DR Road kill

jabejuventus

Bronze
Feb 15, 2013
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Saw a weasel-looking animal that had been squashed by vehicle on road (I could make out the head). Anybody know what it could've been? I've seen the usual suspects laid to waste/rot by road traffic. Anybody have unusual road kill stories?
 

cobraboy

Pro-Bono Demolition Hobbyist
Jul 24, 2004
40,964
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A Juron, the indigenous weasel.

Pretty quick. I'm surprised it got squashed.
 

zoomzx11

Gold
Jan 21, 2006
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Yep, its a Mongoose. Imported to control rats in sugar cane and decided they really liked it here.
In Bonao my wife was lounging in pool and one ran by at full speed. Dog chased it into the house via open front door, cornered it on porch, and dispatched the little devil. They are a vicious, highly agressive animsl. Not very big but ferocios. Most Dominicans give them a wide berth.
 

dv8

Gold
Sep 27, 2006
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i find then very cute. but i also think hyenas are sweet so don't rely on my opinion. i see a lot of them creatures in costambar. never encountered one up close, i just see them running from one side of the street to the other. they are very fast. they do not really like people or other animals. i leave them be.
 

melphis

Living my Dream
Apr 18, 2013
3,489
1,676
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Definitely a mongoose. Zoomzx is right. They were imported to eat rats. The can be vicious but I prefer them over rats any day.
 
Aug 6, 2006
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According to Wikipedia espa?ol, a hur?n is a ferret (helogale parvula) of the family mustelidae, and a mongoose is a mangosta (mustela putoris furo) of the family herpestidae.

There is a youtube of a guy hunting rabbits with a hur?n in the Islas Canarias. It is common swap a j for an h in Spanish (hale for jale and vice versa).

Both are low lung snaky and furry critters and they look a lot alike. Ferrets have been domesticated a lot longer. I can't say I have ever seen either in the wild anywhere, Mongooses are generally bigger. Ferrets often have bandit masks like racoons.
 

LTSteve

Gold
Jul 9, 2010
5,449
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i find then very cute. but i also think hyenas are sweet so don't rely on my opinion. i see a lot of them creatures in costambar. never encountered one up close, i just see them running from one side of the street to the other. they are very fast. they do not really like people or other animals. i leave them be.

I think you are talking about a sanky? Same description, no?

LTSTeve
 

dv8

Gold
Sep 27, 2006
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That was not what I saw; "thanks but."


real huron, from that link is a very rare animal. so much that when one is captured it makes it into the first pages of all newspapers (like few weeks ago). it is shy and doe not show its face around. the tail is long and bald, kinda like a rat. i think the animal you saw is the one that i was talking about, rat-like body and squirrel-like tail. dominicans call it juron, duh, but it is not.
 

dv8

Gold
Sep 27, 2006
31,266
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i checked a wiki page for rodents of the caribbean. of the 11 species listed for hispaniola 7 is extinct and one more is thought to be extinct.
 
Aug 6, 2006
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A couple of years ago, a possum got into my house. It was a peaceful nocturnal critter, and the only evidence I saw was that something tore into a bag of my cat's food. Then one day, it was lurking in the kitchen, and my former Cuban girlfriend saw it. Shrieks and cries of fear! Ayyyyyyyy!

My experience in Mexico led me to call it by its Aztec name, tlacuache. It was the only word in Spanish I knew for this animal. She had no word for it, other than "rata gigante". A Castillian word is "zarig?eya", but she decided to call it a rac? or rac?n. In M?xico, a raccoon is a "mapache". I assume that this is not related to the Chilean Indian group that is referred to by the same name.

The syllables "tla" "tlal" in Aztec often refers to the land. The city of Tlalnepantla, for example, means "land in between".

It had a hiding place somewhere. I never did find out where. I called some "experts" that told me that they would come over, if I made an appointment and paid them $50 in advance, no results guaranteed. So I bought a trap at the Home Depot for $40 and baited it with catfood. The next morning, there it was, in the trap. Piece of cake.

I took it up to a recession-affected building site 20 miles away and turned it lose. I figured that if I had asked the county what to do, it would cost me money and time, and I prefer fast, easy and cheap solutions. It is a wild animal, return it to the wild. I set the trap down and opened the gate, and my tlacuache waddled off. On the way home, I bought some Fabreeze and Fantastik and removed the funky smell from my station wagon.

Goodbye possum, goodbye rac?, goodbye tlacuache.