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Post by granty on Dec 16, 2016 16:37:40 GMT
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Post by sherri on Dec 16, 2016 18:33:39 GMT
Doesn't look as if the opera house is right on the corner there!! Dry looking country. What's the animal? I am taking it it is not a dog, looks a bit like a dingo but I know it's not.
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Post by granty on Dec 16, 2016 20:03:02 GMT
Hello Sherri I was staying in Vegas, so I thought I'd have a drive around Death Valley, a place I always wanted to go. I drove two hours up to "death valley junction" then another hour drive up to 'Furnace Creek" then the 75 mile drive down the basin of death valley on a road they call "badlands". It was October and the temperature was a cool 90. There was very little traffic on the road which I found strange, then out of nowhere this coyote came out of nowhere. I reckon it must forage off passing motorists as it certainly wasn't shy.
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Post by sherri on Dec 16, 2016 20:43:21 GMT
coyote. I wondered if it could be that but wasn't sure as I have only heard of them, never seen one. I like it when there isn't much traffic on the roads. My ideal world would be where I had the roads pretty much all to myself. LOL
How far apart are the petrol stations? When we drove from Alice Springs to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and other parts of Northern Territory, we had made roads all the way but there were signs at each roadhouse to warn how far to the next petrol bowser. usually a few hundred Km so it paid to stay topped up.
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Post by DADDY O on Dec 17, 2016 16:29:33 GMT
That Coyote looks awfully hungry and thirsty Granty. I bet you didn't stop to feed or water him? Stick a hot dog near him and you'd be pulling back a stump.
They usually travel in packs. Did you see any more around?
The Coyotes in Texas would come on your property and take whatever livestock you had, such as small cattle, lambs, goats, etc. If you get a Donkey and put him out with the stock, he would fight to the death trying to stave off a coyote attack. Donkeys can be really mean and vicious fighters.
If you kill a coyote, you hang them upside down on your barb wire fence (head pointing down). It wards off the other coyotes in the pack. Kind of like when the Koreans in Vietnam killed a Viet Cong, they would chop their head off and stick it on a pole outside their compound. Very nasty people.....no better than the Vietnamese gooks.....but it seemed to work for them. No VC wanted to fight a Korean.....as you might imagine.
I think one the best restaurants I have eaten at was in a small town outside of El Paso, Texas named Fabens. You drive for about two hours to get to this place, but the steaks were great and the atmosphere superb. Hell, I bought a Davy Crockett hat in that place for a good friend of mine.
Named the Cattleman's Steakhouse.....great steaks and great atmosphere.
You need to go at night because the place is lit on the outside and if you can get a window view, it is a spectacular view. But the best thing is, when the busboys clean the dirty dishes, they keep the bits of meat and fat that is left over and dump them in a bucket. Every hour on the hour someone gets on the roof of the building and tosses the meat to the ground.....right in front of your window. Then a pack of coyotes emerge and jump on the scraps and fight like crazy for them. If you have never been there before, it scares the daylight out of you watching three or four coyotes 3' away from you fighting for food. Everyone in the restaurant comes over to watch. Best show in El Paso or Juarez...............bar none.
www.cattlemansranch.com/
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Post by granty on Dec 17, 2016 18:46:31 GMT
Sherri, I filled the tank up in Vegas before I left (it's a pleasure to fill the tank up over there, Petrols that cheap) so there was nothing to worry about. Once you hit that Badlands road, there's no internet, no garages nothing, and you're warned to take plenty water. Daddy-O, that Coyote just came out of nowhere, I pulled over and took that photo and it didn't flinch, I'm sure it lives of passing motorists. Maybe if i had my Davy Crocket hat on it might of done a runner incase I strung it up.
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Post by sherri on Dec 17, 2016 21:45:56 GMT
Over here, farmers used to do that with foxes. Whether it really has any effect I do not know. I have my doubts. I do hope the coyote in the photo is left alone, it is just trying to get by, same as most living creatures.
Not sure of the wisdom of that restaurant throwing scraps to wild animals. It is teaching them to associate that location with food. What if some small dog or child wandered around outside and got attacked?
They think that probably contributed to the Azaria Chamberlain case. That was where a family was camping and a dingo went into a tent and took the baby. It was a notorious case here because the baby was never found and the mother was charged with murder and imprisoned with hard labour, till some of the clothes were found years later outside a dingo lair. But people at the campsite regularly used to feed the dingos scraps.
There have since been a couple of other attacks on children at resorts where tourists fed scraps to the dingos so it has been banned.
Granty, I would imagine as long as you stay on the main road you would be right there. If you broke down, you could wait it out for a passing motorist.
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Post by DADDY O on Dec 17, 2016 22:15:43 GMT
The area where the Coyotes are is high fenced and impassable to children or man.......but let's flip that coin over to its other side. If they didn't get scraps, would they die of starvation & thirst? Or would they be more likely to hunt down the little children? Just don't feed the Bears. Damn, I wish Lola hadn't mentioned the emoticons......I feel pressured to use them now.
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Post by granty on Dec 18, 2016 19:09:52 GMT
Talking about Dingos, Coyotes, Bears, etc. We've got a fox that come into my street every night, my dog 'Milo' sits looking out the window for it and goes ballistic when he sees it. The urban fox is very common in all towns in the UK now. I had two pet rabbits go missing from the back garden a few year back, and I never clicked what happened to them for a while.
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Post by DADDY O on Dec 18, 2016 19:46:33 GMT
I would either rent or buy a live animal trap and trap him. Then I would take him over to Andy's house and let him loose in his back yard.
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Post by granty on Dec 19, 2016 20:46:14 GMT
I must be getting a bit soft in my old age, there was a time when I would of set a trap for it. But now I got security cameras on my house so I can keep an eye out for it. I've even got the ap on my phone.
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Post by sherri on Dec 19, 2016 21:33:30 GMT
I suspect the thought was that if people feed wild animals scraps, those animals will tend to seek out places where humans are, rather than be wary and stay away from them. And a young child or baby looks like a small animal for food. Me-I would leave the coyote & fox alone to get on with their lives, rather than try trapping them. But then again I am not a farmer.
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Post by DADDY O on Dec 19, 2016 22:04:15 GMT
We call them Ranchers Sherri......
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Post by lola on Dec 22, 2016 1:54:51 GMT
We went to California first time (in fact first time every anywhere in the US of A) in May this year, as an extended stayover option, after our Alaska/Canada tour. I really do like Calif a lot, and it is the most interesting place. So variable. Of course, went to Disneyland too, and as we met the long lost rellies, they took us to San Diego, and found along the drive there, how dry the place looked, as they were having a drought, so far 2 years into it. Intend to go back and spend more time discovering more of California. Love the photos folks, gives more perspective of how the areas can vary in nature.
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Post by DADDY O on Dec 27, 2016 18:00:53 GMT
Granty - How did you like driving on the right side of the road over here?
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