squirrel gymnastics

You have just discovered, that squirrel is just a masked rat. Congratulation.

:-D they call them tree-rats, and pigeons are air-rats. Just that squirrels have cultivated the "cute" image a bit more!

They did lots of damage to our carport roof and my DH is in constant war with them. Guess who is winning the war.

Nothing against your roof and husband, KLahanie, but in this case I am always on the side of weaker, e.g. squirrels..;-)

Ha, Kat, I think that in us humans are the weaker - all of our civilisation, our technology, and our inventiveness, and we still can't keep squirrels out from where we don't want them! at least, not without going to wild extremes.

Mind you, these squirrels are alien invaders, and so don't really fit into our ecology; they forced their way in, displacing the native reds, who I'm sure were shyer, more reserved, more "english", lol, while these greys are "more "american", brash and lively!

Unfortunately , in this case, you are not on the side of the weeker Katarina. The Eastern gray squirrels are real problem on the island . They are "foreigners" and multiplying like crazy, and our lovely native red squirrls are in danger. They are endangering our native ecosystem.

http://alienspecies.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/eng/species/eastern-gray-squirrel

http://www.campbellrivermirror.com/lifestyles/160755575.html

http://www.kania.net/GreySquirrelPoster11X17.pdf

and many others.
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We are all sensitive to our environment on the Island and loosing the battle with "eastern gray" infestation.
Difficult subject for me to express..

I can see that Fran beats me to it. I did not read hers before I wrote mine. We had to write it at the same time.

Well, if that happens, something must be in environment which allows that. Hard to say who or what is responsible for that. We have lot of woods, yet squirrels are rare. But we have overpopulated bear, lol.

That's the major problem of taking a species and introducing it into a new environment: the checks and balances that were in its original habitat don't apply in its new one, and so it goes out of control - grey squirrels in UK, rabbits in Australia, Japanese Knotweed everywhere ... by the time the danger becomes apparent, it's too late do do anything about it.

Well, almost too late - someone introduced hedgehogs to a Scottish island, and they're now devastating the local bird population, which nest on the ground, never having needed to be protected from ground predators before. They've got a programme to find all the hedgehogs and relocate them to the mainland. I don't suppose that we'd be able to export all our grey suirrels back to the US!

I think mink were imported into UK for mink farms for the fur trade, but some escaped and are causing havoc; and the Teenage Ninja Turtles craze meant that hundreds of baby terrapins were bought and, when they got too big, were "released" - the lake in my local park has almost no fish in it now, because of that.

On one of my documentaries, it says that there are people at ports checking to make sure that nothing is brought in by accident with the containers - but at one port (I think it said Felixtowe but I'm not sure) there was just ONE man to check every container that came in on every ship that delivered cargo to that port.

Well, you cannot check everything even if there were dozens of officers. Some years ago we had small out-break of malaria which was imported here with mosquitoes in touristic luggages.

The worst import of all would be drug resistant TB which is invisible until illness comes on. Being so cheerful as keeps us going!

lol Dorjac. Especially in US, I heard, where medication has to be paid for, people stop half way through the course because they feel ok and don't see the need to spend $$ on the rest of the course; so the TB learns to live wiht and then ignore the "cure",

Dorjac@you do not need to import TBC. London has at the moment the highest incidence of TBC in the EU. Fran155@treatment of TBC is so--called DOT therapy (directly observed therapy) for years, based on experience that people often think often they know the best how to manage their treatment, e.g. better then corrupted doctors. Britain standards of DOT are very good, don´t be afraid. With the US you are right, however incidence of TB is nothing compared to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which have the hoghest incidence of MR TBC. The source - prisons.
Years ago I worked with such patients, who have triple deadly disease AIDS+MR TBC+hepatitis C. I do not expect you will invite me for a coffee now ;-)

Hi Kat....Thanks for your info. I have had TB as a child and calcified it. I read an article in TIME magazine a edition before last. It seemed to be telling me that this new TB kid on the block is fully drug resistant and the world authorities are very concerned. I am not worried for myself, as I am living my span currently.

Dorjac@I am not sure if I understood the last sentence correctly.
MR-TBC or multidrug resistant TB is nothing new, it isn´t any new kid in the block. People just pay attention to it from time to time, always taking this topic on the ligh as something bombastic and new.
WHO repeats it now, as this organization had goal to eradicate TBC from the world till 2010, if I rememebr this deadline correctly. And it wasn´t fulfilled, moreover, Russia and Belarus are now fighting with MR-TBC. People from Russia, Belarus, Latvia etc. travel free all across Europe, no checkings as in the USA (if you go to the US for several weeks US governement requires lung X-rays from new residents).
Slovakia has now the lowest incidence of the TB in its history, yet majority of MR-TBC cases were foreigners from the former Soviet Union (illegaly employed in the country). So this is all timed bomb. Governments are stupid and politicians who make regulations even more.