Hitchhiking Animals

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Ever hear a tap-tapping on your house, while you are having breakfast or working at your desk?  It's hard to tell where it's coming from.  You run outside, and there's a woodpecker on the side of your.
For 5 years, I've had woodpecker holes in the cedar siding of my house, and it's getting worse.  Some of my neighbors report their own woodpecker blues....

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Pollinators and flowers are one of the best examples of interdependence.  They show why preserving biodiversity is important.
Flecked with gold... a fly with hairs for catching pollen, in Hartman Creek State Park, WI

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Definitely, they do.
Generally, it's thought that only tigers that can't catch their ordinary prey turn to eating people.  An injured or disabled tiger turns into a man-eater.

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Recently I was reading Katherine Boo's nonfiction book--Behind the Beautiful Forevers--about life in the slums of India.  It's a deeply disturbing account of the lives, hopes, and misfortunes of people living in abject poverty.
There were numerous accounts of children bitten by rats, including one boy with numerous infected rat bites on his butt.  It was horrifying.  But I wondered if it could really be true.  So I began an internet search....