look at me. listen to me. this is directed at americans for the record. the reason you think North American animals are boring is because you live here. there are so many cool and beautiful animals here. we have beavers. we have wolves. we have moose. we have sea lions. we have armadillos. we have mountain lions. we have alligators. we have foxes. we have bighorn sheep. we have manatees. we have bears. we have ocelots. we have BISON. and thatâs not even touching on the birds! or the turtles! or the snakes! we have amazing beautiful and diverse wildlife right here and it deserves to be appreciated and protected
Possums are the only North American marsupial, they eat ticks and keep down cases of Lyme, and they can't carry rabies! We only have two native boa constrictors; the rubber boa and the rosy boa! Bison and the American Alligator are LITERAL MEGAFAUNA LEFT OVER FROM PREHISTORY!
When I was a teenager, I was hiking with my family on Cape Cod. I was not a willing participant to these hikes; I would've preferred to be back at our rental cabin with a book.
But my parents were birders, so hiking we did go.
And about a mile up the trail, a woman came rushing up to us, clutching her binoculars to her chest. "Come quickly," she said, with a British accent. "You have to see this!"
This is what birders are like. They are as excited about a life bird as any fan would be spotting their favorite celebrity. You have to see, you have to.
So my parents rushed off with her, and I plodded along behind them.
To find a cluster of Brits huddled in a bird blind, staring at..
A blue jay.
A goddamn blue jay.
And I was a teenager, but I knew better then to mouth off in front of my mom. So I nodded, and smiled, and bit my tongue, until an elderly man looked at me with tears in his eyes, and said, "Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?"
And I stopped. And looked at it. The way they were. As if it were new. And damned if they weren't right.
I think of that, to this day. That sometimes, you need to step back, and see the world as if it were new. Strange, and haunting, and beautiful, so beautiful.
Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?
on that note, please enjoy some of my north american wildlife photography:)
I'm no skilled wildlife photographer but I do love me some marmots so here is my contribution :)
I'm from the Netherlands. I was talking to a friend who's from Louisiana. She asked me if I'd ever seen a wild hedgehog. So I said "Yeah I see them all the time, my parents have a large garden and you can hear them rustling in the bushes at dusk. But you mostly see them dead by the road tho" and she was so amazed. She loved hedgehogs and really wanted to see one one day. Mind you, a week before she had told me about the aligators that frequent her yard... It's all about what we percieve as 'normal animals' due to where we live.
