Animal Picture Time!

[Chesu]

Living in Florida is nice, and I love being able to hop in the pool year-round... but it's crazy how many animals set up shop near, or even break into, my house. Here are a few of the more interesting ones (click to enlarge).



Last October, this Spinarak took advantage of the bugs being caught in the fake cotton spider web set up by the front door. That is one lucky spider.


In May, a mockingbird started building a nest in the topiary by my front door, directly under where the green spider had been. Since it's shielded from the wind in two directions and predators are scared away, I guess it was the perfect place. At the end of May, there were four eggs; by mid June, the eggs had all hatched. On June 22, the baby birds had all of their feathers, and three of them left the nest. The last one remaining, seen in the third photo, was gone by the end of the day. In case you're wondering, all of the white stuff in the nest is cotton stuffing from dog toys the mockingbird liberated from the back yard.


A juvenile black widow! I don't normally have a problem with spiders, as they tend to sit quietly in the corner and eat the flying insects that actually do bother me... but I have a cat and dogs, so after spending the night in this terrarium, I released her far, far away from my house.


What is that? What is that?? Wait, look closely at the third picture... is that.. is that a.. frog?! Yes, yes it is. My house has what's known as a screen room, basically a room with walls made of nylon-fiberglass screen mesh, where the indoors and outdoors intermingle. A number of small frogs and lizards live among the thirty-something potted plants out there, but in July this tiny specimen, barely larger than a house fly, found its way into the kitchen. It's probably a bit larger than it looks here, as I'm kind of a giant, and have giant hands. Believe it or not, my hands look pretty small when compared to my great uncles'; he's an actual, literal giant, and the biggest living thing to enter my house. Yes, that Wiimote is the size of his index finger.


During the winter months, three or four of these bad boys are spotted in the garage every week. Since they're aggressive, I usually capture them in cardboard tubes and send 'em packing. As you've surely noticed by now, there are a ton of spiders here. (Cigarette box borrowed for size reference)


Your eyes do not deceived you; these are, in fact, wild monkeys. A Tarzan movie was being filmed around here in the 1930's, and they released some Rhesus Monkeys on a little island in the Silver River... if they'd done their homework, they would know that this monkey species can swim over a kilometer. Within a few years, there was a huge population of them all around the river. They don't usually stray too far from it, as the water there stays the same temperature all year, but for whatever reason these two came to ring in the new.

I still have plenty of pictures of frogs, lizards, toads, turtles, tortoises, and cats with Hitler mustaches, but it's 3:00 a.m., so I'll just cut to the reason I created this thread:



BUNNY! This little guy (remember, I'm pretty big) broke into the screen room from... somewhere, three weeks ago. I handled him with leather gloves, but when he turned out to be timid and not prone to scratching or biting, I removed a glove to take pictures. This area is full of wild hares, but I was unable to find a warren the bunny could have come from. Since it was raining pretty heavily (presumably why he broke in), I let him stay the night in a dog carrier, then released him in the morning.

So, do you have any cute or interesting animal pictures you would like to share? Feel free to post them below!

 

[♣Gawain♣]

Wow! I bow to you sir! I really love nature pics, and me a born naturalist love nature and the biosphere! I don't have any good cameras and such to impress you, but I'll try to snapshot my cat later on. I still have some work t finish.

 

[Chesu]

I have... Well, an unbelievable number of pictures of my pets. I do have a few favorites, though. Here are two of my fourteen-year-old cat, Cleo. I love how different she looks with the flash.



The first picture below was taken in May 2007, and shows my boxer Bree's litter of five puppies. We kept Zach, the focus of the picture; he still sleeps like that. The second picture is from Nintendo's "Animal Crossing: City Folk Welcome Waggin' Contest", which was a pet costume contest held last year to promote the game. In it, Zach is dressed in as Booker, a bulldog from Animal Crossing... You can see the character and the simple pattern I made for the costume to the right. That picture won me a prize package worth around four hundred dollars!


Here's my aunt with her cat, Marley. Even though he's now fully grown, he still sits on her shoulder like that... or at least tries to. The second picture is the aforementioned Hitler-stached cat, hiding from the rain under a hose reel. I think it was a stray.


Here, my cousin celebrates her short vacation from army life by holding my dachshund Little Bit like a rifle... or something. The other two are of my red-bellied pacus Edward and Ripsaw, with a Wiimote for size comparison. You can't really tell, but Edward, the big one, is about fifteen inches long.

 

[poopnoodle]

Lovely pictures. The Spinarak is gorgeous, what is that an argiope spider?

I wish I had a camera, I'd be flooding this thread. :(

 

[Chesu]

Another animal break-in!



This time, it was a Black Racer! These little constrictors are just as common around here as tortoises and hares, but this is only the fourth or fifth time one's found its way into my house.

...That sounds like a lot, but you have to take into account that I've lived here for about five years. Once a year (that I know of) isn't so bad!

Just now, in the garage...

(゜Д゜) Scorpion!!