[Durham INC] IMPORTANT CORRECTION~ Guest Column: Neighborhood listservs are the owl's meow!

[TheOcean1 at aol.com]

Great article from Betty Hodges!  But one correction should be issued~  
560-4600 is the non-emergency line to 911.... not the number below.
 
Hope the N&O will issue a correction. 
 
Thanks, Bill
 
In a message dated 10/8/2009 11:34:33 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
bwatu at yahoo.com writes:

Guest  Column: Neighborhood listservs are the owl's meow! 
By Betty Hodges, Durham  News, 07 Oct 2009

Durham's vigorous neighborhoods keep current with  their listservs. They 
provide a way to keep up with everything from garbage  pickup schedules and 
reports of break-ins to appeals for advice on  babysitters, plumbers, 
electricians and the like.

It's not surprising  that most listservs can be entertaining, inevitably 
taking on the flavor of  the neighborhood of their origin.

The Duke Park Neighborhood  Association listserv has been very 
animal-conscious from its inception. A lost  cat can engender innumerable postings, from 
first report of a sighting to the  eventual joyous return of the beloved 
feline. And users learn quickly that you  don't call 911, or even 560-6500, 
the non-emergency number, for help in  rescuing a cat from a tree.

"We don't do cats," Sgt. Gunter, the  popular and witty Division 2B lawman, 
tells a petitioner from the  get-go.

In no time at all an interested onliner neighbor chimes in,  "Try Animal 
Rescue."

Another online neighbor sounds off, "I think that  [to get a cat out of a 
tree] you call your cat and tell it to come down. If  the cat got up the cat 
can get down."

Once I became entranced with the  cacophony of an owl courtship in the 
woods up the street. A series of familiar  calls was followed immediately by 
what sounded like a raucous cat fight. It  got to be a recognizable sequence: 
owl calls followed by cat fight. It became  a regular evening serenade. 
Finally I appealed to the listserv for  illumination and got the instant answer: 
the melody I'd been hearing was the  mating call and the apparent catfght 
was the sound of the actual coupling once  the call-and-response chorus was 
successful. OK, so owls are distinctly vocal  lovers.

But the clincher came the other night when I came upon an  informative 
posting from a turtle expert in answer to a query from a turtle  espert in 
answer to a query about the requirements for keeping a turtle as  schoolroom pet.

"Turtles make terrible, terrible, terrible pets," no  matter whether their 
owners are forgetful children or well-meaning but  uninformed adults, wrote 
turtle rescuer Kim Willis.

To start with, she  said, turtles, as do all reptiles, carry salmonella so 
it's not all that smart  for people to handle them. Additionally, in 
captivity turtles develop a  variety f illness and require great care.

Given access to the outdoors  they will obey a powerful homing instinct and 
strike out for home, only to be  killed by a car or other vehicle in the 
nearest street, she  elaborated.

Willis reports further that the once-great North Carolina  turtle 
population is in such danger that only four native species, the common  snapper, 
eastern and striped mud turtles and the common musk turtle are not on  the 
protected list. Besides destruction of habitat and thle onging threat of  road 
vehicles, illegal pet trade has diminished the state's turtle population  in 
the harvest of common snapper turtles, among others, to feed the Asian  
appetite for their flesh.

Bored? Just open your listserv and smoke over  the  postings.


_______________________________________________
Durham  INC Mailing  List
list at durham-inc.org
http://www.durham-inc.org/list.html





Bill  Anderson

REALTOR®
SEAGROVES REALTY
_TheOcean1 at aol.com_ (mailto:TheOcean1 at aol.com) 
_www.SeagrovesRealty.com_ (http://www.seagrovesrealty.com/) 
Cell    919.282.8209
Fax    919.220.2058   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.deltaforce.net/mailman/private/inc-list/attachments/20091008/9cfcf764/attachment.htm>