General Chat

It sounds like that T V Brocklehurst is about as popular over there as the Pommie B******** who released rabbits in Victoria in 185 whatever!

Possum is delicious- actually there is a company
in Tasmania exporting 1000's of the pests to the Asian gourmet market.

When we first went to Canada I was astounded at the variety of colours in the squirrel population.

No, we have plenty of the grey bushy tailed tree rats, its the native little red fellers that are going to be extinct soon.

You can keep your possums.

Although....what do they taste like.....?

Sorry to hear you are running out of squiggles over there!

Allow me to send you a container load of Brush-Tail Possums to replace them.

My treat!

xxxxx mick

I'll keep an eye on the rain barrel ...

Sounds like those black tail road kills might be acceptable after all.

If you can fill a bin liner with them, its serious cash.

AnnGG --

They seem to come in many variants, those greys. This one has many colours:

http://www.axis-of-aevil.net/img/2002_05/squirrel_nut_side.jpg


Aha:

http://www.uksafari.com/greysquirrels.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Special features: The grey squirrel is a native of north-east America. Its range there stretches from Quebec down through New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

It was first recorded in Britain in the 1820s, but they were not released into the wild until 1876 when allegedly a chap named T. V. Brocklehurst liberated a pair in Cheshire.

Why they were released is still a bit of a mystery. The most likely reason is that it fitted in with the Victorians' ideal of reshaping all aspects of the world, and it became the fashionable thing to do. At that time very few people were aware of the damage that this might cause to native wildlife.

...

Grey squirrels can also carry the squirrel parapox virus which is fatal to our native red squirrels. Grey squirrels rarely die from the disease because they've developed antibodies.

...

>>>>> The grey squirrel frequently has patches of reddish-brown coloured fur, and we often get asked if this is the product of cross breeding with red squirrels. It isn't. In fact grey squirrels are more often half grey and half brown. To add further confusion there are also some colonies of black squirrels, and we've also received sightings of white grey squirrels in Kent, Sussex and Surrey.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Pretty much everything you would want to know about grey squirrels there!

Oh no Ann
lol Jenxx

I do have a knack of murdering a good thread - just can't help it!!!!

I have a cute baby squirrel in my back garden - he's not totally grey though - he has quite a bit of red on his coat and I'm beginning to wonder, as he;s not the first with this colouring that I've noticed, if the greys have co-habited with the reds somewhere along the line!! When I was a child we only ever saw red squirrels but some aristocrat apparently imported some greys - pillock!!!

We have lots of poxy squirrels here. The grey ones carry it but are immune and the reds catch it and die. The greys were an import from America. We did have a bounty on Greys nationwide once over, but now it is localised.

Where I live, it's £5 for a grey squirrel tail. We are one of the last remaining red squirrel strongholds in the whole of the UK. So if you come across any spare grey tails.....roadkill is fine with me. Or rain barrel, whatever.

The Post is much above the Sun, I think. Your Sun is like our Suns. ;) Our Sunshine girls have to have their tops on, though.

The Post and the Telegraph are the pair, I think. Conrad's papers here were littered with reprints from the Telegraph, especially the dotty animal stories you Brits are so fond of. That penchant was how I found out about squirrel pox having come to my town, and correctly diagnosed my poxy squirrel -- only the 9th reported case! And trapped him and took him for 6 weeks' treatment (had to be kept in over winter because the pox, like mange, had taken a lot of his fur).

Say mean things about my squirrel obsession if you like, but Rat Ear was my squirrely friend. He thought my house was his house, and I once caught him about to bury a peanut in my VCR. I never had the heart to tell him that his mother, Rat Girl, had been found drowned in my rain barrel. Lesson: always put an upright 2x4 in your rain barrel so thirsty wildlife can get out.

I don't even think about the baby racoon who drowned in my inflatable 9-foot swimming pool ...

Oh - so the National Post is a bit like The Sun here then.....

Fair comment!

We used to have the false mediums act, but it was repealed last month and replaced with the consumer protection act, which has made every psychic and medium here display a sign or notice to the effect that it is for entertainment only.

Not before time IMHO.

Eldrick, Eldrick, Eldrick. The National Post??

The National Post was the flagship of the Conrad Black empire. Along with the Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post.

We do not take anything published in the National Post as truth unless confirmed elsewhere.

And even when its facts are correct, we do not assume that it has not omitted other crucial facts or otherwise put a huge slant on whatever the story is that was not warranted by the facts as a whole.

We also consider that this mother had a huge grudge against the local school authorities to start with, and so we might question the accuracy of her report of what the school authorities said:

"I challenged them and asked if the other children in the class with autism exhibited these behaviours. They said, 'Oh yes, all the time.' But they were not reported to the CAS because they didn't have the psychic's tip."

The National Post will take, or invent, every available opportunity to rail against the "nanny state" and just about every other sign of social progress. No one I know would use it for anything other than cat box lining.

I don't like to have opinions without knowing all the relevant facts, but I think the authorities might have been acting on the employee's obvious concerns about the girl, which *did* have a possible basis in reality, regardless of what other basis they might have had.


I am absolutely taking your point about the psychic. Clearly she intended some action to be taken on her words, or she would not have uttered them. It's unfortunate that she wasn't just a tad more specific, or some kind of action might lie against her. Clever of her. And vile, in every respect.


http://www.canlii.org/ca/sta/c-46/sec365.html

Criminal Code
PART IX: OFFENCES AGAINST RIGHTS OF PROPERTY
False Pretences

Pretending to practise witchcraft, etc.

365. Every one who fraudulently

(a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,
(b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or
(c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found,

is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.


And I just wish some charges would be laid. Imagine the public outcry if they were ...

Huh! They once were.

http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1987/1987rcs1-310/1987rcs1-310.html

"The Municipal Court of Montréal convicted appellant of fortune telling, contrary to s. 323(b) of the Criminal Code which provides that "Every one who fraudulently...undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes... is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction". She testified at trial that she enjoyed special powers to predict the future, but the judge did not believe her."

Hahaha. Silly judge. ;)

The Supreme Court of Canada agreed with him.

It must be pointed out that other children were displaying the same behaviour.....what tipped this one was the revelations of a psychic.

None of the other children who displayed the same behaviour were subjected to the same investigations.

From the National Post article :

"I challenged them and asked if the other children in the class with autism exhibited these behaviours. They said, 'Oh yes, all the time.' But they were not reported to the CAS because they didn't have the psychic's tip."

I dont imply too much criticism of the authorities. My criticism -nay, contempt and disgust - is reserved for the excuse for a human being that can spout such total unadulterated rubbish just to make a buck.

Oh, I'm not thinking she might have been right! Not by anything other than huge coincidence ... or deception and cunning.

There was some possible ground for suspecting abuse already -- the girl's behaviour.

Had that not been the case, I would have fired the school employee in question. Well ... maybe sent her on a training course.

Who knows, so much could have happened that's not in the article. The employee could already have been concerned about the girl, and the "psychic" got enough out of her, as psychics do, to make the guess, and the employee took this as confirmation of her own worries ...

Had there been nothing but the report of the psychic's words, I think the principal or school counsellor might have had the mother in for a chat -- to tell her that this report had been made, because she's absolutely entitled to know that, that a school employee is listening to things a psychic says and then telling school officials that those things are about the woman's daughter.

The school could have asked the mother whether she wanted to have any aspect of the matter looked into, and the mother could have reviewed her GPS/audio tapes. And the girl's behaviour could have been discussed. All with the school on the mother's side, as advocates for the girl.

I can just imagine what a happy prospect that would have been for the principal -- telling an already adversarial mother that one of his employees was telling tales like this. But I do think she was entitled to know.

With the possibly problematic behaviour, though, well, one has to wonder whether it had ever been discussed with the mother before. It probably should have been, just discussed directly. It has to be a tough call, if the possible abuser is a member of the household as in this case.

On the law of averages a 'psychic' who knows that a client works at a school is once in a while going to hit pay dirt. And they will use that once to justify turning people's lives upside down. I would have been more impressed if the teaching assistant had queried the sexualised behaviour which had been going on for a while, rather than waiting for someone to get a message through the ether via the 'psychic'.
Yes, accusations of abuse need investigating, but they should look at the source a bit harder first and decide whether their information is likely to be credible. And if it's decided they are credible then they should proceed with tact and caution.

I see what you are saying here Kathryn...

Firstly, the report, and we, are focussing on the fact that the 'psychic' made this allegation and got it completely wrong. Now she is villified. What if she had been right?

Secondly, the fact that, although on very shaky ground, it DID cause a reaction and investigation, isn't wrong in itself, and in fact proved there was no abuse after all. If they had ignored it, and that 'psychic' had been right, the social services (or whatever they are called there) would have been villified.

What do we want folks? Ignore it just in case its wrong, or investigate in case its right?

You decide!

How embarrassing, I think. In Canada.

And then I read the article. And I see:

"Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. (See other typical actions here) That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the 'attack'."

Sexualized behaviour in a young child is a classic sign of sexual abuse, if also typical of autistic behaviour.

Because the behaviour *could have* been associated with abuse, it was wise to investigate. Completely apart from any other allegations or fabrications.

I like to think that if I had a child that age and s/he was exhibiting signs of abuse, someone would investigate.


"The mom, who is divorced and has a new fiancé, adamantly denied the charges, noting her daughter was never exposed to anyone of that age." (The psychic said a man between 23 and 26.)

Actually, stepfathers are among the most common victimizers of young girls. And the mothers, for a range of reasons, often do not / choose not to recognize the problem.

The presence of a new adult male in the girl's home was certainly not grounds in itself to suspect abuse, but coupled with her behaviour, it was a possible indication.


"And so a case worker came to the Leduc home to discuss the allegations of sexual misconduct, only to admit there wasn't a shred of evidence that anything had ever happened at all. They labelled Leduc a 'diligent' mother doing the best she could for her child under difficult circumstances, closed the file and left, calling the report 'ridiculous'."

Well isn't that just AWFUL. The public agency with a duty to protect children investigated a possible abuse situation, and found no grounds to suspect abuse. The worker didn't "admit" anything, since SHE had never said otherwise. She was investigating. She made a finding.


"[The mother's] goal: get the board to pay for the IBI therapy she believes her child should have had in the first place. She wants them to foot the bill for the expensive treatment - it can cost more than $50,000 annually - at least for the rest of the semester."

IBI -- intensive behavioural intervention -- therapy is hugely, hugely expensive, and parents of autistic children have been locked in battle with provincial governments here for years about access to it.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/419563

There is controversy over its utility for older children especially. And local school boards usually just do not have the funds to provide it for all children whose parents want access to it.

This mother is to be commended for her advocacy for her daughter.

I would think that we, if not she, might be glad that where there is some reason to think sexual abuse of children might be occurring, someone bothers to investigate it.

Children's services are pretty much damned if they do and damned if they don't most of the time.


... None of which is to say that the psychic shouldn't be prosecuted under our Criminal Code provisions that actually outlaw taking money for crap like this. Not that anyone ever has been ... it's all just "for entertainment", doncha know ...