Good Times...

You're a cow.  You've been in the barn all winter, but now it's spring and the pastures are full of tasty green grass.  The farmer comes to let you out to pasture for the first time:



Dead Penguins...

Via my lovely bride:

Did you ever wonder why there are no dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica?  Where do they go?

Wonder no more!!!

It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life. The penguin is very committed to its family and will mate for life, as well as maintain a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.

If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other members of the family and social circle have been known to dig holes in the nearby snow, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be rolled into, and buried.

The male penguins then gather in a circle around the fresh grave and sing:

    "Freeze a jolly good fellow."
    "Freeze a jolly good fellow."

You really didn't believe I know anything about penguins, did you?  In the Dilatush family, the correct response to something like this is: “Sigh!”

What Is Happening to My Country, Part 499,823...

Wisconsin law, we're told, prohibits the “possession” of wildlife.  The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was told about an animal shelter that had a fawn, and they confirmed this through covert surveillance.

So far, nothing really awful.

If you were a DNR employee responsible for handling this situation, what might you do?  The obvious thing would be to knock on the door of the animal shelter and ask them why they have a fawn.  Had the DNR done this, they would have discovered that the fawn was due to be sent to a wildlife rehabilitation facility the next day.  That would have been, one supposes, the end of the story.

But that's not what the DNR did.

Instead, they created, in effect, a SWAT team comprised of 9 DNR agents and 4 deputy sheriffs, all heavily armed.  They descended upon the animal shelter in a convoy of cars to conduct a surprise raid.  They captured the fawn, tranquilized it, then took it away to be euthanized.

This sort of grotesque over-reaction is very disturbing, and it's happening more and more frequently.  When I was a child, such an event would have been unthinkable – and any bureaucrat who perpetrated such an atrocity would be out on his or her butt in short order.  The DNR is defending its actions, not punishing the people who executed the fawn.

And what the hell is the DNR doing with heavily-armed agents, anyway? 

The trajectory of heavily-armed, over-numerous, out-of-control government thugs is a positively terrifying one – it's the trajectory of a proto-fascist state.  We need to rein this in ... if we can.  There are only two ways to do this that I know of: via the ballot box, or via the gun.  The ballot box isn't working very well so far...

Doom.  I hear the drums of doom, and they draw ever nearer...

When You're Not Looking...

Cute Puppy of the Day...

Via my mom, purveyor of cute puppy pics:

Seems to me that if you had enough photos like this, and you sprinkled them all over the Middle East, the conflict there would be over...because everybody would be holding a photo and smiling at each other....

Sleepy Time...

Via my mom:

Ducks, Meet Water...

Via reader Simi L., this delightful video of some “hoarded” ducks who meet water for the first time in their lives, as adult birds:

Animal Rotundity...

Weird, But Real...

Here are 22 animals that are all really weird, 19 of which I had never heard of before.  For example, at right is a sunda colugo.  Look familiar?

Most of the animals are kind of cute, but a few look like something out of a low-budget Bollywood horror movie...

Dolphins Find Antique Torpedo Off San Diego's Coast...

Dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy to locate sea mines (at the Pt. Loma facility) have located a Howell torpedo from the late 1800s (the only other known example is at right).

Awesome!

The Kid and the Camel...

These two get along very well...


Sorry about the no blogging yesterday - I was on the road to Perris, California to get my transfer case/exhaust skid modified and installed...

Animal Funnies...

Via my mom.  In a household with four dogs and eight cats, you can bet that lots of these resonated with us!

World's Cutest Frog...

Via Althouse:

Candid Animal Photos...

Recent technological advances have made it entirely practical to put up “trap cameras” – automatic cameras that take pictures when they sense an animal is in range.  These digital cameras can be in very remote areas, and store the photos – sometimes for months – before the scientists collect them.  Scientists have been deluged with far more photographs than they've ever had before, leading to all sorts of research opportunities.  Some of them get turned into animated GIFs, like the one at right.  Here are many more...

Disposable Penis...

I find this...disturbing...on several levels...

Macaulay Library is Online...

In the bad old days (before yesterday), if you wanted to listen to the Macaulay sound library (a huge archive of the sounds of nature: animals and birds, especially birds) you had to purchase expensive CDs.  Now they've gone and put it online – the whole library – complete with a nifty search capability that lets you search by either common name or Latin name.  I just spent a happy half hour listening to great recordings of all sorts of familiar animals and birds.

Now all we need is a way to search for sounds that we record, to identify the animal or bird by searching the library!

Dogs and Trampolines...

My mom sent me a video of a dog playing around on a trampoline, which I thought was pretty cool.  I went onto YouTube and searched for it in an embeddable format, and found it – along with dozens of others.  I had never heard of dogs enjoying a trampoline before!  That same search I linked will also lead you to videos of cats, foxes, and even skunks on trampolines...

Invisible Animals...

Animals have evolved some astonishingly good camouflage.  The photo at right shows a pika (a rodent in the U.S. Rocky Mountains); Debbie and I have experienced this critter's hiding ability first hand.  We've often heard them but were unable to see them – even though they were less than 50 feet away!

Here's a great collection of these invisible animals, in photos...

PETA...

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is an organization that bills itself an “animal rights” organization.  Their mission statement:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 3 million members and supporters.

PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in the clothing trade, in laboratories, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds, and other "pests" as well as cruelty to domesticated animals.

PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.

So you'd think that when PETA takes animals for adoption (which they do, regularly), they'd have a good record for adoption or no-kill shelters, right?  Wrong:

The organization, which claims to be dedicated to the cause of animal rights, can’t explain why its adoption rate is only 2.5 percent for dogs.

In 2011, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) behaved in a regrettably consistent manner: iteuthanized the overwhelming majority (PDF) of dogs and cats that it accepted into its shelters. Out of 760 dogs impounded, they killed 713, arranged for 19 to be adopted, and farmed out 36 to other shelters (not necessarily “no kill” ones). As for cats, they impounded 1,211, euthanized 1,198, transferred eight, and found homes for a grand total of five. PETA also took in 58 other companion animals — including rabbits. It killed 54 of them.

I've written about this before. It is still just as astonishing to me as the first time I heard this. It's diabolical – PETA has constructed an organization that actually does the opposite of what donors would expect it to do...

Animal Portraits...

Some extraordinary animal photography by the very talented Tim Flach...