Bayou Renaissance Man

A kitten experiences a sunbeam for the first time.

All together now:  Aaaawwwww!

Peter

Click over to this tweet by Flappr and watch the brief video provided (it's just over a minute long).

Dang, it got dusty in here all of a sudden . . .

Peter

A news report triggered a major flashback memory of my childhood.

The Hudson River Estuary Program fisheries staff reeled in a giant fish out of the Hudson River in New York last week.

The Atlantic sturgeon spreads six feet in length, weighing around 220 pounds, according to a Facebook post from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC).

It was caught near Hyde Park, about 80 miles from New York City.

. . .

The staff suspected the unique fish to be a female that had not yet spawned.

Atlantic sturgeons typically spend most of the year in the ocean, but the adults move in the Hudson during this time of year to spawn, the NYS DEC post said. 

Atlantic sturgeons are the Hudson River’s biggest fish, and New York State’s largest sturgeon species, the post said.

There's more at the link.

And the flashback?

Apparently, during World War II, American servicemen brought to the European theater a large number of songs from their homes.  My father, in turn, brought some of them home with him.  One of them, which my father used to hum (and, when my mother wasn't within hearing, sing), was "The Virgin Sturgeon Song".  The first verse is sort-of-suitable for polite company, so here it is:

There are many other verses, most less polite (and the lyrics at the link leave out all of the really "military verses" that Dad learned - he wouldn't sing those unless he was absolutely sure we kids were out of earshot!  I had to wait until I was in uniform myself before he'd share them.)  If you do an Internet search, you'll find several recordings of the song, some less... er... raw than others.  No, I'm not going to embed one here!  There are ladies among my readership!

It was weird.  As I read that report, I could literally hear my long-dead father's voice in my head, singing the Virgin Sturgeon Song softly to himself as he repaired a piece of furniture or worked on our car.  It was almost unconscious for him, a sort of meditative mouth music.  The song was also one of the less... ah... impolite pieces he brought back from the war, so if Mom caught him singing it (particularly in the presence of us kids), he wasn't in as much trouble as he would be if she caught him singing "The Rape of the Sphinx" or "The Old Bazaar in Cairo".  (An expurgated - highly expurgated - version of the latter may be heard here.)

Ah . . . memories!

Peter

I note with some bemusement that Italian bureaucrats are at it again.

Italy’s Ministry of Health has banned “puppy yoga” classes, saying only adult dogs should take part in order to protect the health of animals as well as the safety of attendees.

In a note circulated on 29 April, the ministry said it was aware that organisers often "borrow" puppies from breeders.

But because puppy yoga "improves wellbeing" it should be considered as a kind of "animal assisted therapy" - which by law can only be carried out by fully grown animals.

Puppy yoga typically involves puppies roaming freely around a yoga class and sometimes being incorporated in yoga poses, or a yoga class followed by playtime with the puppies.

There's more at the link.

Puppy yoga does seem to be a thing, judging by the number of videos of it on YouTube.  However, it also appears to be attracting questions, if not criticism.  Therefore, I'd like to offer some of our Texas critters to be used instead of puppies in yoga classes.  For example:

• Razorback hogs:  Usually a cross-breed between escaped domestic hogs, wild pigs and Russian  boars, the latter introduced in the 1930's by "sportsmen" wanting a wilder, tougher animal to hunt.  (Idiots!)  Guaranteed to make any yoga class an uplifting experience, as students climb the walls to get away from them.
• Skunks:  Particularly during February, which around here is known as "Suicidal Skunk Season" due to their habit of wandering out into the road at that time of year, getting run over, and leaving an unmistakable smell for miles and miles on local roads.  The odor of sanctity, it ain't!  Repeated application of students' deodorant to the animals may improve things.  Then again, maybe it won't.
• Armadillos:  Probably the safest animals in a yoga class.  When they curl themselves into a ball, they can be rolled up and down the floor, making avoidance techniques an interesting addition to the standard stretches.
• Grackles:  They'll add a definite musical (?) dimension to the class, as well as redecorating the studio (and the students) with artistic splotches and stripes from on high.

Readers are invited to suggest in Comments below their preferred animal contributions to yoga classes.  We'll send the lot to the Italian bureaucrats responsible for this ruling, and let them decide what's best for their needs!

Peter

I did a double-take when I came across this video.  I've used a chiropractor's services myself, but I had no idea they were applicable to something this big!

I suppose it's logical that they should work on giraffes as well as on humans, but it's still a bit mind-boggling.  I wonder how much force he had to exert to move the vertebrae?

Peter

There's been an enormous, emotional reaction to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's revelation that she shot an errant dog after it had killed a flock of chickens and then appeared to turn on her.  If you've missed the story, you can read about it here.

My first point is, if the incident is as she described it, she did exactly the right thing.  One of her dogs had inflicted death and destruction on another person's animals.  There's no "miracle cure" for that;  once an animal starts down that path, it'll continue unless and until it's stopped the hard way.  I've seen it many times before, and twice have assisted a friend to shoot packs of dogs that had "graduated" to chasing cattle, biting at their legs and throats, trying to bring one down to kill and eat it.

My second point is that far too many people today have lost sight of the basic facts of life.  They're living in a cocoon, an emotional fuzzy ball of fluff that's insulated them from reality.  As "Ragin Dave" put it at Liberty's Torch:

The people freaking out about this are people who have never once been outside of their protective bubble. Sometimes real life demands hard choices. When I read the story, I just shrugged and went “Yeah. So?” I think it would do this country a world a good if many of those pampered bubble dwellers had to actually see where their food comes from, and perhaps harvest that food themselves. The first time I helped harvest and butcher an animal I became much more appreciative of the food on my plate, and the people who work to put it there. I think that lesson needs to be taught to an entire generation these days.

True dat.  Life is full of hard choices.  Killing an errant, dangerous animal is just one of them - and by no means the most difficult.

Choices are often hard in the abstract, but a heck of a lot easier in the concrete.  It's easy to say, "Oh, I could never shoot someone!" when asked what one would do if a criminal attacked one's spouse or child.  When it actually happens - when one's spouse or child is subject to a brutal, relentless attack that can only result in her death or serious injury - it's a whole lot easier to justify shooting, and even killing, the attacker.  That also tends to change one's whole outlook on life.  Shooting an errant, dangerous animal is part and parcel of the same response.

I remember a young lady I knew back in South Africa.  She was one of the anti-violence, peace-and-rainbows-and-unicorn-farts people, nice enough as a person, but without much of a clue about the darker side of the world.  When I invited her to join a class I was presenting on defensive firearm use, she recoiled in horror, as if I were some sort of monster.  (I was more than a little surprised that her husband, a shooter and hunter and outdoor type, had married her;  but he obviously saw beneath the surface to the real person, who hadn't yet revealed herself.)

That changed in the small hours of the morning she found an intruder climbing in through the window of her two-year-old daughter's bedroom.  According to her (somewhat bemused) husband, she stormed into the room (pushing him aside in the process), pepper-sprayed the intruder in the eyes, waited until he'd put his hands up to his face, kicked him hard in the unmentionables, and proceeded to beat him unmercifully about the head with her daughter's favorite wooden stool (so hard that she broke it).  According to him, when the cops arrived, they stood around scratching their heads and saying things like "Ma'am, why did you call us?  You were doing just fine on your own!"  Kipling warned us about the female of the species . . . and I suspect he was right, particularly when the female in question is the mother of a young child.

I heard about the incident at five o'clock that morning, when she called, woke me out of a sound sleep, and demanded to join my next shooting class, at once if not sooner.  She learned well, and persuaded her husband (who, already a shooter, needed little persuasion) to buy her a Colt Commander lightweight .45 pistol, which she proceeded to carry everywhere with almost religious fervor.  She'd learned the hard way that life happens, whether we like it or not - and she was determined to make sure it worked out in her (and her child's) favor next time.  The rest of her (former) circle of friends were horrified at her transformation, needless to say, and promptly turned their backs on her;  but her husband (and yours truly) were all in favor.  It did their marriage no end of good, too.

So, I fail to see why all the fuss about Governor Noem's actions with respect to her dog.  She did what was necessary, when it was necessary.  I have no idea whether or not she's a good governor, as I live a long way from her state and have never had the need to do any research about her:  but the story makes me more likely than not to consider her favorably, as a politician who's walked the walk as well as talked the talk.  Readers who know more about her can tell the rest of us in Comments if that's a reasonable assessment.

Peter

This just made me smile.

Peter

I had to smile at this news report.  If you'd prefer to read it rather than watch the video, you'll find the article here.

Now that's a warm and fuzzy gun story for you!

Peter

I'm sure many of my readers have seen photographs of whales jumping out of the water, then falling back with a monumental splash, like this one, for example:

That came strongly to mind when I looked at the weather map late last night, and saw a large rain/storm concentration stretching from west Texas right up to the border between south-eastern Kansas and Missouri.  The resemblance is striking.  Click the image for a larger view.

I'm calling that a whale of a storm!

Peter

If you've never come across it before, the National Park Service's Twitter feed is worth reading for the humor alone.  Whoever runs it has a snarky mind that's right up my street.  Examples:

Did you know if you hold an ermine up to your ear, you can hear what it’s like to be attacked by an ermine?

Hike in groups. Bears like to have options.

Always hike with proper supplies and equipment. Remember, flippy floppies may lead to slippy sloppies.

One day you’ll find someone obsessed with you. It’s probably going to be a squirrel.

Just remember, jumping on a bison and yelling “yip yip” will not make it fly. But you will.

The best way to stay safe around wildlife is give them room to move. Do not feed, touch, tease, frighten, or intentionally disturb wildlife. Remember that wildlife in parks are wild and like your ex, can be unpredictable when they’re disturbed or surprised.

There are many more at the link.  Enjoy!

Peter

I laughed out loud when I read this report.

A wildlife rescue that took in what was thought was a baby hedgehog found it was actually caring for a bobble from a hat.

It was brought to the Lower Moss Nature Reserve and Wildlife Hospital by a well-meaning rescuer last week.

On arrival they discovered the hoglet was in fact a "faux furry friend", a volunteer for the animal charity said.

There's more at the link.

I almost posted this as part of our intermittent "Doofus Of The Day" series, but it's too cute for that.  One can just imagine some member of the public (perhaps a little old lady, or an excited child) bringing in the "baby hedgehog" to be cared for, and being so disappointed when they found out what it really was.  (One must admit, too, that from some angles the bobble really does look like a baby hedgehog!)

Anyway, I thought it was cute - and funny.

Peter

OK, here's something completely different:  an orchestra of elephants!

The Thai Elephant Orchestra is, remarkably, just what it sounds like. At a conservation center in Thailand, made for former work animals with nowhere to go, a group of elephants has been assembled and trained to play enormous percussion instruments, holding mallets in their trunks and sometimes trumpeting along.

David Sulzer — known in the music world as Dave Soldier — is a neuroscientist at Columbia University, a composer and the co-founder of the orchestra.

"Elephants like to listen to music: If you play music they'll come over, and in the morning when the mahouts take them out of the jungle, they sing to to calm them down," Sulzer tells NPR's Jacki Lyden. "So what we came up with was, well, maybe if we made ergonomic instruments that would be easy for elephants to play — for instance, marimbas and drums that are giant — perhaps they would play music."

Among those instruments is a sort of oversized xylophone that Sulzer built in a metal shop in Lampang, using the music he heard locally as a guide.

"The idea here was to get the instruments to sound like traditional Thai instruments, and make music that sounds like Thai music," he says. "That instrument ... is using a Thai scale, a northern Thai scale. And when Thai people hear it, they say, 'Oh, that sounds like some of the music that we play in the Buddhist temples up north.'"

The Thai Elephant Orchestra has produced three albums.

There's more at the link.

The elephants certainly seem to be getting into the swing of things.  Here's a live performance.  Don't just listen to the discordant elements (of which there are plenty):  listen to see if you can detect an underlying theme or sequence.

When transcribed into musical notation, the underlying theme comes out more clearly.  Here's a chamber orchestra playing one of the elephants' compositions.  The YouTube notes read:

The Composers Concordance Chamber Orchestra conducted by Thomas Carlo Bo premieres Dave Soldier's Thung Kwian Sunrise at the Dimenna Center in New York City on December 7, 2012. The piece was originally improvised by the Thai Elephant Orchestra , an orchestra of up to 14 improvising elephants founded by Dave Soldier and Richard Lair in 2000, and is on their first CD. 

It  was transcribed from the CD by Wade Ripka and arranged  by Dave . At the end of this premiere, the conductor asked the audience to guess the composer: they guessed Alan Hovhaness, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, and Milica Paranosic: no one guessed that it had been improvised by elephants.

Here's the original piece, played by the elephants:

And here's the transcribed version, played by the orchestra:

That's pretty amazing.

Peter

Normally I post an excerpt from a book on these regular Saturday Snippets.  However, this week I was pleased to discover an old British comedy movie titled "Mr. Drake's Duck", released in 1951.  The plot centers around a duck that lays radioactive eggs - and that's just the start of the fun.  It stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr. along with several British movie stars of the day.  I found it charmingly old-school:  funny without being crude, sending up science and the military of the day with barbarous impartiality, and reminding me of the days when innocent fun really was innocent.

Therefore, instead of a book excerpt, here's a movie.  Enjoy!

If you like this sort of thing, I may put up a link to an old movie of this kind once a month or so.  Let me know in Comments.

Peter

I'm puzzled by this report.

A 280 million-year-old fossil thought to be a well-preserved specimen of an ancient reptile is largely a forgery, according to new research.

The fossil, initially discovered in the Italian Alps in 1931, has the scientific name Tridentinosaurus antiquus. Scientists thought the dark, deep outline of the lizardlike body encased in rock was skin and soft tissue, and they considered the fossil to be a puzzle piece for understanding early reptile evolution.

. . .

A new, detailed analysis has revealed that the dark color of the fossil isn’t preserved genetic material ... researchers determined that the body outline was carved in the rock and painted with “animal charcoal,” a commercial pigment used about 100 years ago that was made by burning animal bones. The carving also explained why the specimen appeared to retain such a lifelike shape, rather than appearing flatter like a genuine fossil.

. . .

Intriguingly, there are actual bones within the fossil. The hind limbs, although in poor condition, are real, and there are also traces of osteoderms, or scalelike structures. Now, the researchers are trying to determine the exact age of the bones and what animal they belonged to.

. . .

Rossi and her team can’t be entirely sure that the forgery was done on purpose.

“We believe that, since some of the bones are visible, someone tried to expose more of the skeleton, by excavating more or less where someone would expect to find the rest of the animal,” Rossi said. “The lack of proper tools for preparing the hard rock did not help and the application of the paint in the end was perhaps a way to embellish the final work. Unfortunately, whether all of this was intentional or not, it did mislead many experts in interpreting this fossil as exceptionally preserved.”

There's more at the link.

To my mind, this discovery raises even more questions than the original discovery.

• Who did it, and why?  It obviously wasn't an attempt to gain publicity for an individual, because there was no fuss at the time of the "discovery" naming any individual as having found it.  If it wasn't for publicity, why did the researcher(s) responsible not simply document what they'd done, or simply discard the sample along with other debris of no scientific value?  I don't think anyone would have complained, given that they didn't destroy anything worthwhile in the process.
• Why did nobody in the nearly a century since the "discovery" ask more questions about it?  Why was it left until 2021 to begin an investigation?  Clearly, it wasn't considered an important enough issue by previous generations of researchers.  What drew their attention to it so long after the fact?
• Where did the actual bones discovered during the investigation come from?  Was there an Italian Kentucky Fried Chicken equivalent way back then, and did the originators of the "fossil" simply discard their dinner bones along with the ruined research material?  Did the investigation discover and analyze "eleven herbs and spices" on the fossilized remains?

I doubt we'll ever find answers . . . but it's an intriguing discovery.

Perhaps we should ask the same investigative team to take a long, hard look at the present inhabitants of the White House.  Are there, perhaps, fake fossils to be found there too?

Peter

I enjoyed this exchange on Tumblr, referenced on social media.  An anonymous user asked:

I recall at least one of you guys having worked with livestock animals. Why are cows so damn indestructible while horses keel over and die if mercury is in retrograde or a dog barked in Kazakhstan?

Among others, this amusing and entertaining answer was submitted by reader gallusrostromegalus.  I've edited out most of the profanity and corrected the spelling.

My entirely half-assed understanding of Why Horses Explode If You Look At Them Funny, As Explained To Me By My Aunt That Raises Horses After Her Third Glass Of Wine:

Horses don’t got enough toes.

So, back right after the dinosaurs ****** off and joined the choir invisible, the first ancestors of horses were scampering about, little capybara-looking things called Eohippus, and they had four toes per limb:

They functioned pretty well, as near as we can tell from the fossil record, but they were mostly messing around in the leaf litter of dense forests, where one does not necessarily need to be fast but one should be nimble, and the 4 toes per limb worked out pretty good.

But the descendants of Eophippus moved out of the forest where there was lots of cover and onto the open plains, where there was better forage and visibility, but nowhere to hide, so the proto-horses that could ZOOM the fastest and outrun their predators (or, at least, their other herd members) tended to do well.  Here’s the thing- having lots of toes means your foot touches the ground longer when you run, and it spreads a lot of your momentum to the sides.  Great if you want to pivot and dodge, terrible if you want to ZOOM.  So losing toes started being a major advantage for proto-horses.

The Problem with having fewer toes and running Really ******* Fast is that it kind of ***** your everything else up.

When a horse runs at full gallop, it sort of... stops actively breathing, letting the slosh of it’s guts move its lungs, which is tremendously calorically efficient and means their breathing doesn’t fall out of sync.  But it also means that the abdominal lining of a horse is weirdly flexible in ways that lead to way more hernias and intestinal tangling than other ungulates.  It also has a relatively weak diaphragm for something it’s size, so ANY kind of respiratory infection is a Major ******* Problem because the horse has weak lungs.

When a Horse runs Real ******* Fast, it also develops a bit of a fluid dynamics problem- most mammals have the blood going out of their heart real fast and coming back from the far reaches of the toes much slower and it’s structure reflects that.  But since there is Only The One Toe, horse blood comes flying back up the veins toward the heart way the **** faster than veins are meant to handle, which means horses had to evolve special veins that constrict to slow the Blood Down, which you will recognize as a Major Cardiovascular Disease in most mammals. This Poorly-regulated blood speed problems means horses are prone to heart problems, burst veins, embolisms, and hemophilia.  Also they have apparently a billion blood types and I’m not sure how that’s related but I am sure that’s another Hot Mess they have to deal with.

ALSO, the Blood-Going-Too-Fast issue and being Just Huge Mother******s means horses have trouble distributing oxygen properly, and have compensated by creating ****** up bones that replicate the way birds store air in their bones but much, much ****tier.  So if a horse breaks it’s leg, not only is it suffering a Major Structural Issue (also also- breaking a toe is much more serious when that toe is YOUR WHOLE DAMN FOOT AND HALF YOUR LEG), it’s also having a hemmorhage and might be sort of suffocating a little.

ALSO ALSO, the fact that horses had to deal with Extremely Fast Predators for most of their evolution means that they are now afflicted with evolutionarily-adaptive Anxiety, which is not great for their already barely-functioning hearts, and makes them, frankly, ******* mental.  Part of the reason horses are so aggro is that if denied the opportunity to ZOOM, its options left are “Kill everyone and Then Yourself” or “The same but skip step one and Just ******* Die”.  The other reason is that a horse is in a race against itself- it’s gotta breed before it falls apart, so a Horse basically has a permanent terrorboner.

TL;DR: Horses don’t have enough toes and that makes them very, very fast, but also sickly, structurally unsound, have wildly OP blood that sometimes kills them, and drives them ******* insane.

There's more at the link, including illustrations.

I did a brief check, and it looks as if the explanation given is basically anatomically correct (minus the profanity and simplified breakdown).  Interesting!  I didn't know any of that - but I do now (and so do you, dear reader).  It also made me smile;  an added bonus when discovering something new.

Peter

From The Guardian in the UK:

Missing monkey trapped by yorkshire pudding in Scotland

I did a double-take when I read that, imagining a sentient animal-trapping Yorkshire pudding sneaking up on an unsuspecting simian.  Turns out it was simpler than that.

Two pebbly droppings deposited on her patio are all that Stephanie Bunyan has to remind her of Thursday morning’s celebrity guest. Honshu the missing macaque was finally captured in Bunyan’s garden after five days and four nights on the run and after drone search technology was rendered useless by blustery weather. In the end, it was the yorkshire pudding that got him.

Bunyan likes to drink her morning coffee looking out on to her peaceful terraced garden, which is decorated with tinkling wind chimes and boasts an array of bird feeders.

There were peanuts in the feeders but on Wednesday night she put out some leftover yorkshire pudding. In the morning it was gone. And just after 10am “there he was at the top of the steps, looking in the window”.

The desire to capture her visitor on camera was powerful but she knew she had to get hold of Highland wildlife park straight away. Within 10 minutes of her call to its dedicated monkey hotline, the search drone operators had arrived, and minutes later the park keepers.

By then the macaque was hopping back and forth off the low roof of her sun room and playing in the gutters. It took some time for the rangers to line up their desired tranquilliser dart shot – when one attempt failed, the macaque “bit it and threw it away”, Bunyan said.

But the next shot was true and the doped monkey was whisked away for examination by the park’s vet.

There's more at the link.

I still think a sentient, predatory Yorkshire pudding would have been more fun . . . something like the Goon Show's 1955 "International Christmas Pudding" episode!

Peter

A reader wrote to ask, "What weird/wacky/crazy animal songs or tunes have you come across?"  Well, that's tricky, because it depends more on the beholder (or should that be listener?) to make that call - it's a matter of taste.  At any rate, I decided to post three weird animal songs/tunes, and invite you to post your own contributions in Comments (including a YouTube link or something similar, if possible).  Let's drive each other nuts this Sunday!

Of course, one has to begin with the original animal ripoff . . .  How many of you remember the Hampster Dance and its spinoff, the Hampster Dance Song?

Perhaps the most earworm-ish of early animal songs (?) was the Badger Song.

Also dating back to last century is Dana Lyons' song Cows With Guns, which became a worldwide hit and led to a music album and book of the same name.

Over to you, readers.  List your favorite zany animal songs in Comments, with a link to the videos.

Peter

Cedar Sanderson e-mailed me the link to this Valentine's Day gift via the San Antonio Zoo in Texas.

Yes, it's a hippo dung scented candle!  The zoo describes it as follows.

Did you know, hippo poop is the cologne of the hippo world and is used to impress potential mates?

So, if you’re looking to turn up the heat and attract that special someone, our poop-scented Hippo-Love Candle is the rizz you need. The scent of seduction will have potential mates flocking to you like never before.

This one-of-a-kind candle captures our famous hippo, Timothy’s, signature scent of hippo poop. Embrace the power of nature this Valentine’s season and give this memorable gift that will certainly take you from date to mate.

Having been in the presence of far too many hippopotami for comfort, particularly at close quarters, I'm here to tell you that I've never seen a female hippo all a-twitter over the scent (?) of a male hippo's dung in the water.  "The cologne of the hippo world" indeed!  Hippo dung is very useful to feed small fish and fertilize underwater vegetation, but I somehow don't see it as an aphrodisiac.  Wikipedia says of their behavior:

Hippos engage in "muck-spreading" which involves defecating while spinning their tails to distribute the faeces over a greater area. Muck-spreading occurs both on land and in water and its function is not well understood. It is unlikely to serve a territorial function, as the animals only establish territories in the water.

Nevertheless, if flung dung strikes you as romantic, you can pick up a hippo-dung-scented candle from the Zoo's shop.  Personally, I'd think that a hunka hunka burning dung would produce the very opposite effect from that (presumably) desired . . . but what do I know?

Peter

Found on MeWe:

Most of the cats I know are probably applauding enthusiastically . . .

Peter

Gabriel M. posts on YouTube:

I was parked in McDonald's parking lot in LOS ANGELES (Ladera Heights) drinking my coffee and this giant hawk came from nowhere and landed on my windshield. It's saw my baby kitten from who knows how far away, tried to atrack it through glass and wouldn't leave even as i drove away through the strip mall.  Someone at the home depot nearby saw it on my hood as I was driving it around the strip mall said it was a pigeon hawk but i confirmed its actually a Red Tailed Hawk.

That sure is one frustrated hawk!

Lucky for the kitten that windscreen could stand up to the impact . . .

Peter