Hey, that’s Ziggy! Or one of her relatives, anyway. When I was ten the neighbors had one of those, and obviously we named it. They don’t normally bite that I know of. They just make neat webs and catch flies.
A booby. Theblue-footed variety. I was volunteering at a seabird rehab place and this bird was brought in, he was waaaaaay off course. They are usually found in the Pacific, I live on the Gulf coast of Florida, he must have flown across Mexico and the Gulf to get to us. He was pretty funny, he wasn’t afraid of anyone he chased us all around the room. There was nothing really wrong with him except for being very tired from flying and not very good at navigation. We had to ship him to another sanctuary closer to his home grounds. Boobies are cool.
A client brought a lemur in to the vet hospital I work at several years ago. We usually don’t see primates but this guy promised he could handle it while we sedated it. We x-rayed it and it had a broken leg. It seemed fitting that the lemur would break it’s femur.
One night at the hospital a co-worker was leaving for the night and then came running back in to say that either there was a large brown ferret loose outside or it was a chupacabra. (He sees chupacabras a lot). So we all went out to look and saw a very large brown ferret-like thing run towards the back of the hospital. I later looked it up to prove that it wasn’t a chupacabra and identified it as a mink. They are native to this area but I think it’s unusual for them to be running around the city far from any rivers or streams where they would normally enjoy frolicing.
Co-worker still thinks it was a chupacabra. I am also beginning to suspect that JThunder may be my co-worker.
By the way, hawks, moose, armadillos, etc. may be old hat to some of you but for people that don’t live in the wilderness it’s always interesting to see wildlife that’s not squirrels and pigeons in our own backyards. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of hawks, up close and personal even, and I still enjoy seeing them.
Oh, and I’ve yet to see a roadrunner that wasn’t in a zoo, maybe Tijuana_Golds could tell me where to find one?
Once, when driving through the Catskill Mountains, I had to do a double-take…I saw an emu on a farm. I know some people raise them for meat, but its appearance was quite unexpected.
On a trip to Anchorage, I saw a moose walking down the street. This is no doubt commonplace for people who live there, but I never expected to see a moose move through a thoroughly urban environment.
I was driving down the highway early one morning when I noticed the cars in front of me were starting to brake. I slowed down myself, not being a big fan of flaming death, and next thing I knew an emu raced across the road right in front of me, flapping its little wings.
Emus aren’t native to Missouri; I guess it escaped from a nearby farm. You could almost hear it yelling, “Wheeee! I’m free! I’m free!” as it scampered by.
A few months ago at work I was outside during my lunch break. I was hearing the local crow population exchanging vocalizations with what I assumed was another bird that was doing some loud screeching. I looked up to catch sight of a large looking bird with a white head just before it flew behind a building.
Due to the white head I had to assume it was a bald eagle. Which amazed me because I couldn’t recall ever seeing or hearing anything about bald eagles being in the area of San Diego city.
I’m sure it’s pretty commonplace to you Canadian folk, but I’ll never forget seeing gigantic elk just meandering down the street in Banff, Alberta. No one even batted an eyelash except us visitors.
Also in Canada a couple beautiful mountain sheep had traffic stopped for awhile, sometime when we were travelling through B.C. We got out of the car and took pictures…from quite a distance. Those horns looked painful.
And then here in Reno, the herds of wild horses. My husband and I saw a bunch up near Virginia City, just grazing in the distance. They just look like normal horses, but it’s so cool to think that they’re wild and just run wherever they please.
Do a dozen Turkey vultures tearing apart a deer carcass count?
They were swarming all over it, & fighting among themselves.
I thought I wandered into an African Wildlife Documentary this AM.
I’ve seen several interesting animals right here in the suburbs of the Twin Cities.
We live on a very busy highway. I looked out across the highway one day and saw a bobcat or a lynx. It was the size of a big dog and had a stubby tail.
I’ve seen a red-tailed hawk in our backyard several times over the last few years, sitting on the telephone cable, swooping across our yard into the neighbor’s tree and oddest of all we saw it perched on the edge of our neighbor’s dumpster which was sitting in their driveway.
My husband and I were driving on the highway about a mile from our house, when I looked to my right and saw a wild turkey running along the fence line of the Armory. It was trying to find a way through the fence. I don’t know why it just didn’t try flying over the fence!
We’ve also seen red fox, one crossing the street in a new development about a 1/2 mile south of us, and one along another highway about 5 miles east of our house.
We regularly see deer right across the highway from us, but last month we looked out and saw that a buck had just been hit and killed while trying to cross. That was the third buck I’d seen that week amoung my travels around the area we live in.
<hijack>Saw many unusual things while diving. A seal cavorting underwater; you have never seen a seal until you see one underwater.</hijack>
Only last Sunday, I was hiking with a friend when we simultaneously spotted something “lying” on the ground in front of us. Just before we made it to the spot, the thing disappeared, confirming that we’d seen the head of a ground hog. In all my hiking years, it was the first time I’d seen one sticking his head out of his burrow.
I occasionally get hummingbird hawkmoths on the sage plants in my back garden; OK, they’re laughably diminutive compared to some of the impressive animals in this thread, but they are nonetheless unusual; they just look exactly like little birds - right down to the side-mounted eyes and a little flexible fan tail.
I’ve sometimes wondered about this; watching one of these moths going about its business, it’s hard to doubt that the insect hasn’t evolved specifically to mimic hummingbirds. Yet I’ve never been able to puzzle out exactly what advantage the moth gains by this elaborate deception. “Ha ha! Though I am in reality a harmless moth, I fool predators into thinking I’m a deadly venomous hummingbird!”
Frankly I find it hard to believe that any animal that routinely preys on large moths would find a hummingbird to be insurmountably difficult prey: “Ahh, here comes a delicious moth-- what the?! Wait a second, is that a hummingbird? OMFG, retreat!!!” There are other, more subtle principles of mimicry that act less directly, but I’m unaware of any that would provide an obvious advantage for either species here.
Maybe I’m wrong, and hummingbirds are just a lot more dangerous than they look. Anyway, this mystery seems like it might be a good candidate for General Questions.
Sorry; rather,
“hard to believe that it hasn’t”
or
“hard to doubt that it has”
Either works; your choice. Carry on.
In May 2004, my friend and I drove down to Florida, and on our way back , just South of Atlanta, we saw a road killed animal that we still talk about.
I swear with God as my witness, it looked like a hyena.
It had the large, blocky, predator head, and wicked looking teeth. Since it was dead, it was hard to judge size, but it was roughly the size of a small deer. It’s coat was a mottled brown, it had hugely developed shoulders, and the hair looked long and wirey. We were on the interstate, so there was no way to stop and inspect it.
And the oddest thing of all… about 10 miles further on up the highway , inside the Atlanta city limits… we saw ANOTHER one :eek: .
We have tried to figure out what else they could have been. The ONLY thing I can come up with would be wild boars. Anyone else have an idea?
Ironically, it seems that she and I run into … odd… roadkill often. I live in Indiana , she lives in Maine , and another time she came to visit, we were driving in the country, and saw a MONKEY that had been hit by a car. And that one, we DID get out and look closer at. Definitely a monkey. Had to be someone’s pet that escaped.
But the hyena-things…what the hell could they be?
I regularly saw urban foxes and coyotes when living in central Denver, and we had a family of sharp-shinned hawks who nested on our block.
But Denver ain’t got nuthin’ on northwest Florida.
Since moving here I’ve seen dolphins, whitetail deer, fox, otters, and various herons, cormorants, pelicans and kingfishers. Have heard coyotes at night but have not seen them. Roadkill: armadillos, 'possums, raccoons.
But the best is the most unusual:
Every single day I see Bald Eagles circling above, perching in the pines, or hanging out at the beach.
When I was 5, I when out to retrieve the newspaper just after dark. As I reached into the box, I realized there was something on top of the rack of mail and paper boxes. It was a bear cub. I’m not sure which of us was more firghtened.
As a teenager, early one summer morning, I saw a Wood Duck I was awe struck. I never saw another.
I saw a dead elephant seal on the Washington coast once. They are really BIG.
I was chased by a Gila Monster in Amarillo Tx.
I found a bright yellow tarantula in a hole in my driveway in Amarillo. It was about the size of my hand, not very hairy, round, elevated abdomen. Very aggressive and territorial I’ve looked at pages and pages of tarantulas with no luck. So, you’ll have to imagine it from the “also ran” photos.
The strips on this one are the right color, but it was solid yellow. Right shape, Right color and shape, wrong size
My son caught a horned toad under the house.It squirted blood out of its eyes.