Commuting by Numbers: Animals Edition

Last entry of this kind for a while, and a puny one to boot. Thanks for indulging me.

Not many line items here, so I’ve added comments.

Commuting by Numbers: Animals Edition

Commuter: Paul Gorbould
Location: Downtown Toronto
Commuting time: 45 minutes
Route: Queen/King Streets, via streetcar

Dogs: 10

Two varieties: big, rambunctious dogs going for an early-morning romp in the park by my house, and tiny, ornamental things being carried to the small patch of urine-burned grass outside the condos by CBC.

Cats: 3

All within 50 feet of my house. The lady a couple of doors down feeds strays - her backyard is like some festering cat commune. Perhaps they ate the squirrels.

Squirrels: 1

I simply can’t fathom how this number is so low. Normally I can’t open my back door without seeing a platoon of these little buggers scampering across fences and falling from trees. Yet on my morning commute I hardly see any - and I pass half a dozen parks. Maybe they get up late. Maybe my eyes are too blurry. Maybe they are up to something.

Canada Geese: 3

OK, I’m cheating here - I see these when I ride my bike and deviate from the route to follow the Lakeshore path.  Where I also see…

Ducks: 4

These creatures defy logic by swimming in the murky brown brine at the foot of the Don River. Exposure for more than 10 minutes will set feathers ablaze. Today I saw them swimming between two bike tires, a Pepsi bottle and a grungy pool noodle. Nature at its best.

Cows: 0

I come from the self-proclaimed “Dairy Capital of Canada” - we even have a cow statue - so their absence is felt. Not that there’s much good grazing along Queen St. East (West isn’t bad, though.) Compare and contrast farm animals to the Cx# Netherlands Edition.

Elephants: 0

I could pad this list by adding all the other animals I don’t see, but even my tiny mind isn’t amused by the concept.

Pigeons: 55
I expected this - the winged rats are, like City TV, everywhere. The only animal that might possibly outnumber them is sparrows, which are just too small and flighty for me to effectively count.

Seagulls: 22

I didn’t expect this at all - in fact, I wasn’t expecting any. But there are dozens of them wheeling around in the sky. Which leads me to believe that somewhere, on the other side of the condos, Toronto may in fact be near a body of water.

Roadkill: 0

Contrast to the Cx# Rural New Brunswick Edition. It amazes me that, despite the number of dumb animals and insane traffic, there is almost never any roadkill in downtown Toronto. Maybe we have highly effective city works people to pick them up. Maybe there’s som much traffic that the remains are instantly ground into the asphalt. Maybe those cats eat them too.

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 07-14-2007 | 12:07 AM
Posted in: Commuting