St Francis Street Fair and Pet Blessing

Photos from Sunday:

Pet Blessing
 

Line of Dog owners
 

Girl Dog
 

Dachshunds
 

 

tough
 

wolf twins
 

twins
 

two dogs
 

white puppy
 

Giant white dogs
 

Raccoon: The Other Dark Meat

Natural foods, unprocessed and untouched by modern production methods, are all the rage nowadays. This could prove to be the perfect food for urban locavores intent on harvesting a reliable source of wild game.

Some excerpts from an article in The Kansas City Star:

"Raccoon, which made the first edition of The Joy of Cooking in 1931, is labor-intensive but well worth the time, aficionados say. Raccoons go for $3 to $7 — each, not per pound — and will feed about five adults. Four, if they’re really hungry. Those who dine on raccoon meat sound the same refrain: It’s good eatin’.

As long as you can get past the “ick” factor that it’s a varmint, more often seen flattened on asphalt than featured on a restaurant menu. (One exception: French restaurant Le Fou Frog served raccoon about a dozen years ago, a waiter said.) Eating varmints is even in vogue these days, at least in Britain. The New York Times reported last week that Brits are eating squirrels with wild abandon.

“Raccoon meat is some of the healthiest meat you can eat,” says Jeff Beringer, a furbearer resource biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation. “During grad school, my roommate and I ate 32 coons one winter. It was all free, and it was really good. If you think about being green and eating organically, raccoon meat is the ultimate organic food,” with no steroids, no antibiotics, no growth hormones.

And when people eat wild meat, Beringer says, “it reminds the modernized society — people who usually eat food from a plastic wrapper — where food comes from."

In Ohio, raccoon season ends on the last day of January, and there's no daily bag limit, so get 'em while the gettin's good. You'll need a valid hunting or trapping license unless you're having problem raccoon interactions with your pets, or are eradicating dangerous raccoons from your dwelling.

The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources says, "Raccoons are well adapted to urban living. Raccoon damage typically involves raiding gardens, upsetting trash cans and taking up residence in chimneys, attics or other unwanted areas. Control is not difficult, but requires persistence.

Nuisance or sick raccoons may be trapped without a permit, but it is illegal to live trap and relocate them to a new area. In order to prevent the possible spread of raccoon diseases in Ohio, all live trapped raccoons must be released again on the homeowner's property or humanely euthanized."

Once that's done, you'll find some tasty raccoon recipes here. Or head down to the Mercantile Library and see if they have a first edition of "The Joy of Cooking".

Cleveland Allows City Chicken Coops

...The new law would change that, requiring just 5 feet of side setback and 18 inches of rear setback for coops and hives. But there are new constraints too: The law would limit the number of chickens to one per 800 square feet of property (that's six chickens for the average 4,800-square-foot lot) and one beehive per 2,400 square feet. Roosters would get the boot completely unless you've got a full acre. ("It's not gender discrimination," says Brown. "They tend to be noisier than their female colleagues.")

Perhaps the most contentious changes: licensing and building department requirements, lot diagramming and new fees to pay for the added oversight. Brown says, however, that if coops are kept smaller than 8 feet high and 30 feet square, building fees can be waived. But there still would be a permit fee of around $40.

City Chickens

And no, this article has nothing to do with that Cincinnati Specialty: pork on a stick, rather it is about the growing number of people who are raising chickens in urban areas despite the fact that it is illegal according to many zoning ordinances.

Return of the Crows

A huge flock of crows was in around Music Hall for the past few days. Today they are gone. There must have been a few thousand of them. Are these large flocks in the city a new phenomenon? I am wondering if suburban development has pushed them from the country to the city?

This article in USA today says that these flocks are an increasing problem in some cities in the midwest. Some cities have resorted to poison or bright lights to move them.

Crows live fairly solitary lives for most of the year. In the winter, they form large flocks that forage for food in fields during the day. At dusk, they roost together in warmer urban areas that are near water and have plenty of trees and enough illumination so they can spot owls, their main predator.

Once crows find a place that offers those amenities, they come back year after year. Evicting them is hard. "You can't make them stop doing this," says Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y.

Dead Animals

Nature can be easily found in the city, and not just plant life. On any given day in town, we will can see animals such as squirrels, possum, earthworms, insects, horses, fish, birds, as well as dogs and cats. We even had a problem with raccoons for a while here. Unfortunately there are also rats, which at night can sometimes be seen scurrying from storm drain to sewer drain.

Growing up, I remember seeing dead animals many times. For example, I remember seeing a frozen cat disappear into the dirt as spring started. It is part of learning about the cycles of life. I also remember seeing maggots for the first time in my life on a dead mole.

Below is a photo of a dead rat, found at the edge of the Findlay Market Playground. My son looked for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders and ran back to play.

 

The fact that today is election day is pure coincidence.

Daddy Zebra