Wallaby Lost in Minnesota

Minn. man finds his AWOL wallaby
http://news.yahoo.com/s/a...NRExEa_GGxhooQVAyVT3tiBIF

Wouldn't you expect to see a wallaby in Minnesnowta?

We have a Wallabys in Columbia Heights.  I've seen many things leaving there after a night of consumption.

Except a kangaroo.  I guess.  I'm not sure.

I hear they can be pretty mean.

They like hanging out in the cemetery up the road.

They walk through neighbors yards and stuff, but don't get too close. Maybe they see me shooting my bow in our yard everyday and figure they better stay away from me. One of our Pastors had one get stuck in his garage though.

In December I noticed a flock gathering in the field behind our house so I snapped this shot of ~16. A week later we counted 42.

We see them quite a bit around here but I've never seen as many together as then. And stroh's right, as  odd as that sounds, the "acclimated" ones can be quite nasty.

Nice pic, Fuzzy!

I wouldn't necessarily say that the acclimated turkeys are nastier than those in the wild.  I think it's just that they have become more accustomed to people but not so much that their natural instincts have been tamed.  From what I have observed on an overall spectrum, people see that they (any wild animal) are adapting to the their environment and have a bit of a pet mentality.  "Oh, aren't they cute" or whatever.  "Let's see if they let me get close" seems like a brilliant idea.  Then they have a false sense of security when the wild animal allows them to take half a dozen steps toward them.  Unless someone is particularly interested and studied in animals and their habitats and behaviors, most tend not to recognize the warning signals the wild animal may be giving them, either, but rather consider them to be cute antics or some such thing.  (I'm not saying that someone that is studied on them is 100% immune to attacks but certainly have a smaller likelihood of such things happening.)

I've mentioned before that we had feeders in our backyard that deer would come to and that I was able to go out there to fill the feeders while they were out there.  I would have been able to be within 5 feet of them if I had wanted to be (or if I had let them), so I'm definitely not against getting closer to animals in the wild.  Just that over time I've come to know that even a flick of an ear can mean you're pushing to far.  Because others don't necessarily realize that, they can't "show" the animal that they don't mean to endanger them.  At that point, a squirrel most likely would run away (although, if you get them at a time where they feel cornered, or close to a next with young ones, or some such thing, I'm sure they would attack), a raccoon or turkey would be more like to defend themselves in more situations.