Monthly Archives: February 2014

Raccoon Rumble

Ear­li­er this week, I came home from work late one night only to bear wit­ness to one of the most amaz­ing spec­ta­cles I’ve seen in a long time: a fam­i­ly of rac­coons out on the town for a night of fun and mayhem.

At first I noticed a noise in one of the bush­es out­side my house, and when this prompt­ed me to take a look, I quick­ly dis­cov­ered a pair of adult rac­coons wrestling one anoth­er in the midst of a large mud pud­dle in a near­by vacant lot. Hav­ing real­ized they were being watched, they quick­ly broke it up and went back to scav­eng­ing for food.

It was­n’t long before they were at it again, this time in a tree! A round of loud chit­ter­ing and squeal­ing broke the silence, this time going on for quite some time, so I grabbed my cam­era and flash­light and head­ed for the source of the noise. What fol­lowed are two of the most fas­ci­nat­ing videos I’ve cap­tured in ages.

I should also add that despite my first impres­sions, the rac­coons’ actions seem to con­vey some­thing more along the lines of horse­play, play-fight­ing, or at most, estab­lish­ing the peck­ing order. These lit­tle guys don’t seem to be caus­ing each oth­er any harm, but damn can they crank up the volume!

This has been one of the many rea­sons I love Vic­to­ria: the wildlife is extreme­ly abun­dant here, and if you look hard enough, there’s always some­thing cool going on.

SCC to Parliament: Struck Down, Try Again! … and Other Adventures in Law Making

This post fol­lows a response to the Ottawa Cit­i­zen arti­cle from ear­li­er today:

[ Pun­ish the Clients, Not the Pros­ti­tutes ]

… which, in turn, fol­lows this his­toric Supreme Court rul­ing from last year:

[ http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/13389/index.do ]

So here’s the TL;DR for any­one who’s not been fol­low­ing the issue: the Bed­ford case end­ed with a rul­ing by the Court that Canada’s cur­rent laws address­ing 3 key aspects of pros­ti­tu­tion are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and that they, in and of them­selves, have the effect of cre­at­ing gross­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate safe­ty risks and oth­er prob­lems for the pros­ti­tutes them­selves. The SCC struck down the laws and gave Par­lia­ment 12 months to rewrite this legislation.

Con­tin­ue read­ing