CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
@IWRATS. Thank you. I shall try that next time. This time we casseroled it with celery and carrots and stuff.
I've now added a large, strong, plastic bag to my audax kit, to take advantage of future bounty that I come across.
It was definitely a free-range bird, but any pretence that it was wild was countered by the quantity of grain in its crop: at this time of year, birds just don't find lots of grain lying around...
there was a deer reported on Balerno Moans the other week, I will notify @greenroofer. I was out the next day on the A70 and just one wee hoof the Highways people missed
This morning, on the wall of our front hall, there was a New Zealand Flatworm.
I have never seen one inside the house before. It did look a bit sick, without the lively activity that shows you clearly that they are a predator rather than prey. As I do with these whenever I see them, I hastened its journey to the way of all flesh.
Now feeling a bit queasy as, reading the article linked above, I see that one of the reasons birds don't eat them is that they don't taste nice, and the reason we know they don't taste nice is that the chap after whom they are named tasted two. Bleurgh.
the chap after whom they are named tasted two.
Imagine going to all that effort and tribulation, and it's only the named after you in latin...
"..the way of all flesh."
"Now feeling a bit queasy"
After your pheasant tales I'm just not quite sure what to make of this.
Arthur Dent?
Woke up at 03:30 last night to the sounds of a mouse (or something mouse sized) on a mission under my bed. They have broken the rules - Big hall cupboard? Under the fridge? Occasional forays across the living room rug when they think I'm not there? These I have deemed "respecting the ceasefire". Waking me up with furtive scrabblings below my scratcher? This shall not stand.
@unhurt - My red lines are on the cooker and in the cupboards and drawers. That really is deep in my territory. Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Happily I haven't yet detected any signs in kitchen cupboards or at worktop level. I might have very non-arboreal mice? (Or, perhaps more likely, there's plenty crumbs to eat at floor level - might also be why they ignore the bait when I set traps.)
@unhurt if the bait is being ignored, you might be facing a different beast
leave a biscuit out on the floor
if its nibbled, you have mice, if its gone, you have...
a cheap motion sensor wildlife cam also reveals the 3am intruder
@unhurt: Happily I haven't yet detected any signs in kitchen cupboards or at worktop level.
Have you checked the toaster's crumb tray, and under the microwave? (Based on the wife's accounts of when she had an infestation of souris in her rather pleasant ground floor flat on Magdala Crescent. Which is just a bit less pleasant now that it's had an 'executive development' built across the road from it.)
As for red lines: I'm reliably informed that meese have a charming tendency to dribble urine as they patter around. That puts my red lines firmly at the external walls of the building.
[A few years ago we had a panic because we thought we'd found rat poos in the kitchen bin. Then we remembered that we'd badly over-roasted some pine kernels the day before. How we laughed.]
Zoophagy was an actual thing in Victorian times. There is a famous account of one such side-burned maniac dining on panther and declaring it 'sweetish'.
Flatworms would be bread and butter to those dudes.
Zoophagy was an actual thing in Victorian times
William Buckland was the rockstar of Zoophagy, tried to eat pretty much one of everything. I read his account of eating a mole, was horrific.
Mice are incontinent so constant streamie.
When I stayed in thistle st about twenty years back, Lyon and turn bull closed it auctioneer business and fishers took over. The rats became disturbed in their habits and moved along to our basement spaces. We stayed second floor so never troubled us but had lot of junk down there that had to go. The shops on the ground floor had more trouble if you ever bought a sandwich, glasses or beauty treatments?
William Buckland was the rockstar of Zoophagy
That's him! I believe even the SAS are forbidden from eating city rats.
My upstairs neighbour's washing machine leaked water in my hallway. My neighbour blamed mice for chewing through the pipes.
The sump pipe of my washing machine has sprung a leak as well, and when the guys come and install a new machine (no parts for the old one) I'll check the pipe for tooth marks.
Also if the subject of rodents comes up - we had rats one time - the neighbour loves to tell of his mate touching rat pee, contracting Leptospirosis and dying a horrible death.
@Rosie
Not even Google can find it now, but one of the finest ever posts on CCE (better even than a Spokes dropped kerb update) was Brother Bax's exposition on the hallucinations induced by eating pasta contaminated with rat urine.
Some would say they are ongoing and possibly spreading.
Great powers @Frenchy. Great powers.
Potentially good news, but plenty previous discussion on this thread.
“
This government has stated repeatedly that we intend to bring an end to the illegal killing of raptors and to bring in whatever measures are necessary to achieve this. Addressing wildlife crime remains a key priority both for this Government, and for me personally.
“
There are about 2,000 golden eagles in Scotland at any given time. They eat about 500g of meat each per day year-round. Mixture of carrion, hares, grouse, crows, rats, rabbits and anything else they can get their claws into. Say 500kg of grouse a day, 180 tonnes a year?
The density of grouse on an industrial moor is about 1.5 per hectare so the Scottish population on the 1.6 million hectares of moor is 2.3 million birds, total mass 1,600 tonnes.
So the loss is non-trivial but you wonder why they risk six months in prison over it.
The answer is the demanding nature of the rich people who pay to shoot the birds. They think of themselves as very special and are incandescent if large numbers of grouse are not put in front of them. Grouse are very scared of eagles and will bug out or sit cowering if they see one. This makes the actual shoot hard to manage and is the reason the estates kill birds of prey.
What needs regulated, as ever, is rich people's greed and sense of entitlement.
“What needs regulated, as ever, is rich people's greed and sense of entitlement.“
Can be regulated??
“
Perhaps Rishi Sunak should carefully read the ‘Seven principles of Public Life’ to make sure he is fulfilling the two principles of ‘Honesty and Leadership’
“
Can be regulated??
We could certainly regulate away their status as "rich people".
fOR SOME VALUES OF 'WE' THIS WILL BE TRUE. Sorry bout the CAPS LOCK.
@IWRATS/Frenchy - thanks both - a lesson learned - I confess to thinking food on the floor not totally verboten.
Also thanks to bax for being a guinea pig.
I do like the thread but is also possible the Bax-San bratwurst had been impregnated by Russian agents from the future come back in time to do him in for future environmental work in the Taiga/Tundra.? So not the floor pee but the sausage?
its fair to say that my mental health has never recovered
PS if you want a fright, buy a UV torch and turn it on in a darkened kitchen
and you thought it was clean of bacteria...
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