching and stood on guard with a very mean look in his eyes and a horrifying growl coming from his massive body. Needless to say, we tiptoed away for the next couple of meters...
I've posted about several of them over the last couple of years. Less-frequently mentioned:
There was the time I was snorkling in Hawaii, and dived to the bottom of a kind of keyhole in the reef. I was drifting back up to the surface, about a foot away from the wall, and came face to face with a moray looking out from a hole.
I think it got as much of a fright as I did. It turned and fled into another hole, and I still remember the sight of its body gliding past. And past. And past. That was a lot of eel.
summer evening kayak club paddle in West Cork. We saw lots of seabirds circling out in the bay, so paddled out that way. And then sat and watched a humpback whale bubble feeding, about 60m away from where we sat in our little boats.
I was having a really shitty day with depression and just generally cursing the universe when I walked past a trashcan and a squirrel jumped out and went flying into a tree
oh and there's also the time when I was 4 and a butterfly landed right in front of me on the playground and let me gently stroke its wings, which I didn't know was super unusual until I told Mom after school
Σαν σήμερα στις 14/12/1976 η Επαναστατική Οργάνωση 17 Νοέμβρη εκτελεί στο Παλαιό Φάληρο τον απότακτο αστυνομικό και βασανιστή της χούντας Ευάγγελο Μάλλιο.
‘’Έτσι αποφασίσαμε να εκτελέσουμε παραδειγματικά έναν από τους κυριώτερους αρχιβασανιστές, τον πασίγνωστο Ευάγγελο Μάλλιο. Ο αστυνόμος Μάλλιος δεν ήταν κανένα τσιράκι που εκτελούσε διαταγές ανωτέρων. Μαζί με τους ομοίους του Λάμπρου, Μπάμπαλη, Καραπαναγιώτη ήσαν στα αφεντικά στα μπουντρούμια της Μπουμπουλίνας και της Μεσογείων. Αυτοί αποφάσιζαν για τα βασανιστήρια, κι έπαιρναν μέρος σ' αυτά. Χιλιάδες αγωνιστές υπέφεραν στα χέρια τους. Σήμερα τα καθάρματα αυτά κυκλοφορούν ελεύθερα και κοροϊδεύουν τα θύματα τους και τον Ελλ. λαό. Κανένας θεσμός δεν μπόρεσε να τους τιμωρήση. Ούτε η Βουλή, ούτε η Κυβέρνηση, ούτε η Δικαιοσύνη. Ο Ελλ. λαός θα τους αναλάβη πια μόνος του. Το προηγούμενο της ατιμωρησίας του δοσιλογισμού δεν θα επαναληφθεί.’’
Απόσπασμα από την ανάληψη ευθύνης.
φωτό: αυτοκόλλητο που κυκλοφόρησε στην Αθήνα το Δεκέμβρη του 2013.
In the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair, 24-year-old Hanady Hathaleen is raising three children alone after her husband Awdah was shot dead by an Israeli settler. Now the family faces demolition orders on their home theferret.scot/awdah-hathaleen…
The residents of Umm al-Khair in the West Bank were already reeling from the loss of community leader and English teacher Awdah Hathaleen. Now they are fighting a mass demolition order on their homes.
⭕Des enfants de colons attaquent des villages #Palestiniens avec le soutien et la protection d'adultes armés et des autorités de l’occupation #Israélienne.
𝓝𝓲𝓸𝓫𝓵𝓮𝓸𝓾𝓶
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