When I was in the Scottish Highlands a couple of months ago, staying at a hotel with a group of Australian tourists, I witnessed this. They’d never seen a squirrel before, and were as excited and fascinated by the furry-tailed rodents outside the breakfast room windows as I imagine I’d be if I saw kangaroos and koalas cavorting among the trees. (Though kangaroos and koalas in Scotland would certainly draw some attention.)
Family of little kids who just moved in across the street: “Mum! Mum! I just saw a squi’l, mum! No fooling – it was grey and it just went ZOOM up a tree, mum! Dad, did you hear? Dad, dad, I saw a squi’l, dad!”
From South Africa. Where we’d go crazy pointing out the monkeys stealing coins from people, but they say is an ordinary occurence.
Detroit Police Department has a few; I’ve once seen one on Belle Isle. But they’re rare enough that if I saw a mounted officer, I’d take notice of it.
And yes, most of us know what horses are :rolleyes:
do what now?
This reminds me of when a friend from Maine came to visit & we went to the Cincinatti Zoo. We were standing by the Okapi pen; neither of us had even seen a living okapi. All of a sudden, she starts yelling “Oh my god! Look! Look!” and pointing up in a tree, snapping pictures.
It was a cardinal.
A bird that is comman as all get out iun the midwest, and are pretty tame when used to people.
I never let her live that one down.
I’ve seen mounted cops in Manhattan, Virginia Beach VA and Portsmouth VA.
Here in CT we have the Governor’s Horse Guard - two companies of horse cavalry (organised in 1788* and 1808) to protect the governor and escort him between what were then the state’s two capital cities.
- Or 1778, depending which official website you believe.
No horses in Detroit.
Just tigers. And lions.
That’s what I thought.
No where did I say you didn’t. Roll your eyes back into your head.
Control rioters. Surely people in Detroit know what control and riot mean.
That’s the old bash on Detroit - a lot of Detroiters weren’t born yet the last time there was a major riot. 1984, I think. And that was a sports riot.
The new putdown is that there aren’t enough people left in Detroit to get together and have a proper riot.
See, that’s what NYPD mounted police are used for. To control crowds, especially unruly mob-type crowds.
Funny, I said the same thing about riot control to my co-worker who said that they never have riots in Detroit. To which I said, “You mean you don’t have racist Korean greengrocers, brutal mop-handle wielding police officers and angry Hasidic Jews?”
The Buffalo, New York area doesn’t have fireflies, but go 40 to 60 miles in any direction from the city, and they’re quite common. I never saw a firefly when I was a kid.
However, there’s horses in the city limits. There’s still a lot of old money Blue Book families in the city, and the stables and equestrian facilities that are an important part of their lifestyle.
My stepmom freaked the hell out when she came to The Bronx from Boston for a visit and was out on the front porch at dusk. Full out running and screaming and waving of arms. We thought it was an unseen hornet. But no, it was a group of fireflies.
Why would there be fireflies in The Bronx and none in Boston or Buffalo? Strange.
One of my most magical experiences when visiting the US was seeing fireflies for the first time, around C’ville, VA. I’d heard of them but seeing them in real life was as close to magic as an adult me can get.
Having just come back from Noel Night in Detroit, I can confirm that there are, in fact, horses in Detroit. They were giving carriage rides.
Nobody really knows why Buffalo or the surrounding area doesn’t have fireflies. Some say it’s because of industrial pollution from the past, but fireflies are abundant in Cleveland, which was even more industrialized than Buffalo. They’re also common in Toronto, Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Erie.
I still get really excited when fireflies start appearing in June.
Squirrels: Buffalo has big, fat brown squirrels everywhere. When I first visited Toronto, and saw that all the squirrels were black, it one the one thing that made Canada really feel like a foreign land.
I meant “light brown and gray” for Buffalo’s squirrels.
But they do have black squirrels in Detroit. I hear they’re exceedingly fond of horseflesh.
I recently had the chance to talk with some British folks who had gone to the same Connecticut summer camp as me when we were kids. They all remarked on fireflies, and how they just seemed like magic. Until then I didn’t know there were no fireflies in the UK!
They are pretty cool, especially a a nice summer night in the mountains.
I’ve noticed that Australians are particularly enamoured of squirrels. I mean they are pretty cute, and in many of NYC’s urban parks, they’re semi-tame and will hustle you for snacks at a cuteness level that makes the cuteometer explode. But Australians seem particularly entranced.
See how people from different areas experience things so much differently? Ask any New Yorker, most will call squirrels rats with bushy tails.
Fireflies are common in Toronto!? That’s news to me!
We have brown/grey squirrels as well, but in some places they’re crowded out by the black ones.