Can those living today live forever?

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And, my friendly suggestion is... keep speaking.

I feel that too many people have this strange idea that extending our existences into infinity would somehow become boring. However, your obvious concern for other species (that we share this planet with) does not cease, if you become immortal. Quite the contrary - it gives you even more time to care for, and "bring along" other, differently endowed living entities.

I look forward to when I will be able to "chat" with a possum (and some opossums), whatever "chat" might eventually mean in that context, and read their posts, here, on WP.

What do the farmers do about the cockatoos that eat their crops? I bet that many birds can take a good sized portion of it. Considering their size.

Here, they only exist in capitivity, both the pink ones and the Sulfer Crested variety. I liked the one I saw at the mall but I have heard they, sometimes, don't like to be kept as pets so I don't know if it's a good idea to have one. I would like to have them in the wild here. We have wild snowy egrets but they are really shy birds, storklike, they like this area because of the water.

They fly in groups at night, like geese, sometimes I see their faint ghostly forms flying in the indigo overhead. Very tough to see and I have to be outside at night and looking up at the right moment. This species doesn't come around the house or people, not in my neighborhood (I live in a suburb, it's quite a mix of department stores, restaraunts, movie theatres, apartments, houses, and wild places for, mostly, skunks, possums, birds, rabbits, squirrels, toads, and spiders/ insects (of course).

My neighborhood has so much wildlife in it these days, it's amazing how much there is now. Living so close to the shops, stores, etc. I wish we had flamingoes here. We have seagulls even though I am no where near the sea.

When I lived in Florida I fed bread to the seagulls and that was fun because they would catch the bread in mid air when I tossed it, and there were so many of them, circling. I like being in the center of the seagulls, them swirling around me in a Skylla of excitment.

The seagulls here (now I am in the central part of the US) aren't like that. They do not travel in flocks. I see a few in parking lots but they ignore me completely and have no interest in people at all, nothing like the ones I encountered in Florida.
Another type of bird we have bunches of: pigeons.
All the bird populations have significantly increased because of various projects the government has implemented to help wildlife populations recover.

The Canadian Geese are the newest inhabitants. They are much further south now. I am a good ways away from the Canadian border, it's to the north.

I never saw the geese growing up, now they are literally everywhere, pretty amazing. The park I go jogging in has lots of hazelnut trees and they enjoy eating hazel nuts after they have fallen on the ground. There are hundreds in that park during fall, searching for for food.


Birds really like water and getting a bath. The parrots exist as pets here, or in zoos. I like Amazon Parrots, African Greys and Quakers.

I like watching the birds in the backyard after I put food in the feeders, a starling will get on the feeder and use his beak to swoop at the birdseed so that if gets swept off the feeder's ledge and onto the ground where the other birds gather to eat it. The alpha starling's job is to dislodge the food from the feeder for the other bird. Sometimes several birds argue about which one will get that job.

The yard squirrels are cute, sweet and fun to watch when they try to get food from the feeder. Their back legs stay on the branch above while they try, with their front paws and head to get food from the feeder, all the time it moves and spins. It's easier to get the squirrels some dried corn cobs, they really like those. A nearby store sells them.

We have bats that fly at night too. Sometimes I see them around the lights in parking lots and I think they are birds. When I see one I am surprised because I think it's a bird but I know the birds do not fly at night so then I figure it must be a bat. Since they are up by the lights and so far away, they look just like starlings so it's not easy to tell.



I feel the same way about one species of bird around here. They are not pests, there is only one thing they do that I object to and then I feel bad about objecting. I have a tree in my front yard and the birds like to eat it's pollen. They roost in the tree to eat and as soon as they leave they leave droppings on my car. I wouldn't mind if this happened every so often but it happens a lot. I have to wash the car more often because of all this and it gets tedious. That's the only time I don't like the birds, when this happens and I wish they would avoid my yard entirely and stay in the pear trees.

That is what I like about birds, squirrels too. I've seen individuals feeding squirrels in parks, right out of their hands. Some of the geese around here will let themselves be hand fed too.



Because of what they need to eat, they would have to be bossy to find enough food considering they are good sized.
Sometimes I see hawks perched on lights above along the highway silently watching the traffic flowing. I wonder what it is they think of all the cars zooming underneath them? Quite a curious sight for them but they like sitting on those lights. I have seen them in different ones in different locations perched and watching. It must be a hawk conspiracy.



Our possums are different. Opossum looks strange so I just call all of them "possum" because the "O" is silent. Possum looks more accurate. Our possums babies are adorably cute. The adults are stranger looking, especially at night running down the road, which is when I see them. The rest of the time the possums stay hidden. I see the baby possums only on television. I assume there's baby possums around here somewhere because I see the adults at night. When I was a kid, I saw a possum one night at my grandmother's. I had a flashlight and shown it in some grass because her dogs were barking and there was a possum there, unmoving with it's mouth opened, teeth showing and eyes glazed. I told my grandmother I thought it was a dead possum and she said possums do that and not to worry, it was fine. I didn't believe her because I couldn't understand how something that looked so dead could really be alive, I thought she was surely mistaken about that. By the time she got to where I was in the yard, I shown the flashlight again and the possum had already vanished into the impending darkness.




Whenever dry pet food is somewhere outside skunks venture into the neighborhood overnight to eat it. I know this because I can still smell them in the morning.


I do too and I enjoy watching them/interacting with them. The wild animals in my suburb are quite untrusting. They still have a strong, natural fear even when fed on a regular basis. There's a place in the city that has tamer geese that will take food from people's hands, even Cheetos. Once, I fed them some Cheetos.
The geese in the park are the untrusting sort too and do not want to be fed.



Possums are either the only or one of the very few species of marsupial on the North American Continent. Ours look a little different, smaller ears, smaller eyes, fuzzier, fatter bodies, but they still have the pouches and the joeys. I have never touched one of our possums. I would like to pet a Wollabee. I just saw a Wollabee at the fair. A woman in one of the exhibit buildings had one in her arms and was talking. So many people were in front of me, I couldn't get close enough to touch the Wollabee but I bet it was soft like a rabbit or a chinchilla.


Owls are the villians in many children's stories because of this reason! I like owls, their eyes turn night into day.


Do you have any koalas nearby? It's nice that the animals are so tame and trusting so they allow you to interact.


After the humans find immortality, next step is they will make the possums immortal too! I incorporated this topic into that of the Topic Thread so we are all on topic now.


It's nice of you to answer, most people get so bored with animals and are not that interested in conversation about them. You are one of the very few I have ever encountered who likes to discuss them at great length and in vivid detail.

With the outbreaks of everything, the pandemics, and natural disasters? Hell no.

Since you mentioned it... Time to rethink your habits and watch out for germs.

Cockroaches hitch a ride into US with troops: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oc ... a-wildlife
Here we go again. Continents collide, germs get re-mixed, mass extinctions...
Just wash your hands whenever you can, don't rub your eyes or put your fingers in your mouth...

Oh -- and beware of any forced inoculations. I'll pull my kids out of school first.

please forgive my ret*d attitude.
i am a small minded person.

the farmers can do not much. of course they can not kill them, so they use scare tactics like smoke bombs or loud cartridge shots sounds.

it is not common for there to be literally plagues of them. but it does happen.
i know the size of the flock where the cockatoos that come here derive from.

when i drive past a local school, i see hundreds of them on the playground after the kids have gone back inside after lunch.
i know if i give the cockatoos that come here all they wish to eat, they will invite their friends and then it would be a fluttering mess of cockatoos everywhere.

in the wild (where no humans provide food), a flock of say 200 cockatoos will break up into little groups of about 8, and fly all over the place looking for food.
if they find a good source of tasty food, somehow they communicate it to about 8 of their friends that night.

the next day, there are nine cockatoos that are prowling around.
as soon as i go inside, they all fly down and chase the other birds away.

one way of dealing with it is to put food out for all nine cockatoos, and more, so they will all get full and fly away and the rest can continue to feed.

but if i do that, then the next day, there is 30 cockatoos.
if i continued to feed all of them, then eventually the entire flock of 300 would be frantically trying to get into my yard.
1 cockatoo will eat a third of a loaf of bread in one sitting if it gets it's way.

if i put a whole loaf out there (which i did once as a test), then 3 cockatoos will all devour it within 15 minutes.

300 would need 100 loaves of bread per day.
it would be a nightmare of white feathers out there if i did that.

it is unfortunate that new cockatoos come in exponentially large numbers when you feed just a few.


they are social birds by nature, so keeping one in a cage is very cruel i think.
even though they "acclimatise", they are prevented from living in such freedom as they instinctively desire.
in fact, it is gruesomely cruel now i think of it to confine say a cockatoo to a small cage.

they are much more expansive than us. it is nothing for a cockatoo to fly directly within minutes, to a place i also take minutes to reach by car, and a place i would take 1/2 hour to reach on foot.
they are so mobile in 3 dimensions. they are used to that freedom.

to wrap a cage around a bird like that, is relative to putting a human in a snug fitting coffin and burying them deep down with a little infrared camea set so the "owners" can see what is going on.

food and air are supplied and you are going to certainly live your normal life's length in that coffin.

so maybe divide the volume of their potential sky by the volume of the birdcage, and then you have a number which denominates the degree of degradation to which these birds lives are reduced in such an environment as a cage.




i think i would be bewildered in your native animal environment.
i just know the animals that i have direct contact with and i do not know ones i see that do not see me.

it does sound like the initiatives that were exacted to be beneficial to wildlife are working.
maybe next season you will see little goslings that were born in your area.
maybe you can stop on your jog and get to know them.

what is their absolute favourite food?
if you have some on you while you are talking to a goose that is paying attention to you, then you may be able to make a bond of trust and expectation in that goose

(this sounds like some woman telling her girlfriend how to treat her new boyfriend)





unfortunately i think they are coming here for a feed and a bath and a fun game. blasted things! they have almost outsmarted me. but if i find a scent that they hate and add it to the water i squirt, then that will be the next step in this cold war.


yes when i hang seed bells from a tree, a head parrot (rainbow lorrikeet) will land and bite off chunks for his flock to feed upon on the ground.
after he has bitten off what he thinks is enough, he delicately prunes the bell for his favourite seeds. he is a good little boy.

if i go inside and get a telephone call from the office with an emergency i have to deal with for 30 mins, then when i go back out, there are 12 cockatoos all on the ground under the destroyed seed bell (that they destroyed), and there are no other birds on the lawn. it should take small parrots a few days to eat a seed bell, but 2 cockatoos will rip it to shreds in minutes.




it is very interesting how you understand what you are seeing in animal nature. nost people could not assess it that way.


it kind of makes me very sad for animals to see how much effort they make to get such a small reward.
humans are spoilt very badly.

if i am late home and my possums have not been fed then every skeric of seed and other food is gone when i get home.

they "lick the floor" for their sustenance if needed. and it is needed often for most animals.

i feel very blessed to be able to come home with loads of foods that i particularly enjoy, and i feel very sad for my little loves that are dependent on me to give them nice stuff, or eat leaves.
when the leaves are gone, just sit in a branch of a tree very hungry and heading toward possible death.
not when i live here they do not.
i will always make the lives of animals that trust me and come to me very much easier.



i do not have any thing to say about bats. i have never thought about them in any way. i do not want to cut this part of your post out of my reply, but i must admit i have no thought about bats.



i know that my cockatoo visitors are not pests individually.
i never look at one and think "you are a pest".
but collectively and impersonally i think they are they are.

my car is inside a garage and i have no problems of excremental slurrs across the paintwork.




well there is someone pushing my doorbell button so i wil blasted well have to curtail this post too.

i do not get enough free time to talk because sonia is here.

crackatoa is yet to be relived (she is bipolar and cranky because i am slow to answer the door). "the door never asked me a question" i will say when i let her in.
she may roundhouse handbag me.
she is wild.
i will get back to this i must go

What's that supposed to mean.