Mother Goose, or maybe it was Father Goose, can’t say for sure, was probably giving the photographer the stink eye when he got just a little bit too close to the little ones. The little gooses pretty much didn’t seem like they care much about the creature taking their picture.Turtle stink eye? Hard to tell. Just lucky to get a picture, ‘cause they tend to dive into the water rather quickly.

'Zombie raccoons' and gettin' the stink eye

Please read this. . .

Critters have been giving yours truly lots of stink eye during recent adventures on The Journey Through Life...

...before we focus on stink eye stuff, allow me to share something else that we all need to worry about.

I ran across a little article in the May 16 issue of USA TODAY which reported some rather disconcerting news. Seems that there are “zombie raccoons” on the loose in Illinois.

USA TODAY reported that the Riverside, Illinois, police department had issued an alert about “zombie raccoons.” 

It seems these raccoons “present serious dangers to family pets. The critters are called zombies because those carrying the distemper virus often stagger on their hind legs and bare their teeth.”

Maybe I shouldn’t make light of zombie raccoons news, since the situation involves some serious stuff. I suppose the good thing is that Riverside is way, way up north, in Chicago land. Maybe that means we won’t have to worry about zombie raccoons, at least for a little while.

Stink eye, on the other hand, appears to already be here, given the experiences I’ve been having lately with various feathered and furry critters.

For example, one day last week, I’m pretty sure a goose was giving me the stink eye. In this case, the stink eye was kind of understandable. 

I was walking fairly close to where Mother Goose and Father Goose were keeping a close eye (probably not a stink eye) on their feather fledgling family flock. I kept my distance, ‘cause adult gooses can, on occasion, be rather territorial, as in really mean. I took a few pictures, and moved on. Even so, I could still feel the stink eye on me.

Then, there were the vultures. At least two of them. There might have been more, but I only saw two of them.

Given how they spend their time, it really shouldn’t be all that surprising that a vulture would have a stink eye. And a stink head. And stink wings. And stink feet. Just pretty much stinky.

One of the feathered carrion-cleaner-uppers appeared to have decided to fly over me one day last week while I was motoring along the State Forest Road on the way to a photo opportunity.

A couple of days later, in pretty much the same place, another vulture (or, maybe it was the same one) did pretty much the same thing, under pretty much the same circumstances. I don’t know much about how vultures think, but I’m guessing that maybe they were setting me up for an ambush.

Finally, there was the armadillo, which was spotted along Mountain Glen Road last weekend. For this critter, the stink eye was more of a description of its current state of being. As in it was dead. I suppose the armadillo was more about stinky eye than stink eye.

I mention the armadillo because there are some folks who still are doubters when it comes to such creatures actually wandering around Southern Illinois. For whatever it’s worth, the deceased armadillo on Mountain Glen Road was the second one I’ve seen in that state of affairs during the past couple of weeks.

Let’s just hope that these armadillos don’t start joining their furry brethren, the “zombie raccoons,” in coming back from the dead. That could get really stinky.

The Gazette-Democrat

112 Lafayette St.
Anna, Illinois 62906
Office Number: (618) 833-2158
Email: news@annanews.com

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