Thursday, October 23, 2008

Animal Holes

As much as people would like to consider all the critters that visit our back yards pests, they are an integral part of our eco system and have every right to check out what you throw in your trash can and then dig a little happy home in the ground. I probably shouldn't tell this story because it is so awful, but when I was about 10 years old my very best friend called to tell me baby raccoons were born and living in a oak tree stump in her back yard.!!! YAY! A few days later she called crying, saying her dad filled the hole with CEMENT with the baby raccoons in there to kill them - snuff them out like they were an infestation of cockroaches. She invited me over to see for myself, which basically traumatized me upon sight and I tried digging my fingers into the concrete to free them. Environmental ignorance is long past due it's death, and it's time to nurture the importance of biodiversity & the creatures that make nature the place we seek when we want peace.
Check out these cute little animal holes behind my house (which will never be filled with cement)!





What do they do when it rains? Does anyone know?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have holes for mongoose burrows! They love the mulch pile and they also love to live under the walkways. Sometimes they pop out unexpectedly and scare the chickens half to death. The mynah birds all scream their heads off when a mongoose is around. (They do make trouble with the bird population.) I don't know what happens when it rains, but I bet burrowing animals have some sort of engineering technique that keeps their house from flooding.

Anonymous said...

I would generally think they are only in trouble in cases of severe rain or flooding, in which case most of these critters do know how to swim :) But usually the ground will absorb the rain quick enough to keep from flooding. If you ever delve into 'sand castle culture' you would think that rain destroys the sand castles but the opposite is usually the case. The rain simply is absorbed faster by the sand and therefore not much decay.