Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for November 17, 2023

And those cacti get to be so ugly over the years. Even if you have one on your lawn and dislike it, you have to pay a company to move it!

Saguaro are easily that endangered. One Dirty Jobs episode showed Mike Rowe helping move a saguaro.

Years ago, I had three 30 foot palm trees on the back of my property. They were above the power line height, so very dangerous. Our insurance company advised us to get rid of them. We called a local landscaping company, and he came out and looked at them. He said, "I can do it for $25,000. Seemed like a lot of money, but everybody else I called said more. It was made especially difficult by our pool, fruit trees, and there was no back access as we are on the beach and have houses 150 feet to our sides.

Imagine my surprise when he removed them, and handed me a check for $25K! Here, I thought I was going to be paying him! I asked him what he was going to do with the trees, and he said he had all three sold, and should make a tidy profit. Moving them and being able to put mature trees on a new development was something that was very expensive. I wonder if that could be done with your cactus?

I hope the idiots who cut down the cactus get the max, and do every day of it. The Last thing America needs right now are more mindlessly-destructive vandals running around loose.

For years in India they’ve been giving their aged “sacred” cows an Anti-inflammatory drug containing Diclofenac to keep them alive longer. Vultures can’t digest it and it kills them. This meant a huge loss in the number of vultures, so the dead cows were being eaten by packs of dogs. The number of dogs exploded and have been spreading rabies in a wildly increasing number of cases. I haven’t heard much about the last 3 or 4 years, so I don’t know what the situation is now but I can’t imagine it improving.

One of my favorite news stories: “In 1982, David Grundman used his shotgun to take down a protected saguaro cactus. He was crushed and impaled to death as the cactus collapsed on him.”

I see them flying high up on thermals looking for fresh road kill. While walking once, I got real close to them when they were trying to feed on some road kill on a busy two lane road. I later regretted not having moved the carcass to the sidewalk where they could safely eat it.

Love “Looks toxic… Yum!”

The left out that Everett was 91 yrs old when he started his climb.

It can take 10 years for a Saguaro cactus to reach 1.5 INCHES tall. They can live 150 years. Anybody stupid enough to cut one down deserves jail time.

maany decades ago when i led my flat-lander brother onto half-dome, we went the long way from scenic tenaya lake, with much less elevation to pay. had to bluff-charge mama black bear to save overnight pack rations though.

#hashcode → Good Times

I’m not sure about Vultures, but my 97 YO Dad has always told me Buzzards will not eat a dead animal that was struck by lightning. It has to do with the bones splintering & them not being able to digest them. He was raised in the country.

“Preferred by vultures”, doesn’t sound like a good advertisement slogan

Back in the 90s I was living in Tucson and you needed a permit just to relocate a saguaro cactus EVEN if it’s on your own property and you need to move it to fix a leaky pipe.

One time the snake lover climbed whole dome.

Don’t throw out those Thanksgiving leftovers. Set them out for your local vultures.

Kids, Kids can’t we all get along …… after all “WE” don’t want to be like some of “OUR” Politicians, in Congress ….. we’re better then that ……. after all …… :)