Critters at work

Today a very large.....and I mean HUGE beetle wandered out from under a storage unit in the work area. Everyone remarked that they have never seen anything like it before............but I have. It was one of those exotic beetles from South America, a Titanus giganteus. Seeing that creature started a conversation among us about all the animals they have had in that building. There have been mice and birds but nothing more unusual. One man did tell me that one mouse made a daily visit to the break room for lunch until someone chased it out of the building. When I started working there, all I saw were those tin mouse traps, so no mice in sight.

Of course that brought back memories of other places I worked at that had some animals visit inside the buildings. I think the most memorable one was the rattle snake
in Menlo Park, CA. It came in the building when some plowing was going on in a vacant lot. The next memorable event was the stray dog in the parking lot. That black dog had evidence of just having a litter of pups. She avoided animal control by hiding between the curb and the cars when the patrol truck was searching for her. She would not let anyone approach her............except me. After a week of feeding her and getting her confidence up, I took her home. Yep she lived a full life as my pet dog until she died at ripe old age.

A few years prior to taking the dog home with me, I worked at a different company just down the street. There a litter of kittens was born in the bulk storage yard. When the 4 kittens were about 3 weeks old their mother was found dead in the street in front of the building. That left the 4 little, very wild, kittens without a mother. I volunteered to take care of them. The owner of the company gave me the key to building so I could come out on weekends to feed them. All went well for a few weeks then one weekend the kittens would not come out of hiding to get their food....................something was very wrong.

I found the bodies of 2 of the kittens. They were shot with a BB gun. One I found, was very scared and the 4th one was never found. I had cats at home and the thought of bringing another one home was not my first choice but I did it anyway. That kitten grew up just fine at my house until he decided to find himself another home with one of my neighbors.

The HP campus in Corvallis has rabbits in their parking lot and possibly fish in that lake/pond.

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