11 posts tagged “animals”
Enter your caption in the comment box. The winner will get nothing but a hearty laugh from me.
It seems as if the term "bird brain" to refer to a stupid person might not be so accurate after all.
In Denver, Colorado, a Quaker parrot named Willie has been credited with saving the life of a toddler, who was choking on food.
When the bird noticed the child's distress, he began repeatedly yelling, "Mama, baby!", while flapping his wings.
The babysitter, who had stepped into the next room, quickly returned to see what was causing the parrot's behavior. She was able to perform the Heimlich maneuver on the child, who had begun turning blue when she entered the room. Though she saved the little girl's life, she called Willie, "the real hero".
Willie was given the local Red Cross chapter's Animal Lifesaver Award for his heroic act.
Pardon my lack of entries, but things have been a little hectic around here. I'm kind of distracted, so this will be an equally distracted entry of the odds and ends variety as I've not had much sleep in the last two days and I'm not up to concentrating very much tonight.
So, on to the disjointed snippets of thought in my mind
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Inane expression of the day
"Pop", used to mean "stand out". As in, "That purple scarf really makes her outfit pop".
What? Is she made of popcorn and the scarf is a microwave oven?? This
inane jargon-y buzzword needs to finish its 15 minutes, fast
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I noticed that a bird chirping in my yard today made the sound: "Wurty, wurty, wurty". Does anyone have any idea what kind of bird would make this sound?
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Stupid commercial of the day
Chick-Fil-A has an extremely lame radio commercial. One hears a "Clickety, clickety, clickety" sound interspersed with an occaisonal "ding!" sound. The clickety sound is the sound of a 70s era phone being repeatedly jostled by someone who isn't able to pick up the ear/mouthpiece part, but keeps bumping it. Then there's a voiceover telling us that cows are trying to call somewhere to tell people to eat more chicken. This is followed by mooing and more jostling.
It makes me wonder if the latest ad agency trend is to ttry to sound as moronic as possible, as it would seem so if the current crops of fast food ads are any indication.
Well, that's about it for tonight. I have a longer entry in mind, but I won't write it until I'm rested enough to concentrate properly on it.
I've written about cat communication before, so here is one about dogs. Over the years, I've noticed a variety of different types of barking among the various kinds of dogs. Following is a list of the most common types of dog barking. Feel free to add any I've missed.
WOOF -- typical among large dogs, a deep throated, full bodied bark.
RUFF -- similar to woof, but more typical of medium sized dogs, not as full bodied
BARK -- yes, there are some dogs whose bark actually sounds like the word "bark". Typical among medium to small dogs. Typically done multiple times at a fast pace.
ROOOK -- I had a friend whose collie made this sound -- I've not heard it in other breeds. Typically done multiple times, in a punctuated, staccato manner
BUH-ROW-ROW-ROW-ROW -- What I call the "burrow" bark. Done by small dogs, typically when someone knocks on the front door of their home
YIP -- Done by tiny dogs in an endless loop.
YIPE -- Similar to yip, but done in distress
WUH-WOH-WOH-WOH-WOH -- Similar to the "burrow" bark, but done by medium sized dogs.
That's about all I could come up with.
Your result for Which Were Animal Would You Be? Test...
You are a Were-Leopard!
60% leopard, 50% wolf, 40% horse, 50% tiger, 40% rat, 40% fox and 20% bear!
Leopards are predators. They are solitary animals that like to hunt at night, although they have been known to stalk prey during the daylight hours at times. They love sitting in tree branches hanging out and watching what goes on in their territory.
Leopards are the only large cats that are not monogamous. They like playing the field and living the high life of the jungle. They are stealthy and sneak up on their prey. They definitely like to do things on their own without help from their peers. Leopards only tolerate each other when the mating instinct hits them.
Leopards are also very strong and can lift up to three times their own weight.
As a were-leopard you definitely won't be enjoying a vegetarian life-style. You'll be taking your meat a little on the rare side...very rare.
When Bob Walker and Frances Mooney moved into their current home with their five cats in the late 1980s, they decided to modify their home to make it a more cat-friendly environment.
They started with a floor-to-ceiling scratching column covered in 395 feet of pink-dyed sisal and connected to a wall-to-wall beam just below ceiling height.
“Initially, the cats would run full speed down the hall chasing each other, go up and over the top of the two couches and climb up the column and race along the beam and hit a dead end where it connected to the wall," says Walker.
To solve this problem, they extended the beams through the walls, running them from room to room to create 140 feet of cat pathways. They added more roaming space with ramps and staircases.
These walkways lead to ceiling-high hiding-holes and lookout stations, because as Walker explained, “everyone knows cats like to look down on us.”
Walker and Mooney have written a book that goes into more detail about their pet friendly home modifications, which is entitled The Cat's House.
Looking at the typical personalities of cats and dogs, I've always thought that cats are Democrats, while dogs are Republicans. I'm not sure whether this also transfers over to pet preferences among Democrats and Republicans -- do Dems prefer cats and Reps prefer dogs, on the whole?
Following is a list of typical traits of the average cat and the average dog that seem to fit my idea:
Cats
Can't be herded, they are natural nonconformists
Are individualists; they follow the beat of their own drummer
Are harmless when left to themselves
Think of their humans as equals
Prefer a clean evironment
Live and let live
Dogs
Are pack animals; they respect authority
Dogs don't think outside the box
When one starts barking, all the others join in.
Worship their humans
Make a mess wherever they go
Nose into everyone's business
Feral cats in Los Angeles now have a better alternative than euthanization when picked up by the humane society. Previously, feral cats had little chance of leaving the shelters alive because they usually cannot be sufficiently re-domesticated enough to be suitable pets.
Recently, the LAPD, along with the animal welfare group, Voice for the Animals, instituted a Working Cats program that uses such cats to combat the rampant rat infestation in their various facilities.
Everywhere the cats have been placed, they've effectively ended the rodent problem. Though the cats kill whatever rats and mice they are able to catch, the problem is solved mainly by scent. The rodents become aware of the feline presence by the smell of the cats and their urine -- and simply move on to areas with less cat density.
In areas where the cats have been placed, officers have been assigned to feed and care for them, which supplements their rodent diet.
It's a humane solution all around: the cats are saved from starvation or euthanization and the rats are spared more grisly methods of control, such as glue traps.
It's a great idea that should be imitated in other cities wherever rodent problems exist.
Thoughts?
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Working Cats
Several years ago, my stepmother got rather worked up when she overheard me telling my son that human beings were animals, quickly interjecting that this wasn't so.
The reason for her indignation was religious; her literal belief that human being were "created in the image of God" necessarily precluded the possibility of human beings being animals. Along with a disbelief in evolution, she believed this set human beings apart from all other life on this planet, just as surely as if we'd been aliens who came from another world to settle on Earth.
Yes, human beings have distinct differences from all other animals: our self-awareness, our intelligence and ability for complex reasoning, our larger capacity for individuality, our ability to use both spoken and written language, our ability to alter our environment to suit our needs, to name a few. For those who believe in God, surely these attributes are what is meant by the "image of God", rather than our physical bodies.
Recent scientific studies in genetics and DNA have shown that we humans share about 98 percent of our DNA in common with our closest primate relatives, which is sufficient proof to me that human beings are indeed animals. Darwin had it right on the nose, even without the DNA evidence to back him up.
As for me, personally, the sex act in particular leaves me in no doubt whatsoever that I am an animal. Though I'm capable of being civilized and "making love", the best sex for me is a raw, primal act of mating when the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away and I give myself over completely to my animal nature.
The way I see it, life on Earth has two basic choices -- one is either a plant or an animal.
Thoughts?
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