And the saga continues.... I actually spoke to the girl on the white horse on my bike ride this morning's ride, and she was actually really nice. She was by herself, and I started to slow down to stop when I saw her, and she said I was OK to keep going, that her horse was fine, and that "it's the other one". I asked if the other one was real jumpy, and she said yeah, and the lady that rides them might fall off. A nosey horse An overdramatic horse
I really wish birds, rabbits, and lizards would stop running out in front of me on my bike rides. Today, I went past a lizard on the opposite side of the sidewalk, and instead staying on that side, it turned around and run right in front of me. I also had a rabbit shoot out of bush less than 5 feet in front of me a couple weeks ago, and before that a Grackle dove out of a tree and flew right in front of my face.
When I was driving home through rush hour traffic today, I saw a plucky and incredibly stupid box turtle crossing 5 lanes of rush hour traffic. Ordinarily I would stop my car to rescue such a turtle and move him to safety so he could live to pass on his genes of stupidity, but with the rush hour traffic I decided to not make a bigger pile of squish in the road.
Turtles will do that to go lay eggs, and a fair amount of time they get run over. I've moved a few off the road over the years.
(snip) Driving along the road in February of 2000, Matt Aresco, a doctoral graduate student in herpetology at Florida State University, noticed some dead turtles in the roadway. Stopping to take a look, he spent several hours moving remains from the roadway and, in that one afternoon, collected 90 carcasses from the eastern side of highway 27. Deciding to take action, Aresco and a group of volunteers began spending countless hours monitoring the stretch of roadway, transporting turtles across, and petitioning for a permanent solution. In the first 40 days, before they were able to construct a temporary fence, they discovered 439 dead turtles. In the first five years of monitoring, volunteers hand-collected, measured, and transported 8,800 turtles across the road; in the same time period, 11,178 dead animals and reptiles were found. With a 98% mortality rate, this area of roadway had the highest documented road mortality this area of roadway had the highest documented road mortality (for animals) of any in the world. Temporary fences were constructed to divert animals–mostly turtles–to a culvert that ran under the roadway. These fences helped to reduce the number of casualties; however, some turtles were able to climb over, and the fences had to be replaced because of damage by animals, flooding, and general wear-and-tear. After years of petitioning, approval for construction of the Ecopassage — consisting of a solid polymer wall with two additional culverts under the roadway and at a cost of $3.4 million — was granted through federal stimulus money. The Ecopassage gained federal media attention when a Senator from Oklahoma pointed it out as an example in a criticism of wasteful spending. The Ecopassage — often referred to as the “turtle tunnel” or “that damn turtle tunnel” by those with opposing views on the project — was completed in August 2010. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-jackson-ecopassage and, https://www.treehugger.com/how-turtle-tunnel-saving-lives-4861644
I can now report that out of all of the wild animals I have encountered on my bike rides, quails are the only ones who are actually smart to run away from me, instead of running right in front of me.
Years ago I had a quail or a pheasant land right on I-94 while I was doing about 80. Poor sucker........
Yikes. OK, maybe they aren't all as smart as the group I crossed paths with this morning. I ride down a paved trail, and one was on the trail, and the rest of his group was off to the side. The one on the trail ran across when it saw, and the rest of the group just stayed on the other side, probably waiting for me to go past.