オーストラリア、ニューサウスウェールズ州にある園芸店で野生コアラ保護地区のために育てられた苗木数千本が「泥棒」コアラに食べられちゃったことはオーストラリア放送協会が報道した。 園芸店店長ハンフリー・へリントン氏が保護地区用に育ってられた苗木が毎晩少しずつなくなっていたことに気づいたが、理由が思い浮かべなかった。 そして、ある日に出勤したら、動けないほど暴食したコアラが苗木植木場所近くに見つけて、謎が解けた。 その時、「クロード」と名付けてそのコアラを近くの森の中にある安全場所までに動かしたが、二日後、再びクロードが園芸店で表れ、苗木を食べて、現行犯逮捕だった。 へリントン氏によるとクロードコアラが何千本の苗木を食べて園芸店に豪ドル約6000ドル(約56万円)の被害を与えた。 コアラ防止対策として、園芸店にネットかけるという。 食べられた苗木がコアラ用の「バンガローコアラズ」保護地区作成のために使われるはずだった。幸いに食べられた苗木が今年地植え用のものじゃなかったので、保護地区の予定にあまり大きな影響がないようだ。 元記事 Claude the koala eats thousands of nursery seedlings intended for NSW wildlife corridor (英語)
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I’m old, but like to think I do all right. However, it’s getting increasingly harder to kid myself. I can’t hear, can’t see, can’t chew properly because my teeth are going or gone, can’t remember anything and can’t learn new subjects no matter how hard I try as nothing sinks in. I wake up to pee several times a night (which is still better than not waking up to do so), barely sleep and feel constantly harangued and harassed by life. Arthritis in my hands is agonizing and makes nearly any task gargantuan, not to mention turns cycling, my sole…
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I’ve never been good at dealing with life on life’s terms, and being a selfish and spoiled type, easily get down when I don’t get what I want. I got to experience that side of me again this week. My boss finally pushed through the severe pay cut she has been aiming at for the past couple of years. I’m now down to about 60% of the wage I was hired at a decade ago, with less than half the paid vacation, a much-reduced medical plan, no allowances and footing the bill for the company to produce the work it…
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Tokyo is a city built on rivers and streams, and much of its history is built around waterways, yet it took until last weekend to finally enjoy a really decent yakatabune boat ride. I’ve been here for decades and been on cruises and even ridden in yakatabune, which are long, flat boats with tatami mat rooms used mostly for sightseeing cruises, but I hadn’t really cruised on one. I’d always associated them with geisha asobi, parties with geisha, and raucous, bawdy boat trips (and a look at the cruise options available will show that I’m not wrong), but that’s not…
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Not much has happened, certainly nothing to really write about, but I have been very fortunate to get some amazing skies that make tremendous backdrops for bicycle photos, including these shots of La Cangura beside a little pond near the Tama River, which evoked an image of the Lady of the Lake from the Arthurian legend (at least for me). Futile attempts to revive the fertilizer-burned lawn have caused greater frustration. And so has taking care of the bird, which is going through a hormonal stage. Of course, my boss at work is somewhat similar, so I never know which…
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Lots of serious stuff is going down at the moment, yet the biggest gripe in my mind is how to deal with a bloody pigeon. One of my escapes has been the garden at Kangaeroo Corner, and one of the areas of which I had been proudest was the flourishing lawn. Except, it’s no longer flourishing. In May, I went heavy-handed on the fertilizer in the expectation of warm, dry weather followed by the rain and warmth of June and July. The rain barely came and the heat was dry and blistering. I didn’t realize that I needed to compensate…
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Fortune smiled favorably on me this morning, too, as I got to ride out to a nearby sunflower field and get some awesome photos. There’s not much I can elaborate on, other than to say the field was a spectacular sight. There were lots of people around, even though the dawn had only just broken, so I rushed in and out before I became too much of a nuisance with my bike around, too. Also got blessed with some wonderful spurts of rain that I hope will rehabilitate the lawn at Kangaeroo Corner, but was distressed to discover the first…
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Little things in life have kept me scrambling and stumbling in such a way it’s hard to get much else done. Work is always much busier in the warmer months. This year has been particularly demanding as our tyrant boss drove more staff out of the door and their tasks were often imposed on me. Early morning starts have been the norm and I’m often exhausted by the time the sun sets. Health hasn’t been great and the teeth I neglected for decades have come back to haunt me with a vengeance, which will result in two more of them…
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Fortune blessed me with lots of wonderful reminders of how lucky I am yesterday, including through a fat-arsed addition to Kangaeroo Corner. We held a garden party for close friends and family, hoping to show off Kangaeroo Corner. A harsh summer, untimely rains and, I think, excessive intervention on my part, have destroyed the lawn, but much of the rest of the garden is thriving. And now, courtesy of a dear mate and former work colleague, there’s a new addition to Kangaeroo Corner in the former of Fatso, the fat-arsed wombat. I don’t know the incredible lengths she went to…
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One of the highlights of Kangaeroo Corner is the Fountain of Strewth, which I placed with the hope of attracting birds to the garden, but the role has been served so well, I’m now drawn to the idiom used in the headline (which stems from a passage of Aesop’s fables that says “We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified,” according to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Sixteenth Edition and as I learned today). Sweltering heat and fierce sunshine has made the Fountain of Strewth a popular part of the neighborhood’s avian residents. And I’ve been delighted by this, sitting in…