L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Close encounters with the animal world

August 14, 2007 on 7:34 pm | In General Musing |

Redmond is not exactly the big city, but sometimes it feels more wild than others. We’ve been encountering more of our animal buddies recently. Last week a tiny, white-spotted fawn tumbled across our path, followed closely by mom. They stopped, side by side and watched us pass. Sunday morning we shared a Redmond trail with a scruffy gray coyote who kept a wary distance ahead but kept stopping to check us out. Yesterday, a river otter scampered across our path on the Sammamish Slough trail. I think that must be good luck. Of course hoards little brown bunnies bound and abound. Thank goodness for both the bunnies… and the coyotes.

In other animal news:

This article is more than a little alarming and yet oddly fascinating. People pay to be nibbled by fish. The fish reportedly eat dead human cells, leaving the living ones to shine through with a healthy glow. It could be creepy, it could be stimulating. It could be both. Is PETA protesting the enslavement of fish to human servitude?

More animal exploitation: $75 for a quarter pound of coffee that’s been pooped by wild Sumatran civet cats? How much of that do the cats get? Heck, maybe I should start eating coffee instead of drinking it.

In only vaguely related news, protesters are near success in shutting down businesses that sell horse meat. The idea being, I guess, that horses are more deserving of life than cows. It’s a problem for zoos, whose predators are major consumers of horse meat, which is apparently closer to the type of meat their animals would find in the wild than beef. Why can’t the lions just eat salad?

And finally, candidates for cute jail: A gallery of tiny animals clinging to fingertips and two ducks in a teacup. I love the internet.