Quick Fire Questions (A Place to Ask and Answer)

[Olive Skye]

Ummm, I got a private message, but I can't respond because I don't have the required amount of posts. But it's like an urgent message. What do I do?

[Vertigo]

Originally Posted by Mouse

Thanks all who've answered my grammar question!

Note to self: Ignore Word's grammar checker.

Now that's a lesson I learned a while back. Though I do sort of take notice but only on a suggestion basis!

Originally Posted by Olive Skye

Ummm, I got a private message, but I can't respond because I don't have the required amount of posts. But it's like an urgent message. What do I do?

Olive, I would create a new thread in the Feedback sub forum and pop your question in there; It will get noticed by Brian or a Mod pretty quickly there and they will probably be able to help you out.

[chrispenycate]

Originally Posted by Olive Skye

Ummm, I got a private message, but I can't respond because I don't have the required amount of posts. But it's like an urgent message. What do I do?

Is the information particularly private, or just of no great interest to anybody else? In the latter case, you could 'visitor message' them; click on avatar (or, lacking avatar, user name and select 'view public profile'), and you'll find the visitor message box.

Anyone could come there and read it, but why should they? And it puts up a message on the recipient's screen saying someone's trying to talk to him/her. Answering requires 'view conversation between', by the way.

[Interference]

Originally Posted by Olive Skye

Ummm, I got a private message, but I can't respond because I don't have the required amount of posts. But it's like an urgent message. What do I do?

Post. Fast!


Not to be confused with poste haste.

[Hex]

Right. Vermin (not you, the question).

If most or all of the pigeons/ crows/ rats got wiped out in a city and the immediate countryside around, how long would it take them to come back? Any ideas?

[Mouse]

Depends what was wiping them out, I guess?

[Hex]

Ah sorry. People eating them. No disease or anything.

[Mouse]

I don't think people could eat them quick enough to wipe them out, could they? Not with the amount of babies they have. Rats in particular can have big litters (ten is average - I had a doe who had nine) and they can get pregnant from (I think) five weeks.

[Hex]

I suppose it depends what else they have to live on. In conditions of starvation and famine (e.g. the siege of Leningrad) I think people thought they'd eaten all the rats, and there was little food in rubbish etc for the rats to survive on.

[chrispenycate]

Originally Posted by Hex

Right. Vermin (not you, the question).

If most or all of the pigeons/ crows/ rats got wiped out in a city and the immediate countryside around, how long would it take them to come back? Any ideas?

They'd be replaced practically as fast as they were eaten. Seagulls, or something. Last year we had a pigeon plague (Yeah!) which didn't wipe them out, but reduced their numbers by 30% or so. Before they'd finished dropping out if the sky to stink up the pavements we were swarming with crows.

Cities are just too rich an environment to stay empty for long. I remember reading that birds were moving back into Hiroshima within days of the bomb going off (can't find the reference for the moment). Mammals are a bit slower, because they have to walk, but nobody's going to miss out on a free lunch.

[Mouse]

Yeah but rats eat all sorts. Bugs and everything.

[HareBrain]

Is this Edinburgh Council's new austerity-driven pest-control policy?

[Hex]

Originally Posted by HareBrain

Is this Edinburgh Council's new austerity-driven pest-control policy?

It's planning for the Fringe. Breakfast with Shakespeare will now include scrambled rat.


Okay then -- so pretty much right away, and probably they weren't really wiped out in the first place. Thank you.

[chrispenycate]

But if there's no close reservoir for the particular species, you might be surprised what takes its place. I wouldn't be that surprised to find squirrels or feral cats replacing rats, assuming you could actually wipe out the rats, which I doubt.

Seagulls have already taken over from other birds in some cities; they're tough, long range, omnivorous and do you know the recipe for cooking seagull? It finishes "when the brick is tender, smother it in onions to hide the taste of seagull, throw the seagull away and eat the brick."

[allmywires]

I have been puzzling over this line for AGES (so much so I'm probably now over-thinking it), and I really can't think of a way to make it less wordy.

‘I guess you haven't realised why your Commander wanted you to convince me to come here, do you?’

Thoughts?