5 ms·

[They stayed up there and screeched the whole time I was cleaning up (maybe ten minutes).] I probably would have went inside and left the remains to nature. I

[They stayed up there and screeched the whole time I was cleaning up (maybe ten minutes).] I probably would have went inside and left the remains to nature. I commend your bravery. It seems like a squad of crows could do some real damage to a person. Also, I can confirm that raccoons are very intelligent. They're basically like dogs but with more "street smarts". I learned this after trying to get one to leave my attic. Also, a side note about Raccoons: be sure not to expose yourself to their droppings (for example, if one is living in your attic, don't go and clean up their droppings without proper protection). They can apparently contain some airborne parasite which can kill you in days if inhaled.

dec0dedab0de 10y ago
It seems like a squad of crows could do some real damage to a person. A group of crows is called a murder, not that it matters, but it fits the theme of the story a bit.
- blastrat 10y ago
  The big list of collective nouns for animals is just a made up thing, sort of like a book of poetry. There are a small number of ye olde Englishe words for some types of groups (like school of fish) and some of the fanciful names from the book have moved into common usage, but the dramatically expanded version is not known to have ever been actually used some info here https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/resource/4/ https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/resour... this is one old source https://archive.org/details/cu31924031031184 https://archive.org/details/cu31924031031184
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
krashnburn200 10y ago
So can mouse poop, but it's extraordinarily rare so no one really worries about it, well no one sane. Err present company excluded ;) http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/ http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/ It's rare enough that individual cases end up on TV.
- goda90 10y ago
  I took a wilderness survival course in college that included multiple days in the wilderness for the final. In over 40 years there had only been two deaths. One was dehydration due to a stupid fad diet and the other was hantavirus. It looks like the flu until it's too late. So if you are around mice droppings and get flu like symptoms soon after, get to a doctor soon.
  - pvaldes 10y ago
    Hantaviruses and arenaviruses are typical of rodents if I'm not wrong. Rodents are everywhere, so having raccoons shouldn't really make a difference.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    If you are out in the wilderness you are always around rodent droppings. Hantavirus is one of those things that backpacking magazines freak out about, but it's so incredibly rare that there's basically no point in wasting brain cells worrying about it. It's down in the "act of God" ways you might die (meteor strike, lightning, etc...).
    - goda90 10y ago
      Yeah, we were told not to worry too much, just to be wary since someone had died 30 years prior. What I've read is that if you're in an enclosed space with a lot of rodent droppings(say an abandoned cottage or something) then there is some risk, but open air is safe.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    > I took a wilderness survival course in college That's interesting - do you mean as a part of a social club, or actual scholarly study of survival techniques? Or maybe to support a major in something like archeology? Or maybe a military college?
    - safeignorance 10y ago
pvaldes 10y ago
Yup, raccoons faeces can spread several problems: Bayliscaris and other roundworms, Leptospira and some viruses. Airborne spreading rabies from faeces is very rare, but some cases were reported with bats in caves, so should be also a veeeery small probability with raccoons. Droppings from crows and other birds can spread Parrot fever on the other hand. Sun rays eliminate several of those problems, like Leptospira. Droppings in the garden should be more "clean" than in your attic.
aaron695 10y ago
- It seems like a squad of crows could do some real damage to a person Sorry but you've lost the plot on this one. Seen way to many movies. Single birds might become territorial when they have young and you might lose a eye. But thats it. I'd watch less TV/'current affairs'/crows are smart stories if I was you. Alcohol, tobacco and mental issues.... now those are scarry killers.
- matwood 10y ago
  I would consider losing an eye real damage to my person.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    Apparently you need to watch less movies about blindness being bad...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Losing an eye.... How. Birds weight so little compared to a human that our eyelids mass is significant on that scale. The reason birds don't attack people is because a human randomly flailing can outright kill crows by the dozen and evolution selects against suicide.
  - Someone 10y ago
    I'm not arguing crows will attack people, but 'evolution selects against suicide' does not guarantee they don't. Bees attack people, and they are quite a bit smaller. Humans in wartime volunteer for suicide missions, too, if they deem the payout for their comrades high enough.
    - tripzilch 10y ago
      > Humans in wartime volunteer for suicide missions, too, if they deem the payout for their comrades high enough. Really. Got any reliable sources on that, using a reasonable definition of "voluntary", based on sources other than veteran war stories[0] and film plots? :-) (a reasonable interpretation of "not voluntary" includes all people who were forced to join the army because it was the only viable career-option for their socio-economic class) I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems highly likely that the perceived frequency of these occurrences must be extremely inflated because it's been in the interest of war propaganda anywhere since forever, to pretend that knowingly volunteering for a suicide mission is not only perfectly sensible, not only extremely noble, but that this is in fact what you already signed up for, so why are you still standing here? Then there's the question whether this is even relevant in the context of evolution. Soldiers have to be trained and drilled intensively for the explicit purpose of artificially altering their learned instincts which seems to me quite solid evidence of the contrary; that this behaviour is exactly not part of human nature, and that humans by default will not act like this unless you train them to. You can probably train crows to suicide-attack humans as well. [0] I realise leaving out this group leaves the data a bit thin on the ground, but given the extreme biases involved, it's useless data. So many stories people would rather not talk about, to name just one bias. Or stories altered after the fact (like they actually drew lots but tell it as voluntary because they are thankful and know it could've been them just as easily).
chrisbennet 10y ago
"Baylisascaris infection is caused by a roundworm found in raccoons. This roundworm can infect people as well as a variety of other animals, including dogs. Human infections are rare, but can be severe if the parasites invade the eye (ocular larva migrans), organs (visceral larva migrans) or the brain (neural larva migrans)." The "mouse virus" is a different thing.

dec0dedab0de 10y ago

It seems like a squad of crows could do some real damage to a person. A group of crows is called a murder, not that it matters, but it fits the theme of the story a bit.

blastrat 10y ago
The big list of collective nouns for animals is just a made up thing, sort of like a book of poetry. There are a small number of ye olde Englishe words for some types of groups (like school of fish) and some of the fanciful names from the book have moved into common usage, but the dramatically expanded version is not known to have ever been actually used some info here https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/resource/4/ https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/resour... this is one old source https://archive.org/details/cu31924031031184 https://archive.org/details/cu31924031031184
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

krashnburn200 10y ago

So can mouse poop, but it's extraordinarily rare so no one really worries about it, well no one sane. Err present company excluded ;) http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/ http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/ It's rare enough that individual cases end up on TV.

goda90 10y ago
I took a wilderness survival course in college that included multiple days in the wilderness for the final. In over 40 years there had only been two deaths. One was dehydration due to a stupid fad diet and the other was hantavirus. It looks like the flu until it's too late. So if you are around mice droppings and get flu like symptoms soon after, get to a doctor soon.
- pvaldes 10y ago
  Hantaviruses and arenaviruses are typical of rodents if I'm not wrong. Rodents are everywhere, so having raccoons shouldn't really make a difference.
- jandrese 10y ago
  If you are out in the wilderness you are always around rodent droppings. Hantavirus is one of those things that backpacking magazines freak out about, but it's so incredibly rare that there's basically no point in wasting brain cells worrying about it. It's down in the "act of God" ways you might die (meteor strike, lightning, etc...).
  - goda90 10y ago
    Yeah, we were told not to worry too much, just to be wary since someone had died 30 years prior. What I've read is that if you're in an enclosed space with a lot of rodent droppings(say an abandoned cottage or something) then there is some risk, but open air is safe.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > I took a wilderness survival course in college That's interesting - do you mean as a part of a social club, or actual scholarly study of survival techniques? Or maybe to support a major in something like archeology? Or maybe a military college?
  - safeignorance 10y ago

pvaldes 10y ago

Yup, raccoons faeces can spread several problems: Bayliscaris and other roundworms, Leptospira and some viruses. Airborne spreading rabies from faeces is very rare, but some cases were reported with bats in caves, so should be also a veeeery small probability with raccoons. Droppings from crows and other birds can spread Parrot fever on the other hand. Sun rays eliminate several of those problems, like Leptospira. Droppings in the garden should be more "clean" than in your attic.

aaron695 10y ago

- It seems like a squad of crows could do some real damage to a person Sorry but you've lost the plot on this one. Seen way to many movies. Single birds might become territorial when they have young and you might lose a eye. But thats it. I'd watch less TV/'current affairs'/crows are smart stories if I was you. Alcohol, tobacco and mental issues.... now those are scarry killers.

matwood 10y ago
I would consider losing an eye real damage to my person.
- euyyn 10y ago
  Apparently you need to watch less movies about blindness being bad...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sqeaky 10y ago
Losing an eye.... How. Birds weight so little compared to a human that our eyelids mass is significant on that scale. The reason birds don't attack people is because a human randomly flailing can outright kill crows by the dozen and evolution selects against suicide.
- Someone 10y ago
  I'm not arguing crows will attack people, but 'evolution selects against suicide' does not guarantee they don't. Bees attack people, and they are quite a bit smaller. Humans in wartime volunteer for suicide missions, too, if they deem the payout for their comrades high enough.
  - tripzilch 10y ago
    > Humans in wartime volunteer for suicide missions, too, if they deem the payout for their comrades high enough. Really. Got any reliable sources on that, using a reasonable definition of "voluntary", based on sources other than veteran war stories[0] and film plots? :-) (a reasonable interpretation of "not voluntary" includes all people who were forced to join the army because it was the only viable career-option for their socio-economic class) I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems highly likely that the perceived frequency of these occurrences must be extremely inflated because it's been in the interest of war propaganda anywhere since forever, to pretend that knowingly volunteering for a suicide mission is not only perfectly sensible, not only extremely noble, but that this is in fact what you already signed up for, so why are you still standing here? Then there's the question whether this is even relevant in the context of evolution. Soldiers have to be trained and drilled intensively for the explicit purpose of artificially altering their learned instincts which seems to me quite solid evidence of the contrary; that this behaviour is exactly not part of human nature, and that humans by default will not act like this unless you train them to. You can probably train crows to suicide-attack humans as well. [0] I realise leaving out this group leaves the data a bit thin on the ground, but given the extreme biases involved, it's useless data. So many stories people would rather not talk about, to name just one bias. Or stories altered after the fact (like they actually drew lots but tell it as voluntary because they are thankful and know it could've been them just as easily).

chrisbennet 10y ago

"Baylisascaris infection is caused by a roundworm found in raccoons. This roundworm can infect people as well as a variety of other animals, including dogs. Human infections are rare, but can be severe if the parasites invade the eye (ocular larva migrans), organs (visceral larva migrans) or the brain (neural larva migrans)." The "mouse virus" is a different thing.