Do you have a pet who reminds you of a famous human? Who?

I could say that Coney reminds me of Lester B. Pearson but that might be exaggerating.

However, back when I got Mitzi, whenever I told someone about my gorgeous new horse I would say, "She looks just like Audrey Hepburn, if Audrey Hepburn had freckles! And, um, was a horse."

And It's true! It's totally true!

Ahem. Anyone else?

In case anyone was wondering--I haven't seen any sign of the mouse in my kitchen since the weekend I tore the cupboards apart and removed all possible food sources. My building super came in and used some steel wool to close up the hole he thinks Mousie used to get into the oven hood. And he said there have been a few mouse sightings in the last few weeks.

It was so cold a few weeks ago you can hardly blame a poor mousie for moving indoors. I like to imagine it's all the same mouse, keeping one step ahead of the posse...

This entry is mostly for makoiyi:

Jerry Garcia interviewing Bob Weir about a children's book he wrote with his sister, Wendy.

Pullout quote--Weir discusses the sounds on the cassette (it was a while ago) that accompanies the book:

BW: We had a ball when we were over there recording all the atmospherics, all the ambience, going into the jungle and sitting down at sunrise and sunset, because the jungle goes nuts at sunrise and sunset. It gets pretty loud in there. The bugs go off, the birds go off, and stuff runs around. So the story more or less came together while we were over there recording sounds. The fruit bats were good - they sound demonic, but they're actually wonderful. We ran across this one guy who has three pet fruit bats. They're about a foot long, and the wingspread can be up to six feet, and they're bats! But they can be cuddly, affectionate pets, too. You scratch them on their belly, and their eyes get all glassy. [JG laughs] They crawl around on you, and they like to play and frisk and stuff like that. You know, this guy would be anywhere in his house, and he just whistles for 'em, and whewp, whewp, whewp!

Also, at the time of writing neither Weir nor his sister had any kids. Garcia, obviously, did, and had the concerns noted below:

JG: I'm wondering about the girl [Tamara] in the story. Now, this is extremely not cool. First of all, her mom sends her off to play by herself in the part of Australia that has, what, the highest concentration of poisonous snakes in the world? [BW laughs] She's just a little hippie, and she's sent off into the rain forest all by herself, where there are insects big enough to eat your head! So that's my main complaint about the story.

Yeah, everyone loves Jerry for stuff like that...

Oh, and also, here's an interview transcript that describes one of the truly great Dead stories about their trip to Egypt. The best part (from Weir, again):

Moe - When my friends and my listeners learned that I was going to be speaking with you… They wanted to know one thing. They wanted to know what are some of your craziest memories of your whole music experience… not just Grateful Dead, but your whole music experience. Anything stand out particularly?

Bobby - Uhhh… Let’s see. The musical experience. The one that stands out the most is the time that we uh… the first night that we played… I guess it was actually the third night that we played… well it was a blend of all three nights that we played in Egypt back in ‘78, I think it was. It was with The Grateful Dead, and we had done our sound check… It had taken us a week to rig the Son Et Lumiere over there which is you know, thousands and thousands of year old ampitheatre built back in ancient times at the foot of the Sphinx which is at the foot of the Great Pyramid, and it’s all lit up real pretty these days. Word had sort of filtered out that there was going to be a rock and roll band playing there… It was a first time happening. Like I said, we spent a week setting it up and getting electricity out there, getting it reasonably reliable. We went on stage to play and it was just at dusk, and we started playing, and the lights came on and we were the brightest and warmest thing around…

Moe - (Laughs)

Bobby - This was down by the river… The Nile. So the mosquitoes came right for us. This is something we hadn’t planned for!

Moe - Oh jeez… (Laughs)

Bobby - I look at this cloud of mosquitoes around us and I saw them landing on me right and left, and I figured, ‘Welcome to hell, this is going to be throughly un-enjoyable!’ (Smiles) And then something flashed before my eyes… Some dark form… And then another… And then another… And then I looked around and I saw that these great big bats were flying around the stage and they were gulping down the mosquitoes…

Moe - (Laughs)

Bobby - You know… (Laughs) They knew a good thing when they saw it! You know… It was a good thing for them! And then I realized that there were like hundreds, if not thousands of them… there were of course thousands of mosquitoes, but these bats were just… They were saving the day!

Moe - (Laughs)

Bobby - And so, you know… In my mind’s eye, I sort of backed off from this… So here’s this rock and roll band, just hitting the groove, just starting to hit the groove… And they’re on this ancient stage… at the foot of the Sphinx… at the foot of The Great Pyramids… And the dunes on either side were lined with Bedouins on their camels, with guns over their shoulders… They’d heard about this, and they’d come in to check it out… Full moon was rising… and all this surrounded by a cloud of bats… BIG cloud of bats! And I was thinking to myself, ‘Take me now Lord, I want to remember it just like this!’

That does sound cool. And I'd love to have a pet bat as big as Coney!

Once upon a time there were three Billy Goats by the name of Gruff.

There was the biggest brother, Big Billy Goat Gruff.


There was the middle brother, Middle Billy Goat Gruff.


And there was the youngest brother, Little Billy Goat Gruff.


Seriously, if I had a bridge and a troll, I would so call about these guys!

And that's fine with me, because what else lives in a cold climate?

Chickadees!



(My dad used to fill his back-porch bird feeders religiously, and the chickadees and nuthatches would land all over his hands. My mother referred to it as his "Saint Francis of Assisi impersonation.")

This was posted to YouTube by the network--which makes me sort of guiltily love CBS. (Okay, based on the opening music they sort of forgot the episode took place in Ireland, but still.)



Hee!

Well, we all knew it was better than mine.

Article on the chimp/student study.

Maybe they would have found the counting task on the latest Amazing Race episode easier than Nathan and Jennifer did...

(And yes, I know that's an orangutan in my userpic!)

Or, in police parlance, "elephants outstanding" after they escaped from their pen in Newmarket, Ontario.

These audio clips only worked for me in Explorer, but try them out:

"Hi, um, we found an elephant walking down the street...?"

Police dispatcher call. Car response: "I have got to clear for this!"

And a video report from CityNews.ca.

Some cities have all the luck...

I think it was Saturday night/Sunday morning when I rolled home at about 2:30 and made the mistake of turning the TV on. The CBC late night movie was Jaws. You know something? I've never seen that movie in its entirety. (Although I have seen the bit where Quint tells the story about the USS Indianapolis twice--which is plenty.) I didn't realize how much actual shark footage is used in the latter part of the movie. And the dummy shark is actually kind of effective in some places--although he's certainly not lively enough to be credible, and the bit where he's more or less gumming at Quint is actually sort of hilarious. (Lots of teeth, but no pressure behind that bite.)

I ended up getting my copy of The Devil's Teeth out and reading it while waiting for the big payoff. I have to admit, I tend to root for the shark.

Mind you, I swim almost exclusively in rivers...

Myself, I thought this was how it was done:

Holding Hands

Elephants walking
Along the trails
Are holding hands
By holding tails.

Trunks and tails
Are handy things
When elephants walk
In circus rings.

Elephants work
And elephants play
And elephants walk
And feel so gay.

And when they walk
It never fails
They're holding hands
By holding tails.

By Lenore M Link

Of course, I would have to consult the elephants...

I'm nearly out of room for new userpics, but these kids are worth one...

I love this picture.

That white rat? Is very determined! (Speaker warning--there's some kind of voiceover, but I didn't turn it up, I was looking at the rats!)

...but I sort of have to mention the story in today's paper, which described a scary incident at a local wildlife park involving a toddler getting bitten while trying to hand-feed a bear.

But wait! you say. Isn't there a barrier around the bear enclosure?

Why yes, yes there is.

So how did the little one get her hand inside the cage?

Her parents apparently held her over the barrier so she could reach.

Now, I don't know about you, but I have always thought (and been encouraged by fairy tales to believe) that just about the absolute minimum requirement to be considered a good parent was not to feed my children to wild animals.

(If I had some children, I mean.)

I mean, Jesus. It's the Provincial Wildlife Park, not the Provincial Petting Zoo.

I would have expected more disembowelling, but you can't have everything.

...but some of them would frighten small children.

In a quest to find the exactly-right stuffed panda to live at the very back of Jordy's bottom bureau drawer (because he's embarrassed he still has it, and yet could not possibly throw it away) I ran into This Place Is A Zoo, for all your exotic stuffie needs.

I wonder if Jordy would prefer an anteater? Or possibly an otter?

Perhaps it's best if I do not bookmark this site...