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Invertebrate with dreams of stardom
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| That which taketh away, giveth. |
[Mar. 8th, 2006|06:18 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  melancholy | ] |
It must be a February thing; I just seem to ignore blogs in February. Life got busy again this time around, but I do miss keeping the e-diary. Hi to those it amuses. :)
Sunday was traumatic. Kelli and I were winding down from a stressful weekend, full of misunderstandings, hostility and realization that each of us could stand to keep the other one in better mind when making offhand comments easy to take the wrong way. She had gone upstairs to watch some TV, I think I was playing NetHack. Outside, there was a sickening skrutch-thump, an agonized pair of yips, and then a chorus of barking from the neighbour's dogs.
( This doesn't get prettier, so ignore freely. )
Sable caught up to us as we reconvened, looking for all the world like we knew something she did not. "I'm so sorry, Sable," I said to her, offering her one of the cookies, which she took, then looked up at me as if there was something more. We opened the fence, which was closed, and lured her inside. The orange dog from earlier barked at us but kept its distance, and we saw the similarly black sibling of the fallen puppy darting around, too wary of us to come into the fence by way of where we were standing. Kelli stayed in the kennel, holding her Maglight in case the dogs got aggressive, as I went out to coax the skittish pup into the enclosure. Not a minute later, the puppy was in the enclosure, but not by getting past me. "Kelli, she's in.. not sure how she did that, but she got in." We closed the gate, then went towards the back right corner, where the fence abutted Carl's shed. As we shone our flashlights up and down, we saw the end of the fence laying coiled over on itself, and a single nail pegged into the shed to presumably hold the entire fence on. In essence, he did a piss poor job finishing the fence, and one of his dogs lay dead because of the negligence.
So, at 11 some odd at night, the drizzle finally stopped, we hammered some more nails into our neighbour's shed. Sable, who had gotten out while we went to get nails and a hammer, stood near me while we were working, then looked alarmed that she was outside the fence while the other dogs were inside. I lead her in to the enclosure, closed the gate, then went to light Kelli's task as she wrapped up the patch job. We passed by the dogs, looking at us with familiarity, and told them we were very sorry as we went inside our house.
I penned Carl a note, explaining what had happened and what was done, stressing that the repair job would not last, but hopefully would keep the dogs safe for the night. Then we went to bed, or attempted it, anyway; neither of us slept well that night. I woke up at 6 the next morning, unwilling to attempt sleep any longer, and went to the kitchen for some tea. There, Sable stared out towards the front of Carl's house, and although she could not see where her puppy lay because the house obstructed it, she clearly was watching for something. Sometime in the morning, somebody removed the body and drove away, although I don't know if it was actually Carl or not. Nor have we heard from him, although I'm sure he's been back home by now.
As a post script to the story, I found a dead rabbit in my yard, in fairly intact shape, on Tuesday morning. As I hoisted it up on a shovel to bury it near the dead skunk and cat (but not Pokie) I've found so far this year, my eyes couldn't help but wander over to a nondescript patch of pavement in front of Carl's driveway. Poor little guy. |
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| The waiting is the hardest part |
[Feb. 6th, 2006|07:02 pm] |
So my sister, Vrgrrl bought me Sea Monkeys for Christmas, sort of a gag gift, but sort of not, as I kept Sea Monkeys for an entire year in high school, when they were bought for me as 100% a gag gift. I made weekly reports about my Sea Monkeys to John, who by the end of the year was thoroughly sick of hearing about them.
John, if you're out there, I want you to know that all is forgiven. I also don't believe Sea Monkeys purposefully dance to Tchiakovsky anymore.
So, I did what any self respecting cat owner would do in this situation - I took the Sea Monkey aquarium to work. I'm no dummy. I introduced the concept to my neighboring "pod" mate, M-J, who had never heard of Sea Monkeys, being from South Korea (she was also generally amazed by the idea that eggs, thoroughly dried, could somehow come alive). I carefully measured out 12 oz of filtered water, added the water purifier, and dumped the whole thing carefully into the aquarium, not losing a drop. Then I read the instructions, where it asked me to wash out the aquarium repeatedly in hot water a few times before doing that.
Ah, who cares, Sea Monkeys like dioxins.
So now I'm awaiting Artemia genesis. I gotta wait a day for this crap? That's the biggest deal killer right there with Sea Monkeys; kids get all whooped up about the notion of having phyllobranch pets, and the very first instruction reads, "You can't have them until tomorrow." Almost as bad as waiting 6-8 weeks for something to be delivered, but almost worse because you have them right there in your hands, and can't.. add.. the.. eggs.
So, vaguely put out by my Sea Monkeys need for appropriate water conditions, I'm working on my other stuff. Still, I keep looking over my bookshelf ledge, wondering if it's time yet to add the eggs.. |
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| My gums are mighty ticked |
[Jan. 25th, 2006|03:12 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  sore | ] |
A few hours after visiting the dentist, I'm finally brave enough to attempt eating - nothing al dente however - leftover squash/carrot/ginger soup (which came out lousy on account of the squash being meh) and tortilla chips soaked into it.
The hygeinist was very apologetic as she dug deep, but there's nothing settling about seeing in her protective visor a nice puddle of blood in your mouth. Teeth are way more complicated than they should be; I'm even fastidious about my teeth and I still get the scraping of a life time.
I presume this is typical of dentist visits; it has been my experience that I get 99.99% of benefit from visiting the hygienist; the dentist flounces in, pokes my teeth, says "They look healthy, you should buy this service" and leaves, having really offered nothing of interest to me. I asked about my front left incisor, which has eroded down a bit, and he basically said, "yeah, nothing can be done for it. But you should get Invisilign, here's a promotional video clip and a brouchure. Bye now." I asked Amanda, my hygienist about it, and she explained that it was $4k, not covered by insurance (which works, because I have no dental or eye coverage).
The annoying thing is that my teeth are largely neat and orderly. I have two lower incisors that, truthfully, bug me a little bit, but they don't show when I smile. Had the dentist asked, "Say, I notice that your lower teeth there are overlapping, do you want to do something about that," I might have been more willing to entertain suggestions. Getting "Yeah, nuts to your interest, here, buy this service" as an appraisal of my oral health ain't selling me on jack.
Do consider wowing your hygienist on savvy terms like "pre-molar." Mine was a lot more chatty about my dental information after I offered that I knew my way around mammalian dentition. |
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| Jeff Corwin's a dumbass |
[Jan. 19th, 2006|09:54 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| | crappy | ] |
I posted over here about this, but I just wanted it to be said, for the record, that Jeff Corwin is dumb and annoying.
In the project classroom today, the kids watched a Jeff Corwin Experience so that they could understand how you could tell a story while also presenting science information, in preparation for them serving as a "tour guide" for a nature site about their own chosen habitats (which is a convoluted way to get them to learn the importance of scientific representation, but we're getting to that). So, there I sat, watching in increasing annoyance as Corwin gushed about how the Galapagos islands were "bringing Darwin's theories to life" while prancing about in his embarassing shorts and made kissy faces at marine iguanas.
His science is bad, I'm arguing that he's presenting Lamarckian evolution (i.e., animals "choose" to evolve), he only showed 2 invertebrates the entire show, and even the fifth graders in the audience weren't exactly rolling in the aisles over his failed-child-actor mugging for the camera. Additionally, his nipples were poking out of his skin tight banana lycra shirt, which is disturbing on so many levels I can't imagine.
So many good research projects could have been funded with all the money wasted on sending this jackass to the Galapagos. |
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| Tremble world, I am reborn! |
[Jan. 13th, 2006|02:35 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  busy | ] |
| [ | In my ears |
| | Radiohead - Paranoid Android | ] |
When I am king, you will be the first against the wall
With your opinion, which is of no consequence at all
- Radiohead, "Paranoid Android"
One of the finest ways of learning something is to teach it. I have spent the last week racking my brain trying to decide what it would be important to teach to teachers, as my assistanceship has progressed from simply being the field observer on student teachers to doing that AND teaching them all I know.
Problem is, I have never taught anything other than college students. I do have fairly hefty college teaching experience (6.5 years), so I do consider myself capable of teaching, but there are simply things I don't know how to do, like, say, teach physics to 7th graders. So I'm learning through osmosis, copious reading, and, frankly, by sheer accident.
Despite any nervousness on my part, I am a fairly wily teacher, and I've always been at my best provoking metacognition and dysequilibium. In laymens terms, I baffle students with a paradox and force them to rethink their assumptions. I'm very spoiled by working with college students, who can awaken to this relatively quickly, after 12 years of state-mandated mental slumber in standardized classes; they're simply ready for any excuse to rebel against further programming, and I allow no such opportunity to pass by unpunished.
I got in a few nice "gotchas" yesterday. I started class with my two student teachers, by doing nothing more than being social with them. We know each other from last semester's work, so small talk was easy enough to do. What I had done, however, was create on the board an objectives list of what we would accomplish. I had also written "Please fill out your index card" with instructions as to what was to go on them, and left index cards prominently in their first day handout packets. At some annointed time, D. took the initiative to fill in the card, and R. followed suit seconds afterwards. After a minute or so, they were done and looked up at me. "Why did you do that?" I asked.
"Because it was on the board," D replied.
"I did it because I saw D doing it, R admitted.
"Ok, so you looked for normative classroom behavior. D looked around for cues from the classroom for what to do. But I didn't do anything yet. What made me in charge to give you instructions?" I got a few mixed answers, that since I had written on the board, there were tasks to do, that from where I was sitting in relation to the students I was the teacher, that I was the first in the room. All of these I replied to fairly neutrally, saying that yes, I had gotten there first, but I didn't indicate where students should sit, and I didn't do anything at all since people had entered. Similarly, R and I had a huge spray of papers around us, so there were no obvious trappings as to who actually bore responsibility.
"So there was information available to you all as you came into the classroom. There's also norms to classrooms, things that you're trained to look for. I didn't have to do anything, really, because what I created gave you enough information to figure out what was going on," I said, with a lot of growing confidence -- it's been a few years since I've taught, but it's a muscle resistant to disuse. I wrapped up the "hook" activity by explaining to my students that I had not even introduced myself yet. "One of my tricks that I've been opening class with for a number of years is this:"
I wrote on the board "You are the most important person in this class." "Why would I say that?"
"Because," D said, who is always the first to respond, "we're the students, and it's our job to learn."
"R, your thoughts?"
"It puts the power in the students."
"Exactly. There's no way I can know that you're learning. I can assess products of learning, but there's no way I can get inside of you and tell for sure." We had a great discussion on lesson planning that followed, including ripping a pre-generated concept mapping activity I gleaned off of the web a new one. When, at the end of class I admitted that I had violated my own description of the importance of review, both R and D agreed that we had done a thorough job on the topic. I was happy enough with that; if they say they've learned, that's good enough for me.
Today, I have been captain productive. Nothing like a little messing with minds to spark a flurry of activity. |
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| Sweet, monkey Jesus, tax payers pay for this? |
[Jan. 9th, 2006|08:36 am] |
I'm not procrastinating, I'm doing research, honest.
While looking for inquiry activities to encourage my student teachers to, well, run inquiry activities instead of cookbooking, I happened upon this link: NSF Scrub Club. It's about a super powered group of pre-teens that.. uh.. turn into stuff you wash your hands with.
Seriously, form of a paper towel.
Naturally, they included insultingly obvious racial stereotypes in there; Hot Shot the hot water faucet is Latino, Scrubs the nail brush is African American, Taki the clock (it's "time" to wash, her names sounds like "tock" even though it translates to "octopus") is asian of some neutral variety. There's no explanation on how they got their powers, or why, upon realizing that instead of heat vision or metal skeletons, the gods sought to curse them with turning into soap dispensers and sinks, they didn't simply kill themselves. I would have at least strongly considered that my turning into a roll of paper towels would be evidence of a cruel and capricious universe.
When you make cartoons intended for children, please consider that your audience has FAR better things to watch than this. |
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| After 31 years, I still learn tricks from mom and dad |
[Jan. 6th, 2006|06:04 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  rejuvenated | ] |
| [ | In my ears |
| | 04 super mario rpg beware the forest's mushrooms - Beware the Forest's Mushrooms | ] |
Nothing important really, but it makes me glad to have them around. I need to be in better habit of keeping them in my life; one day they'll not be there for me.
From Mom: The trick to making a two crust pie is letting the "cover" pie shell thaw and sag all over the "bottom" pie. I had some leftover mulberry preserves that Kelli wasn't interested in (it was starting to crystallize), but that, plus a cup of pitted cherries and some corn starch make for some good pie. Dad, captain clueless, wasn't aware of any of the steps of pie making, so I got to tease him about his never cooking anything anyway, so how would he know about pie making. Mom was pleased, and I think she even ate some, despite not really liking dessert.
From Dad: Shoe polishing 101! He had never taught me how to do it, and now that I own sensible loafers, it was high time. He even polished them while explaining how horrid the Air Force Academy was about stupid shit like shoes. A spit polish is what it implies it is; you don't necessarily have to drool on your shoes, but the real pros keep the tin's lid stocked with water that they dip a soft cloth into to really rub in the polish. If you really want to be a champ, set fire to the shoe polish and pour the molten compound onto the shoe to make a seal. Then use the brush, gently, to buff the shine, followed by the vellum cloth. I was *so* doing this wrong. Fun additional fact: Shoe polish is a carcinogen, so wear gloves!
I didn't get to do everything my parents really needed done (I found their long-lost mincemeat, which was a plus), but I got to be helpful; cleaning, organizing, repairing things that were broken or simply neglected. Hell, I saved my folks a $100 electrician's bill by repairing the garage door button myself, which was a trivial bit of work to install a $1.50 intermittant switch.
I guess I'm handling the transition from needy kid, to petulant teen, to needy college student, to independant adult who still likes doing things for parents, nicely. I suppose one day I'll graduate to "formerly independant adult who is saddled by their obnoxious parents," but for the meanwhile, I get to make a difference in their lives, and they get to show off things that every young adult needs to know. Like, well, pies and shoes, mostly.
It was bonding to me, dammit.
(Big thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bluemeg and cindrax for hosting me on my grand visit; I was so busy playing video games and enjoying their company, I never finished my travelogue.) |
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| More icon fun? Mais oui! |
[Dec. 27th, 2005|10:56 am] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  creative | ] |
Instead of doing any actual work today, I thought I'd expand on my LJ icons! Seeing as how even us cheapskate free accounts get 3 more icons, a little web searching and a little photoshopping (is there a verb for using The Gimp? Gimping?) netted me a fun cartoon tapeworm from Rocko's Modern Life. Nicest of all, it's an interlaced .GIF, and background free. Lo and behold, there's room for playful digital manipulation in them thar icons!
I might get tired of the Tapeworm vs. Godzilla - any suggestions for targets of platyhelminthine aggression will be cheerfully considered. |
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| Mincemeat from the Pantry of Time |
[Dec. 26th, 2005|10:53 pm] |
My parents own a temporal rift. In the past, the kitchen pantry at my folks' house has delivered historical relics, spoiled and swollen cans of diet food from diets that no longer exist, horse medication dated from before my birth, and oozing jars of what can only be described as "organic gruel."
Behold: Mincemeat... from the pantry of time!
 
Notice the sell by date: January. 1985. That's 21 year old mincemeat, by the way. Also notice the manufacturer, Borden? I.e., the glue makers? Oh, sure, the website glosses over this fact, but this decomposed pie stuffing is made by the same people who make Elmer's Glue. Coincidence?
Little known fact about mincemeat: It has beef and beef tallow in it. Is that why its called "mincemeat?" |
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| Odd holiday wildlife |
[Dec. 23rd, 2005|09:04 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | blue heron, demon cat, kinkajou | ] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  chipper | ] |
| [ | In my ears |
| | My dad, blathering at me about drywalling for no reason | ] |
Stage 2 of the Holiday Travelganza goes well. I returned from Virginia Beach, having seen 3 of my Fraternity Brothers, Rob's wife Leigh-Anne, and their son Joey. All were doing well, and if not for them having obligations, we could have hung out more. I did get a chance to play Starship of Catan with Brian, and I enjoyed it -- it's a lot like their wildly fun Settlers of Catan in terms of strategy, but lacking the sheer tedium of Space Farers of Catan. Plus, its a two player game, so I can play it with Kelli. If ever there's a game worth spending time playing, it's a Catan game; I love those.
Life at home is.. well, it's unpredictable. Largely dull, but there is opportunity for novelty now and again. I have, today, seen a kinkajou, a great blue heron, and a demon cat.
The kinkajou was somebody's pet - my dad's a veterinarian, and occassionally gets odd critters in addition to dogs and cats; previously this cute little critter had its canines blunted so when it got bitey, it did less damage. Currently, it appears to be suffering from seizures (and, IMHO, a poor diet; kinkajou need occassional meat) and potential diabetes. Its owner helped "Booger Bear" get gassed down for a blood draw, and didn't mind me snapping a few pictures and chatting about kinkajou.
The heron was an also ran. I noticed a rib cage on Mt. Vernon Parkway, and mentioned, "Hey, that might be an intact deer!" to my dad. So, we grabbed 2 spades and a construction garbage bag to check it out. Annoyingly, it was a perfectly intact corpse, far more rotted than the one I dragged into the weeds... but the head had been removed. See, I'm not the only skull poacher out there. The odd part was, it was a very small deer, probably just a yearling doe, so whoever poached the head got a really pathetic trophy head. Ribs were intact, but beyond a cheap halloween prop, I don't have a lot of interest in ribs. So, in defeat, we returned home, and noticed a magnificent heron sitting by the neighborhood pond. Ran home, got camera, drove out and shot these from the car (so love my Minolta's zoom).
The demon cat is the incredibly cute, but pathetically named "Purry." She's actually incredibly sweet, and loves chewing on me when we roughouse, which I certainly encourage. The flash really lit up her eyes when she was sitting next to my dad, and if it was my cat, it'd so be an LJ icon.
( Pictures below ) |
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| So many hours in the car |
[Dec. 20th, 2005|11:41 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  groggy | ] |
I'm at point 2 of the mega holiday travels for this year -- I got the crazy notion, while driving up to see Kelli's family for Thanksgiving, that it had been far too long since I had properly road tripped. So, I thought it would be fun to pile my belongings into the car and drive from Nashville to northern Virginia, then from there on to see friends in Virginia Beach before heading back to NoVA, doing Xmas, then down to Raleigh.
The bulk of the driving is done; I made the 10.5 hours to my parent's home without incident. My state inspection expired back in April, so I was thankful for the sun setting as I crossed through Bristol, the first stop on the way through the TN/VA border. I did try to be law abiding, and looked for a service station in Bristol, but to no avail -- gas only. So, I just schlepped home under cover of darkness and got it taken care of this morning. Take that, The Man!
My folks, well, it's always nice to see them, but as they don't exactly do a whole heck of a lot, we were burning through most of the "mmyeps" in our conversation on night #1. They do have a little fiesty calico who I adore (the embarassingly named "Purry"), and she hasn't gotten terribly much tamer since she and I would grapple and stalk each other. After a little hesitant sniffing, it seemed to dawn on her who I was, and she's been bite pouncing me ever since. My folks, clearly not ones to roughhouse with cats, are amazed at how much she likes it. Cats need abuse more regularly.
So, this evening, I am hanging out at my friend Brian's apartment. A lot of my Theta Xi compadres from college are here in Norfolk, and it's good to reconnect with them. Brian I do get to online game with a bunch, so it's not as if we're not doing stuff -- but physical hanging out is good too. Tomorrow, I get to see the rest, and meet young Joey, who is 9 months old -- he's spent equal time in and out of the womb! |
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| Corpses are damn heavy |
[Dec. 18th, 2005|07:42 am] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  nerdy | ] |
I was all set for Operation: On Blitzen -- the 2 dead deer by the road since Thanksgiving had long, or so I thought, had a chance to decompose. They looked just like skin covered bones from the car at 35 MPH, so loosely shovelling them into a construction grade trash bag would be no problem.
I learned a valuable lesson yesterday: Deer corpses are damn heavy.
Three weeks into its decomposition, however, and it didn't smell bad. More like a funk, rather than an actual stench. Not that I was interested in it getting on me, but for the most part it was done rotting. Nor was it particularly populated by arthropods. No flies, no maggots. There were some small black beetles I'm assuming were Carabidae, which are at once highly prized and detested by museums for their habit of eating everything but bones (prized because they efficiently skeletonize animals you want turned into skeletons, detested because they also consume animal pelts and leather which you had hoped to preserve). And yes, while I was attempting to bag the deer, a few headed out through the mouth. It's one of those "Ew!" moments they really play up on horror films, but once you've seen it, you expect it, and voila, bugs left through the mouth. (My other "Ew!" moment - the cranium was opened up -- I'm guessing the collision with the car what killed it fractured the skull, so there's a nice chip missing, so you can see directly in. The jaw is still in fine shape, though, and that's the most valuable part of the skull, at least as far as utility in science classes go)
So I struggled for about 10 minutes attempting to lift a deer out from the muddy gravel, using a shovel, and slide a heavy plastic garbage bag under it. Cars were zipping by the whole time, hopefully thinking that I was garbage collecting, and not some weirdo who was going to take a rotten deer home and eat it. This is the south, so mistakes like that could easily be made. I did pretty good, managing to get the front half into a sack.. and then the bag wasn't big enough. So, I tried to get the back half into another bag. Any progress I made on that side was undoing progress I made on the front, plus a hoof poked through the bag at some point.
I was prepared, at least as far as facilities went, to haul the deer into the back of my SUV, which was generously laid out in plastic. No deer stink on the interior, thank you. However, there was no way I was going to pick this up without help. Even lifting it up with a shovel as a fulcrum was exhausting. Luckilly, the tendons were well preserved; I could grab limbs and haul the thing around, but after some appraisal, I wasn't about to herniate myself trying to hoist it a few feet into the air and into my vehicle.
So, plan B: I dragged it into the woods about 10 feet and left it. I'll collect it in the spring when the bones disarticulate. Science will simply have to wait for Nature to take its course. |
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| I dub my computer... |
[Dec. 9th, 2005|05:13 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| | creative | ] |
Quicky meme thing, from somebody unfond of memes:
If you name your computers, how do you name them (and what are their names)?
One of my buddies got himself a new Alienware gaming rig, and he's not coming up with good ones. Mine just pop into being, named.
This one is "Addiction." That's probably self-explanitory. My laptop is "Bleb," named for the action of a virus leaving one animal cell to infect another. My former computers:
* Godbeast (MST3K reference, at the time a pretty powerful computer)
* Wild Thing (Former host of my BBS, "Where The Wild Things Are")
* Protonephridia ("Flame cells," named after the kidney-esque structures in flatworms, so named because they flicker like flames as they operate. The computer got the nickname from the sheer amount of heat the old 286's put out) |
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| New guinea singing dogs rock! |
[Dec. 9th, 2005|02:28 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| | pleased | ] |
| [ | In my ears |
| | Shinobu Tanaka, Kenta Nagata - Bowser's Castle | ] |
One of my odd duties as a teacher mentor is to go to the sites where student teachers are, and observe them observing the program. In the spring, they would go on to teach there, so it makes some sense, but one of them decided that she didn't want to go into classroom teaching. Being in a teaching certification program, that's an unusual thing to decide, so the program sorta punted and put her at the zoo to hang out with the education staff.
Today, I got to see her make her first tenative steps into teaching, as she did a very brief program "starter" on the rain forest. All of the Nashville zoo programs are themed around some title, and have three animals shoehorned into it. Today's program, "Rain Forest Adventures," was really a way to teach about the rain forest biome (kids were directed to sit on the ground and be the soil layer, then others knelt and became the understory, then more stood to become the canopy, and the last set stood and raised their arms to be the emergent layer). The three animals used were a millipede, as a leaf litter recycler, a boa constrictor, and a sloth.
Chris got to introduce, and allow the students to pet, the millipede. Frankly, I prefer arthropods as showier than mammals, but the real show-stopper was the sloth, particularly when she got hand-fed grapes. I thought she did great, and it was really inspiring to hear her describe how well she "fit" with the program at the zoo. I hope they're serious about hiring her; at the evaluation interview I was tasked to conduct, two of the program coordinators all but blabbed, "ZOO WILL BE HIRING YOU!" to her.
After the program, the animals had to be put away, and I got to meet one of the zoo's New Guinea Singing Dogs, which I had just learned about from my student yesterday. According to the naturalist checking her out, and this site, singing dogs are essentially stone-age relics of when the first New Guineans brought the critters to the island. They are much closer to dingos than to actual dogs, and weren't discovered (by modern science, anyway) until 1957. This one was adorable, and frittered around her trainer's legs, playfully nibbling at fingers and shoes while carrying a very obvious, "I am the submissive animal, oh, look, another high ranking pack animal, love me!" posture and behavior towards me. You see that in puppies a lot, but this NGSD was an adult (apparently), so yeah, I can see why they're considered part of the evolution of dogs.
There's two things I got to learn about these things, and only one of them directly from the animal. #1, they are avid hunters, and while they have never been recorded to attack people, they go after anything smaller and more edible than they are, including smaller dogs. #2, they make a unique "song" that I didn't get to hear in person, but thanks to the interweb, you can!
If they wouldn't eat my cats and drive me nuts with the constant wolf howling (they apparently do this all damn day at the zoo, especially when not getting any attention), they'd make a really cute pet.
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| The early worm gets the roadkill! |
[Dec. 8th, 2005|10:54 am] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  cranky | ] |
| [ | In my ears |
| | DOTT - Purple Tentacles Attack | ] |
Damn you scavengers! Those were mine! MIIIIIINE!
Guess I shoulda done this yesterday; the 2 rabbits and possum are gone. Deer are still getting picked at by vultures. I had a shovel and a cruddy tupperware bin all set for them, too, and was going to fill it liberally with compost, so that the already-established micro-herd could go to work. Plus, the clay soil around here is waay too difficult to work in the winter (I got lucky burying Pokie; it was 60 out).
Well, fine. I now have a roadkill patrol kit already set, so if I see a fresh squish, I can glom immediately.
I probably need help. :) |
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| So, I have a weird fascination with bones. |
[Dec. 6th, 2005|11:10 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  determined | ] |
| [ | In my ears |
| | Christopher Tin - Baba Yetu | ] |
One of the things I've always promised I'd do when I got some property is start working on a bone collection. Not in the "I stalk my prey and take trophies of those I kill" sort of sick way, but in the "I took a mammology class in college, and we had to learn a lot from the skulls, and they were neat" way that I could use as a teaching aid. Although having a playlet with dead animal heads might be too much to resist.
And, living in the south end of Nashville as I do, and with people driving like they do, the opportunities to collect dead mammals presents itself. Frequently. As in, I could, with about 5 minutes of driving, tops, get 2 deer and a virginia oppossom. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to collect the deer, since I'd have to bury the things to get them to rot, or at least bury the heads, and I'm not sure I'm that interested in severing a rotting deer head. The oppossom is right there, though, and possom skulls are neat looking. They have 52 teeth. 52!
Perhaps as part of my utilitarian but macabre fascination with intact roadkill, I like vultures. Always have, ever since encountering a turkey vulture hanging around Dietrich dining hall at Virginia Tech. It was morning on a crisp spring day, and I was hoofing from my dorm to biology class. I rounded a corner and found a huge buzzard just standing on the pavement, regarding me indifferently. I think my exact words were "Oh, neat, buzzard! Hi, buzzard!" Ever since then, I've been eyeing roadkill, wondering when the buzzards were going to show up.
There's a magnificent flock of them living around my house, probably not coindental, considering the dead animals that keep showing up on the roadside. On my way up to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving, early in the morning (again), I found the 2 deer, and a ( WHOLE MESS OF VULTURES )
The part that motivates me most to do something about the deer is that they were struck on Thanksgiving. It's December 6th. They're still dead by the road, with one of them clearly on somebody's yard. I guess it's just a southern thing, leaving roadkill where it lie?
Maybe I should go get 'em. I'd be doing them a public service. I should at least leave a note for the buzzards, though. |
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| Christmas time |
[Dec. 2nd, 2005|04:29 pm] |
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It's December, time for a thematic icon! |
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| Euthenasia? There's too many already! |
[Nov. 29th, 2005|11:16 am] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  contemplative | ] |
On Saturday, it was time. Pokie, too long weakened by his kidney failure and poor eating, began displaying behaviors which I could only interpret as "Looking for a place to be alone for the end." I tried to take daerath's advice, but feeding Pokie was out of the question. When he failed to be able to eat pepperoni, and turned around to face the closet in despair, I made the call.
Pokie passed quickly and peacefully, after being told that he would always be loved.
Oddly, I feel very good about my decision. I miss the old rascal, but his decline had weighed very heavy on me, and when he passed away, I felt an incredible burden lift from my chest. I suppose, in a weird pet-psychic way, Pokie could have been telling me goodbye and not to worry about him anymore. The reason I say that is that while I was waiting in a special part of the waiting room (probably for greiving owners), a woman who was picking up her older cat saw me snuffling and came over to comfort me. She asked me about Pokie, and, for her own reasons, lifted Pokie's head up to meet her gaze, and asked, "Tell me about your life, Pokie."
You have to understand that Pokie and I were buddies, and, like buddies, practical jokes and teasing were the norm. Some of our favorite games:
* Spaghetti fencing: Pokie loved fencing with dried spaghetti. I'd say, "en garde!" to him and draw a noodle on him, and he'd bite at it while I tapped his head and flanks with them. We'd usually go through a few noodles before they ever hit the pot.
* "The cat spaghetti test": At the other end of cooking comes testing the noodles. Some people throw them at the fridge. I threw them at Pokie. If they stuck, pasta was done. Plus, he'd run around with a noodle adhered to his back, where it was the most difficult to reach. He'd usually sit, out of reach, twitching his back at me as if to say, "This doesn't bug me at all, you fucker." Then he'd run around trying to get it off.
* "Who's your god?": When I adopted Pokes, he meowed for food. This became a lifelong trick, once I got him to associate, "Who's your god!" and "Who do you love?" with treat time. Rob, one of my best friends, rebutted his psychology instructor who said that cats can't learn tricks. "My room mate trained our cat to meow to 'who's your god!'" Rob told me, he boasted. Shut the class down for a while with laughter.
* Penny chasing: Pokie adored chasing pennies. Pennies and only pennies, really; he had much less interest in chasing other denominations. I could underhand toss them and he's bat them down, or I could roll them across the floor and he'd fire after them, stamping them with both front paws. When he got tired, I'd lay pennies all over his head and flank, so when he moved, one would slide off of him. As he went for it, another would side off, and so forth.
* "Icky Poo": Nate, one of my college roommates (long story there) had a 6 foot long sticky hand, the kind you snare papers off of people's desks with. After a while, the sticky rubber gets gunky, and you have to wash it in dishsoap and water to restore it's stick. Let's just say that it collected more cat hair than paper when Rob and I discovered Pokie liked playing with it.
Finally, there's just random, weird crap that cats do. If you're in the mood for bizarre cat cuteness, check this out:
( Cute cat picture )
So I have no idea what that woman got out of Pokie when she asked him about his life. She didn't recoil in horror, but her cat was ready to be picked up, and she had to go. Or fled quickly, whatever. |
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| Fundies say the darndest things (lifted from mister_neil) |
[Nov. 22nd, 2005|08:08 am] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  awake | ] |
I consider myself religious, and I consider myself rational. So while the two things are sometimes at odds, I draw some quiet comfort in my faith, and do all that I can do for myself and others, buttressed but not reliant on my faith.
So I came across a web site, Fundies say the darndest things, and I can see why these forum posts are getting rated for being nutzo. I'm guessing the posts are lifted from a fundamentalist support forum, and taken out of context for public mirth. In a way, I see their faith as very real, but I also see it as sorta pitiful. Check this out:
( Read more... )
So, basically, God saved this guy's dogs from getting hit by a car. This person, who is apparently physically limited, called out to God to reign 'em in, and the dogs obeyed. That's a cute story, although the simplest explanation, that the dogs responded to the chanting of their own names, seems to hold more water than divine intervention.
What boggles me is that this person isn't asking deeper questions of faith. "Why does God save my dogs, but He does nothing for people in peril? How do my dogs Spunky and Leah, fit into God's master plan for humanity? Why didn't God intervene and prevent my dogs from running around in the first place? Was He off paying attention to other dogs?"
Again, I don't necessarily intend to make light. Here is this person who has their faith, and I respect what it means to them, just as I would expect others to respect mine. But I really want to ask them, "Don't you think past your 'miracle' to the deeper questions?" |
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| At the homefront, things improve! |
[Nov. 19th, 2005|12:35 pm] |
| [ | Infection status |
| |  calm | ] |
Kelli got her a job! She's a travelling dietitian, essentially - for places like long term cares that can't or won't afford a full time dietitian, they still need the services of a consultant, and there's a firm that essentially provides mobile dietitians. After months of searching, Kelli stumbled upon the place, and impressed the heck out of them -- I think she's becoming more of a people person as a result, which should help our people relationship a lot better. We went out drinkin' to celebrate.
And Pokie is obviously feeling better - he's up to his usual bastard tricks with pills. He has to receive potassium daily, and was recommended to get 5 mg of Pepcid, to settle nausea that a high phosphorous blood content will give. I wasn't aware of this, but along with low kidney function comes an imbalance of K, which you need for neurons to function well (part of that whole Na++/K+ pump that makes your brain worky). Last week, when I was sure Pokie was hovering on death's door, he was essentially in a "praying" position - paws out, head held with the nose pointing to the floor, but not exactly sleeping. Turns out, his brain function was likely impaired due to poor potassium, and his eating and drinking were down due to high phosphorous, which apparently makes you sick to your stomach. So, that's the doctor's orders.
And they must be working. After 3 blissful days of pill giving, Pokie decides he doesn't want to cooperate and starts spitting the pills out, despite my best efforts to clamp his jaw shut and rub his chin. I so enjoy yelling at an animal. "You will take your god damn pill, and you will swallow it NOW!" Ptooie.
Fortunately, I also have to give him amoxicillin, which tastes like bubble gum. I doubt Pokie likes it, but he swallows it quickly to get it out of his mouth. Pill, medicine, gone. Advantage: Me. |
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