What on Earth is a womble?
A small, burrowing, scavenging animal. They live in well developed social groups. They are generally tolerated by man as their scavenging reduces litter.
They are rare and solely to be found in the SW19 area.
I think the little buggers get in my bins.
You are being whooshed.
That being said, the children’s book the Wombles appear in is charming.
We have possums and racketty coons. Also lots of squirrels – they like to climb the trees by the deck and thumb their noses at my dog through the sunroom windows. Drives him crazy. My coolest critter-sighting was last week, though. I saw a wild turkey up the street. I like wild turkeys.
Jess (who is in agreement with Ben Franklin regarding the national bird – it shoulda been the turkey!)
I thought I recognised it from somewhere. :smack:
owlstretchingtime: Your father ees a hamster and your mother smells of elderberries.
[rant]Which some day CPP will finish restoring and let us see. The signs on the barriers indicate that they have no idea when the restoration will be finished. There’s nothing like good project management, and this is definitely nothing like good project management. [/rant]
And how the hell could you leave off the sainted Pigeons of Trafalgar Square? You know, the ones Ken Livingstone is trying to get rid of, and protest groups are trying to protect? Filthy beasts. (The pigeons, I mean. Well okay, the protest groups too. And maybe the Mayor as well.)
Feral chickens.
Yup. I believe it’s the town of Altamonte Springs (just north of Orlando) where there are signs warning drivers about chickens crossing the road. Big yellow diamond signs, much like you would see with the ‘leaping deer’ symbol. (Of course, too, we have ‘panther crossing’ and ‘bear crossing’ signs on the roads, but a chicken?)
Lake County and east Orlando have flocks of emus, and an occasional ostrich, let loose by farmers who lost everything when the bottom fell out of the large bird farming market.
As far as my area, not too many 'gators (though I do live near “Gatorland”), but I have had a flock of wild turkeys stroll through the condo complex, but that was before all the land around me was developed into apartment complexes and shopping areas. Sandhill cranes used to wander through the neighborhood, and an occasional red-tail hawk would roost on the roof, getting mobbed by all the bluejays.
Don’t even get me started on the flocks of peacocks, though. (Nasty, dirty, screamy, let-loose-by-some-asswipe-who-thought-they’d-look-cool-in-his-estate-but-let-them-loose-when-his-dotcom-crashed birds…)
There’s actually an entire book devoted to this – A Natural History of New York City, put out by Natural History Press (the publishing arm of the American Museum of Natural History). The book is twenty-odd years old and probably out of print now, but there is a surprising amount of “wildlife” in The Big Apple, far beyond pigeons and cockroaches.
Here in the Boston area, I’ve seen muskrats and beavers in the Mystic River, and someone I talked to says he once saw a beaver in Harvard Square (!) Certainly there are carp in the now-less-polluted Charles River.
In Newport News, Va. (a city of about 180,000) I have seen:
Deer
Squirrels (LOTS of them)
Herons
Racoons
Possums
Rabbits
Red Tailed hawks
Turkey Buzzards
Bats
Canadian Geese
Cardinals
Blue jays
Crows and Ravens
Rats and mice
Doves
At least two different species of owl
Quail
And in the last 10 years or so we have been overrun by grackles. Sometimes there are so many they cover 2 to 3 front yards in my neighborhood.
Oops I forgot to mention: I saw a gray fox once, and there is a whole family of beavers behind my husband’s workplace. And the strangest animal I’ve seen here: one night my dog was going nuts in the back yard so I went to check. Hanging off the siding on the back of our house was a small, cream-colored flying squirrel!
We have Ravens. And ptarmigans. And Squirrels. And drunks.
I’d add one more to Owl’s list but I can’t remember the name of it… only ever seen it at night and very infrequently; same height as an average fox but much 'squarer’ and slower, just kind of waddles out of the headlights into the undergrowth… funny thing, really. Actually, I’ve only seen it right on the edge of London, on Commons which, for all intents and purposes, are proper countryside……It’s sort of the Paul Gascoige of the animal kingdom.
ps. I had no idea so many of us were brave enough to bunker down sarf of the river! Lock an’ load !!
Another (ex)Houstonian here…
Probably the oddest urban animals I ever saw was when back around 1988 or so, somebody’s pet parrots got loose and the Alief area had an infestation of feral parrots for about 3-4 years- those things bred like crazy!
They were surprisingly aggressive- they’d drive the sparrows and other local birds away from bird feeders, and generally be annoying and loud(although colorful and pretty).
The parrots had made a nest up ont the side of the transformer because it was warm in the winter, and once it blew then froze, I think it did them in.
Here in Alabama (we do TOO have urban areas!!) we have roaches the size of kittens.
And we heard what had to be Santa on the roof last November. On closer inspection, it was a racoon roughly the size of a toddler.
Needless to say, we always carry flashlights!!!
Porcupines, badgers, deer, coyotes, giant scary white owls, red-tail hawks, eagles, skunks, elk and groundhogs.
They’re constantly getting into the yard and the trash. But our yard is 75 acres big, and the trash doesn’t get broken into too often, and they’re so pretty so it doesn’t bother me much. 
-foxy
Unless it IS a womble, I would assume it is one of those fat barrel shaped dogs that council tenants in Sarf have to make them look hard. Innit?