Animals

As I was taking our dog Blackie for a walk, I remembered a picture I took during our Saturday morning walkies. As we were on our way home I spotted a chipmunk clambering up a tree where it perched and looked at us.

This isn't much of a big deal in Canada, there's chipmunks all over the place, honest... but it always amazes Kata when I say "wow, we don't have those back in the UK".

The most you see in the UK tend to be the odd urban fox, or some squirrels if you're lucky, sometimes a glimpse of a deer as it peeks out from cover, but you never see chipmunks, nor do you ever have to worry about encountering a skunk while you walk your overly eager dog at night. So far we've managed not to corner a skunk or make it scared enough to spray and I certainly hope it stays that way as I've heard the tales of skunk spray and how near impossible it is to remove from clothing, skin and fur...

There's certainly more wild-life here in London, Ontario than I ever experienced back in the UK. I grew up (mostly) in a middle class suburb in the middle of the countryside surrounded by woods and fields and yet for most of my formative years the only wild animals I saw were the few foxes that lived in the woods nearby and only fleeting glimpses, although in the summer you can hear the vixens yelping for miles.

London, which is a decent sized and relatively urbanised city has a wealth of wild-life just outside your doorstep. Every morning the squirrels (large and mostly black) are out and about searching for the next meal, every park and damn near every garden has a fair number of squirrels in it. They're certainly helped out by the vast number of tress that London boasts, its nickname is the Forest City after all.

The downtown Victoria Park is a great home to the black squirrels where they forage all day hardly harassed, apart from the odd poorly controlled child, or hunting bird of prey. Harris Park, also downtown, has a large gaggle of Canada geese and in summer a large colony of black fly. The black fly were a new thing to me, they look like common house flies, however they're nothing of the sort, these little buggers will happily land on you and without warning stab you with their proboscis and suck away at your blood. Fortunately I'm not affected by black fly saliva, so I didn't have to deal with any reaction to the bites, but they're know to be a scourge in Canada anywhere there's fast running water.

Skunks were a real surprise to me, not that they existed, but that I'd never seen one in real life until I came here. They're so unassuming and docile looking, however you keep in mind they are wild animals and they don't take kindly to dogs running up to them for a closer look. I saw one crossing the road on Saturday night, it slowly loped across the street, working its way directly to where I stood with Blackie. I slowly moved away but watched as 2 cars which were coming up the road, slowed to allow the skunk to cross unmolested (or more realistically unsplattered on the car, which would have needed a hell of a lot of cleaning to deskunk it).

So what was my point? Oh yeah, there's lots of wild animals around here....