Saturday, December 31, 2011

“The New Day Is a Great Big Fish!”

[It’s a line from Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment. I hope he doesn’t sue me.]



Here’s hoping that you are all approaching the New Year with the same anticipation as this walrus has for her cooler of fish—and that our rewards are, like hers, equal to our desires.


{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Friday, December 30, 2011

Flamingo Friday: Everything's Rosy




{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Thursday, December 29, 2011

She Is the Walrus



I was going to lead up to this. I was going to talk about the rest of the denizens of the Indianapolis Zoo—the penguins and dog sharks, the polar bear and the baby elephant. I was going to have a whole post, or two, before bringing this up, but when it came right down to it I simply couldn’t contain myself.

I saw a walrus.

This may not seem like such a big deal to some of you; this is because you have never seen a walrus. I pity you. The very word conveys, onomatopoeically, something of its character and majesty: walrus—the first syllable rolls in your mouth like an over-size gumdrop, the second syllable adds tusks; walrus—like a brand of extra-bristly scrub-brushes; walrus—a foghorn call over Arctic waters and rocky cliffs; walrus—a rolling tumble through benthic mud, stirring up a cloud of turbid water that forms the shape of a—walrus.

Walruses are incredible. Like most other marine mammals, they’re carnivorous: they prey on shellfish (clams, mainly), and they hunt them using not their impressive tusks but their equally impressive furze of whiskers, which are sensitive enough to find the mollusks where they (the clams) are buried in sand or mud. Their tusks—something both males and females have and something no other pinniped has—are used by males during the mating season and by everybody the rest of the time for breaking breathing-holes in ice and doing something that is delightfully referred to as “tooth-walking”: they drag themselves out of the water with the support of their tusks (which are, in fact, teeth). They can weigh over a ton—a ton! When a mother walrus tells her child, “You weigh a ton!” she would not be exaggerating.

The walrus at the Indy Zoo, a female named Aurora, is as amazing (and big) as you would expect from the description above; she’s also quite charismatic. Her fellow walrus died a year or two ago, and because walruses are highly social creatures, she now shares her enclosure with a large California sea lion (also charismatic, but less amazing).

We were able to see her on land and water, and the impression she made was quite different depending on the element.

In the water, although she was clearly immense, her bulk was streamlined, powerful, and full of purpose, bulleting her through the water at speeds that made it difficult for me to take photographs.


Occasionally, her head would break the surface, and her tremendous brush of whiskers would briefly be visible: the prow of a ship cresting a wave of her own making.


On land, on the other hand, what most struck me was her enormity. Walruses are huge, and although her swimming demonstrated that there was musculature in there somewhere, on land Aurora looks very much like a giant blob with flippers and a furze-covered face.


–I don’t mean this in a derogatory way: her shape is astonishing, awe-inspiring, enchanting, as if she’s some cartoon creature or marine myth come to life. Watching her move is mesmerizing; it’s hard to believe that all of that bulk can be so easily directed—even into a back-flop into the water.


But the most unexpected part of my visit came at feeding time. Two young women entered the enclosure holding coolers full of fish. Both the sea lion and the walrus became very focused very quickly, and you could see just how well, and how swiftly, Aurora could direct her bulk on land.


And then the trainers—or volunteers, or whoever they were (let’s call them the Fish People)—started getting the animals to do tricks for their fish.

Aurora offered her flipper and gave kisses:


Rolled over:


Reared up to her full height:


And did push-ups with her Fish Person:


She also did tricks in the water, which were harder to capture on film (or the digital equivalent)—but they included spouting little jets of water into the air and waving her flippers a la a swimmer from a Busby Berkeley musical:


I was very impressed by the repertoire of tricks, and I am a little ashamed to admit that witnessing it inspired in me a desire that I rarely feel anymore at the zoo:

I want a walrus.

Oh, sure, it would require some changes to our current lifestyle—a much bigger bathroom, for one, and a steady supply of salt-water and raw fish—but it would be worth it.

But, Olivia, they’re endangered animals, you say. That’s fine: we would take very good care of it. But they’re highly social, you remind me. That’s okay, too; we would be its herd, and maybe I could take it to work with me (we’d have to commute via Rock Creek). –None of these problems are insurmountable.

Until the happy day when we usher a walrus into our home, however, I’ll just have to be content with my memories—and my photos.

And in spite of the various ill-punctuated Indiana road-side signs reminding us, in more or less charming ways, of what they perceived to be the true meaning of the holiday (from “Happy Birthday Jesus” to “The greatest gift wasnt under the tree he was hung up on a tree”)—for me, at least, seeing Aurora the walrus was the best Christmas present ever.



{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The Wild Wildlife of Indianapolis



While visiting the suburbs of Indianapolis this week, what should we see but a collection of coots, looking as coot as coot can be! They were unfortunately quite suspicious of me, and so my photos of them typically involve them looking at me askance:


["You really have nothing better
to do with your day?"]

On the other hand, their nervousness may have been the result of the surprising predator that decided to curl up in a neighbor’s yard:


Either my photography or Annie’s yard-work disturbed it, though, so, after giving us several dirty looks, it ran off into the undergrowth.


It was not the most exciting animal I was to see in Indianapolis (stay tuned for more on our trip to the Indy Zoo!), but it was definitely the most exciting wild animal I encountered.

It wasn’t the most annoyed animal I encountered, either; that honor can be reserved for Liza the cat, whose look of combined boredom and moderate disapproval is as unchanging as it is legendary.


["I could not possibly
be less interested in you."]

Ah, the joyous holiday season, that lifts the spirits of even the beasts of the fields!


{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Friday, December 23, 2011

Flamingo Friday: I've Got the Drop on You





{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Any Minute Now…




It will be summer again! That’s right—very soon, our days will grow long and lazy and drenched in sunlight!

To celebrate that fact and that it’s Chanukah—which is a holiday commemorating that there was just a little more (oil) than you thought—I’m also including a couple of red-panda photos (there are always a few more than I think there are. Or several hundred more, give or take).




[oh, there are even more;
just you wait...]



{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Monday, December 19, 2011

Wild Wildlife: Brunch for Everyone



I didn’t get to the zoo this weekend—which was unfortunate for my photo files but fortunate for our laundry—but as I was walking to meet Annie and a friend on Sunday morning I had an encounter of sorts with some wildlife right in the wilds of DC.

I was walking up the sidewalk when I noticed a whole scattering of feathers littering the sidewalk. Not feathers from a mattress or pillow, or down from a coat—these were feathers plucked straight from a creature, probably a pigeon, that had until recently been flying around.

“Somebody just got eaten,” I noted to myself. Then I happened to glance up, and I saw in the tree above me a hawk, ripping away at the body of the unfortunate bird.

I didn’t have my ultra-zoom camera with me, but I was lucky enough to have my other camera on-hand, and so I took a few less-than-telescopic photos. (I’m not sure if this is a Cooper’s or a sharp-shinned hawk, but I’m pretty sure it’s one or the other.)


The hawk seemed a little unnerved by my paparazzi-esque behavior and refused to continue its meal until I put the camera away and continued on my way towards my own meal. If I were being moralistic and pro-prey, I might say that my scrutiny inspired in the hawk a degree of guilt about its own behavior and the ways in which it needed to survive—but I don’t think one can make moral judgments about the ways other animals eat, and even if I did, I don’t think the hawk’s conscience stirred because of my observation.

Nor did mine, obviously, because I had chicken for lunch.



{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Friday, December 16, 2011

Flamingo Friday: Reflections




[And don't forget that you can buy prints or calendars of mine, including one of just flamingos, to give to all the people you love!]

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

An Orgy of Grooming and a Bouquet of Ears



[one of the red panda cubs]

Once again the week has gotten away from me, and I haven’t had time to write up my observations about the red pandas—or anything else. But I have soo many pictures of these guys that I couldn’t put them all in a single post anyway—so today I will simply share with you some photos from another moment with the red panda mother and cubs.

Their mother frequently becomes convinced that, in the past half an hour or so, one or both of her cubs has become unbearably filthy, and so she’s going to groom them back to respectability, whether they like it or not.


["Mo-oooom!"]

At one point, as the mother began grooming a cub, the other cub apparently decided that she could be a groomer, too—so she clumsily scrambled onto her mother’s back...



...and thus began a veritable orgy of grooming:


Eventually one of the cubs tired of the exercise and extracted herself, but she stayed close enough to her sister and mother to form part of an amazing collection of fuzzy white ears—more ears, it seemed at the time, than there were red pandas.


They really are cuter than any animal has a right to be.


{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Monday, December 12, 2011

One Good Shot with a Holiday Theme: Stuffing!





{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Friday, December 9, 2011

Flamingo Friday: Giving a Toss



[pretty cool if you click on it and view large]


{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Not Quite Nothing

Things have been a bit hectic here lately--or they’ve felt hectic, anyway--and so I haven’t gotten around to going through my photos or my impressions of the adorable, six-months-old red panda cubs at the zoo. I will simply say that: the one tricky thing when watching these two sisters in the enclosure with their parents is that the adult red pandas are so cute themselves, and the cubs are so well-grown, that it’s hard to distinguish one from the other. The cubs have puffier faces, though, like those of big, red, masked teddy bears, while their parents are a bit sleeker—more like fox-bears than bear-bears. Perhaps the photo below will help—the mother is in the lower left and one of her cubs is in the upper right corner:



That's all for now, folks.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Small Change

(Merci à Truffaut)


[Dutch sand dollars]

Today at the zoo I had many opportunities to observe parenting behavior and the actions of children.

I amassed further support for my hypothesis that while mothers, by and large, direct their children with words and phrases (“Come closer to me, Taylor”), fathers tend to dispense with such niceties and move their children bodily—even to the point of swiveling their toddler’s head, as if it’s a bowling ball, in order to turn the child in the direction of an otter. Apparently pointing is not sufficiently manly…

I also witnessed yet another example of the truly pathetic state of education in this country, as an eight-year-old boy, looking into the otter’s pool, asked, “Are clams plants?”

No wonder our nation is falling behind all others.

Finally, I got to overhear the relative means of comparison used by a couple of siblings as they tried to understand the size of some animal (missed that part of the conversation). “Was it bigger than you?” the girl asked.

“Yes, it was,” their mother told them.

Astonishment, followed by, “Was it bigger than the whole universe??”

“Maybe not quite that big.”

A brief pause, and then the final important comparison: “Was it bigger than a trash can?”

I guess once you’ve covered those three important size categories, there’s not much else you need to know.


{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Friday, December 2, 2011

Flamingo Friday: The Contortionist




I recently learned that the Vatican has declared yoga to be satanic; I’m not sure if this flamingo is aware of that fact, but it looks pretty evil to me as it practices its soul-destroying act of flexibility.


[And--sorry, but it IS December--don't forget that you can buy calendars of mine, including one of just flamingos, to give to all the people you love! Or like. Or merely don't detest.]





{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Thursday, December 1, 2011

One Shot: What Were They Looking At?





{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Wild Wildlife: Everybody Loves New York



This Thanksgiving Annie and I visited family and friends in New York. Among our travels, we strolled through Brooklyn to a waterfront park, where I relished in the estuarine nature of the waters around the city and scurried back and forth over the seaweed-covered rocks like an enormous shore crab, searching for other signs of marine (or semi-marine) life.

I found evidence of oysters and barnacles, though no live specimens, and I also saw a diving duck that, predictably, dove every time I tried to photograph or identify it. (I think it was a merganser, though.)

I also saw a small group of brants sculling sedately through the water, to all appearances on a sight-seeing tour of New York City.


How do I know they were tourists rather than simply migrants going about their business? Because they let me take pictures of them in front of the Manhattan skyline, that’s how. They even turned towards me at one point so I could get some portraits.


Finally, after a few more glamour shots, they decided they had to be on their way and headed west towards downtown.

We should have followed their example when it came time for us to get back into the city; the L line was closed for the weekend, and it probably would have taken us less time to swim.




{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Friday, November 25, 2011

Flamingo Friday: Bouquet of Flamingo





{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

One Good Shot: Pointillist Pigeon





{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Monday, November 21, 2011

La Mer Est Verte



For two of my years in high school I had a really good French teacher. The year before that, I had a not-very-good one. He was not so good for a number of reasons, but the example that sticks most in my mind has to do with a test he gave us on adjective use, making sure we understood the principles of getting the adjectives to agree with the gender and number of the nouns. I was good at French and did quite well on the test, except for one question. This one puzzled me so much that I went up to the teacher later to ask him about it.

“I got minus two for ‘The sea is green’,” I said, “but, look, in the blank after ‘La mer est’ I put ‘verte’—with an ‘e’ and everything so it agrees. So why is it marked wrong?”

“Because the sea is blue,” he told me.

Annie insists that the reason I continue to bring this up after what’s now been about 16 years is that I cherish holding grudges—and that’s generally true, but that’s not why this particular moment has bothered me so much for so long.


Is the sea blue? Yes. Is the sea green? Yes. Is the sea “wine-dark”? Sure. It’s all kinds of colors, and its protean nature is part of its draw for those who love it—its shifts, its changes, its glittering silver scales when light dances over sharp wavelets, its cream-pale foam, its azure shadows, its shallow pools of delicate grey-green.


Why limit our observation, and the realities of the natural world, on the basis of convention? Why limit what we recognize, appreciate, marvel at?


I didn’t need the two points on that test. But I could have used—and still could today—more people who were willing to acknowledge the diverse and prismatic character of the sea, and of people’s perceptions.

Maybe that does count as holding a grudge.



{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...