pet gallery 3''totally animals''

My nephew has a snapping turtle.
Good luck with your turtle. You will have a turtle
guarding the broms.
Charleen

I love cocky, he is a beautiful bird, and the turtle is just so cute. I think you are right you may need a licence to keep him/her, I know in Queensland you need licences for everything and we are not allowed rabbits at all up here. When I went to sydney a few years ago, pet shops were selling rabbits everywhere, I was amazed, I thought it was an australia wide law, but later found out it was just here you can not have them.

Isn't that terrible. Anything to get your money.
Kids can't even enjoy a bunny rabbit.
Charleen

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't rabbits go crazy and destroy a lot of the native plant life in Australia? Isn't that the reason for the restriction? I thought I heard that in school.

Not sure about the turtle, though. I know that the small red-eared sliders are illegal here because they are so likely to carry salmonella. I think they also wreck the native ecosystems when they're turned out after people get tired of them. Poor little things.

it is so sad that people get these exotic pets then grow bored of them & dump them where they either die horribly because the conditions are all wrong or thrive & become exotic pests instead.
Rabbits, stoats, weasels, deer, pigs, cats & rats are all feral in NZ & cause a great deal of harm to the environment.
There are a few wild horses too but not as much an issue although the Kaimanawa herd is culled to keep them from spreading.
The St James herd just got a reprieve - it was going to be destroyed but those horses have been selectively managed with good stallions put in at strategic times to keep the gene pool diverse so they may run wild but they are far from feral.
People are often caught trying to smuggle NZ native birds & geckos out of the country - and since these are endangered species we take a pretty dim view of that...
I know the Aussies have the same trouble - their astonishing wildlife is vulnerable to imported pests & the same smuggling issues.

Wow. I hadn't realized that the number of pests was so great and that the problem extended also to New Zealand. I can see initially that people just didn't know the effects of their irresponsible acts, but in this day and age I don't understand why people continue to act as though there were no consequences to their actions.

So, dalfyre, are you saying that rabbits, stoats, weasels, deer, pigs, cats & rats didn't exist in New Zealand before being introduced? That's a "wild" concept. :-/

she is an absolute angel,so placid.i found her at the old mental institution ,where i used to work.id say she flew from the botanical gardens aivery abuot 1km away,when some' lame brain doo gooders'cut the wire.''fly free tame birdie''most birds there were from bequests.she coughs,sneezes,copies me when i hammer nails,rap dances on her back,using my finger to propel her around,she loves cheese and ice cream and an occasional shower

Oh my gosh. Look at that red!! I thought she was a Cockatoo, but do they have red like that? She's beautiful.

You learnt the right thing in school katie, about the rabbits and they are still a massive problem....In spring when we go to feed my horse early in the morning,he lives on a local farm, they are running all over the road, from one side to the other, you have to drive very slowly...there have been lots of attempts to eradicate them, but they don't work for long and some of the methods are not humane.
We have even sent pests to New Zealand..dalfyre will tell you about our possums.
We don't have stoats or weasels, we have camels, yes I am serious....it sounds funny but we want to exterminate the huge herds in the outback and the Arabs want to buy them.
So sell them I say....
dalfyre, I am glad that they have decided to manage those herds...I saw a doco on them a while back...I don't think that we are as organised as that yet.
Dianne

Oh my gosh . . . camels? Everything wants to live down under.

We have cycles of rabbits - lots of them jumping across the road in the spring, and then many fewer in the fall. Sadly, they are the food for the coyotes. We have opossums and raccoons and mountain beaver, but all those are native (except for the opossums). Lots of people keep llamas with their goats and sheep to protect them from the coyotes. But we don't have herds running wild.

And then you have so many cool native creatures. I was just watching something about koalas this weekend. They sleep something like 20 hours a day, I think. Now that's the life.

They also bite,katie.
I have a small scar on my wrist, because the one that I was nursing didn't want to go back onto the branch...had a tetanus shot, tho the doctor thought with all the eucalyptus leaves they eat, that they would have a very clean mouth..lol

Anthony she sounds very much like Charlie, she is addicted to hubby and follows him everywhere, she like maccas, pasta, twisties, and shortbread creams are her favourite bickie. Alas she hates every other person on the planet except hubby and she does not mind his brother (hubby is an identical twin) the bird knows the difference and will only go to the brother if hubby is not around lol.

Possums in NZ and Cane Toads in Aus are 2 of the greatest blunders ever made, very very sad for both countries :-(

Oh dear, those precious little ones bite? I guess that would be normal for a wild animal . . . and I HAVE noticed the size of their claws. I guess that endearing face hides some other traits.

Charlie is a beaut. Bird are so smart in some ways. How funny that she has identical twins to choose from!

Katie they are like any animal they mostly only bite when they are p*##$%d off lol...

At least they're predictable. These human animals sometimes bite for no reason. :-)

Katie - NZ only had two land mammals a short tail bat & a long tail bat until humans arrived a few hundreds of years ago.
Maori brought the Polynesian rat & dogs although the dogs were a food source for the humans & never became a pest.
The type went extinct once European settlers arrived with tastier food animals like sheep...
domestic animals are one thing but rabbits & possums introduced to create food or fur industries just went totally out of control.
Then they thought hmm lets try stoats etc to control the rabbits...
so the stoats & weasels came to paradise, lots of tasty rabbits & daft birds that not only nest on the ground but have lost the ability to fly...
we have lost so many bird species & many including our national symbol the Kiwi are critically endangered.
And it is ditto in Aussie in many respects although their birds etc did have snakes to contend with.
Something NZ hasn't got either, despite some trying to sneak in by hitchhiking in cargo.
By the way do you know how to tell the difference between a stoat & a weasel?

you can weasily tell because they are stoatally different...

The birds are beautiful. Too many folks trying to corrupt your paradise.
You have such beautiful exotic wildlife of your own. No need for more..

Isn't that such a sad story of creating more catastrophe by trying to fix the catastrophe you've already created.

I didn't think of ground-nesting birds being endangered. Yikes!! That's awful.

>>> on the stoat-joke. Actually I'd never heard the term stoats until this thread, so I had to go look them up. I guess that's what happens when you start out in Alaska . . .

They have their own problems up there.
I got a cousin who lives and works up there.
She loves it.

It's beautiful - and winters are too harsh for any critters except the native ones to survive for long . . .

does this fall under garden ornament category...

Yes!! And these - here's Honey Bunny with her dogs, Magic and Sahara. The neighbors are coming home . . .

What's a garden without a cat sitting/lying there somewhere..
What beautiful coats they all have Katie.
They are a credit to you...

Aw, thank you. They keep me out of trouble. One thing we do well here is eat . . . :-)

he,has only a face a mother could love.he doesnt like anyone.been like it all his life..one thing he does like is apple cores.

I don't know. I think he's pretty cute - and I'll bet he likes you . . .

Beautiful critters, you got.

Hi Katie,the pink parrot is a Galah and they are beauties Shell & g. The white ones are Sulpher crested Cockatoos. We do have quite a lot of pests, to name a few we have here, Flying Fox (Bats), Rabbits, Wild Horses (Brumbys), Cane Toads can't forget to name the Flies and Mozzies by the millions.
Overall I think we have more nice things than bad and wouldn't live any where else.
Cocko & Charlie.

Oh, what beauties.

I've heard the term Brumbies (love those words you all have!). But I've never heard of Mozzies. Gnats of some sort? I think I'm going to start using that term for the little nasties that we have that give us welts if we're outside at dusk.

Katie, mozzies are mosquitos there only small but they have a nasty bite.
Some of your critters would be Racoons, Sqhirrels and what else?

Are Cocko and Charlie related Helen? they are beauties.
Mozzies are good old fashioned bloody Mosquitoes, Katie
and are they a pest.
In my area we only have a few because the Council people spray all their breeding areas.
They do that because there is a flesh eating bug that the Mosquito can give you when they bite.
Not all of them mind you..lol...but it is very nasty, looks like an ulcer and it spreads if not treated...
Don't let that put you off coming to visit us....we can kill them all before you come...lol
Dianne

Here is my injured silkie "Ollie" had to have an op yesterday.Needs cage rest for 6 weeks,OMG,how am I going to survive 6 weeks,poor little fella......just bought a wooden playpen for him to use as a "cage"

Here is my injured silkie "Ollie" had to have an op yesterday.Needs cage rest for 6 weeks,OMG,how am I going to survive 6 weeks,poor little fella......just bought a wooden playpen for him to use as a "cage"

Here he is having a bit of R&R ,watching other dogs walk on HIS beach..........

Ahhh - mosquitoes. I live near a wetland in a Pacific Rain Forest, so we have a bunch of those. I've been hoping for a growing population of our little native bats, but so far only see one or two at dusk every now and then. Mozzies . . . Blood Mozzies is right. I need to get one of those hats with the corks hanging from it . . .

We have opossums, shrews, mice, voles, moles, squirrels, chipmunks, mountain beaver, nutria, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, deer, bobcats, cougars, bears in this area. Oh, and slugs. We grow slugs big. That's one of the most frustrating garden pests we have. Of course, I (being who I am) can't kill them. But I can toss them into the woods next to me. ;-)

On the other side of the Cascade Mountains, the eastern part of Washington state, it's desert. So I can drive from ocean to rain forest in an hour and then from rain forest to desert in 2 1/3 more hours. It's pretty diverse in this little section of the world.

Poor Ollie - what did he do? My Vana got hit by a car several years ago and had to be in a pen for weeks while her pelvis healed..

Mya, poor Ollie.
Charlie got into his log and has dyed his cone orange from the red soil we have here. I don't think it will come clean, will have to wait till he gets new feathers.
Dianne, no not related Cocko is my hubby's had her for over 30 years & Charlie is his daughter's just turned 4.

Gosh, I can't get over the colorful birds you all have just flying around . . . our native birds are not nearly that colorful.

Mya my heart is sad for Ollie, I hope he is well very very soon, you are going to be lost without him running around.

Did anyone else have problems with the photos yesterday?
I can't see hel's, mya's or katie's.
No image.
Mya, I hope that Ollie recovers quickly,poor little chap.
Dianne

Dianne, I'm receiving the pix.
Charlie having a shower.

That's weird. I can't see any pictures starting with hel's picture of Cocko and Charlie on 2/10. And I could see them yesterday. It just says, "Click the image for an enlarge view." where the picture should be, but there's no image to click!?

Ah, it looks like people in other forums are having problems with this, as well.

This message was edited Feb 11, 2010 4:18 PM