Old nature....
I love natural history museums and even if I know that nowadays it all should be fancy, electronic, interactive and very educational, I really like to old diaramas that often are torn out in the old museums to make space for new things. But at the Academy of Natural History in Philadelphia they still have some showing the North American wildlife. The photos are not too great, it was dark... but don't you start thinking when you see these? Can beavers really climb? Opposum daycare is very efficient. And lynx, that is what EH saw this summer. I think this is real natural history art.
By the way, we have the weirdest screaming/screeching animal outside our house in the early dark mornings. I think it is a rabid cat, but the rest of the household doesn't think so. We have thought about great horned owls, bobcats, coyotes... who knows what it is.
5 comments:
The beaver as a tree climber - sounds very unlikely. They go always on living trees because the don't eat the wood itself but the layer under the bark, I understand. And why should they climb when they can fell the trees at comfortable height about half a meter up - which is what they always do as far as I have seen? They need also to eat a thick stem on all sides. And it will be quicker to get back to the water if something dangerous appears (they are slow on land).
But the dioramas were nicely done!
Beavers - apparently the American ones can climb a little, but why would they? Strange....
Coyotes either bark or "nip" out small sounds, with a whole flock of them it sounds like there's a pool party full of teenaged girls gossiping. So I don't think the screeching is coyotes.
I had a screaming animal once, too! In my old apartment in NJ, I would hear it. I thought it was a bobcat, although someone else said it was probably an owl.
We are leaning towards the bobcat explanation too.
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