A Day at the Zoo: The Birds of Prey

Our last instalment in this series is one of the highlights of our zoo visits: the birds of prey.

We were missing Norbert, our gigantic vulture, and the bad news is that he won’t return, but the good news is that this is for the wonderful reason that he has found a mate.

African Fish Eagle, Giliell, all rights reserved

 

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The Plural of Mermaid is Moremaids

After the little mermaid in the last craft post, I decided to use that idea some more and insert them into landscapes.

To do that you need some larger moulds and tools to shape the result afterwards. I built my single use moulds with thin wood and popsickle sticks, lining them with tape. This worked half- well.

One came out quite nice and shiny, which was lucky, but the other one not so much, which meant sanding. To give you an idea what that means here’s a series of pics demonstarting the process:

©Giliell, all rights reserved

This is after sanding with a 120 grid to make the surface even.

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Happy International Women’s Day. No chocolates, though

Because I hat the comodification and commercialisation of a day that reminds us of the struggles past and those of the future.

Instead you get Angela Davis at the Women’s March:

No human being is illegal.

“The struggle to save the planet, to stop climate change, to guarantee the accessibility of water from the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, to Flint, Michigan, to the West Bank and Gaza. The struggle to save our flora and fauna, to save the air—this is ground zero of the struggle for social justice.

“This is a women’s march and this women’s march represents the promise of feminism as against the pernicious powers of state violence. And inclusive and intersectional feminism that calls upon all of us to join the resistance to racism, to Islamophobia, to anti-Semitism, to misogyny, to capitalist exploitation.

“…We dedicate ourselves to collective resistance. Resistance to the billionaire mortgage profiteers and gentrifiers. Resistance to the health care privateers. Resistance to the attacks on Muslims and on immigrants. Resistance to attacks on disabled people. Resistance to state violence perpetrated by the police and through the prison industrial complex. Resistance to institutional and intimate gender violence, especially against trans women of color.

“Women’s rights are human rights all over the planet and that is why we say freedom and justice for Palestine. We celebrate the impending release of Chelsea Manning. And Oscar López Rivera. But we also say free Leonard Peltier. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Free Assata Shakur.

“Over the next months and years we will be called upon to intensify our demands for social justice to become more militant in our defense of vulnerable populations. Those who still defend the supremacy of white male hetero-patriarchy had better watch out.

A Day at the Zoo 15: A Different Kind of Tit Picture

© Giliell, all rights reserved

Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Our orang utans are doing their best to help with the species conservation, although they demonstrated well that humans can’t plan everything. About 12 years ago a mature orang utan lady and her daughter moved in, hoping that the lady would breed with our male. Turned out the female adult was pregnant already, surprising everybody with a baby in summer. But even after the baby was grown quite a bit, the lady told the dude in no certain terms that he could stuff his dick into the meat grinder or she’d do that for him.

He waited a few years until the daughter had matured and then successfully mated with her, having several kids. He got sent to a different zoo last year to see if could keep up his good work in the conservation of this wonderful species.

A Day at the Zoo 14: I don’t know if any of them is called Alvin

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Chinese chipmunks, also known as cute overload.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

I love those little tufts on the ears, so much like tiny horns.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

And a grey chipmunk that inhabits the ground of the enclosure. It was not chilled out as the other one.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

 

A Day at the Zoo 13: Budgie does as Budgie can

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There’s a walk in aviary with budgies, many of them happy to say hello to the visitors (the zoo provides feed you can give them). The keepers probably spend a lot of time checking for escapes, but some of them always do, although they also seem to return as soon as it gets dark and cold. Except for this little fellow, who has decided to move out permanently and make its home in the wooden beams of the aviary. Literally. It seems like the keepers have just decided to let it go as an example of how wild budgies nest.

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BBC: Badly Behaved Cranes

Every spring and autumn, the cranes pass our little neck of the woods. And every spring and autumn I look out for them, but usually they’re so early or late in the day, that it’s hard to spot them, flying in their majestic V form, but today they were here at around 11 o’clock and my camera was ready.

Of course they did not show their typical pattern, but I think the shots are pretty nevertheless (I had to do a bit of post production, but I swear it did not involve copypasting crane silhouettes). Do click for full size.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

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A little project on the side

We haven’t had a craft post in a while, and I know some of you are still waiting for your horses (they’ll come). I do have a larger work in progress that I can hopefully show you soon, but for most of this year I hit a creative dry spell with just being too exhausted after work.

Well, I got holidays and I used them for a little fun project. I wanted to do something with wood again and if you hit youtube, you’ll find dozens of “secret wood” tutorials (though why they’re called “secret wood” is a mystery to me, it’s quite obvious, isn’t it?), but I wanted to do something a little different:

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

For these I used an old stick that was lying around and cut off some pieces. The bark had already withered away so I only cleaned them up lightly, leaving all the natural signs of withering in place. I then drilled a hole down the middle, starting with a size 5 drill and then going up to 10 over 8. After that I started to make the cuts with my little Dremel tool. In the green one I first tried to make two parallel cuts and then take out the wood in between, but that didn’t work that well, so I just make the cuts as wide as possible and then used other tools to define them. I think it will take a few more goes before I really get the hang of this.

Though this project showed again that my BFF J and I are actually one person leading two lives. I showed here these and said “I’ll need to ask your husband a favour” and she replied “you want to used some thicker wood and have him drill out the middle so you can insert some lights”, which is exactly what I’m planning to do.

And here’s one more thing, a leftover mermaid:

© Giliell, all rights reserved

I still had some green and blue resin left, so I made a pretty pendant. One of the easiest things to do with resin is to print out stuff on a transparency (got to be a laser printer, though) and then insert the result into the resin. Because my resin was starting to cure I couldn’t get the bubbles out, but for once I think they’re actually adding to the whole thing.

Tummy Thursday: Omas Faasekiechelcher

That translates into grandma’s little carnival cakes. It’s that time of the year, and while I have tired of the whole carnival culture (alcohol and sexual assault), I still love Faasekiechelcher. pastries fried in oil are a traditional treat at carnival and they come in many varieties all over Germany. The best known is the “Berliner”, which is very similar to our recipe, now available all year round (you never hear people complain about that, but heavens forbid you publicly enjoy a Lebkuchen in September).

Since I now have a deep fryer and carnival break (you may have noticed the increased amounts of posting), I decided to make grandma’s faasekiechelcher myself, and I’m willing to share, at least the recipe. You need:

1kg flour

120g sugar

150g butter

8g salt

450ml milk

75g yeast

The secret here is that the yeast dough needs a lot of rest. I first gave the starter 15 min, then kneaded the dough, let it rest for an hour, knead it again and the let it rise for three more hours. The yeast’s got to be very happy.

Commerical bakeries and many people will fry their Berliner and then fill them with jam a pipe bag. Grandma had a different secret. You roll out half of the dough, about 0.5cm thick and mark your circles with a glass.

I used Nutella in some of them.

Then you roll out the second half, same size as the first and place it on top. You push the dough down between the little heaps of filling and then you take your glass and cut through both layers. Since the dough is very soft it now sticks together. Let them rest again for about 30 minutes. Since this was my first try I wasn’t sure on the amount of filling and erred on the “too little” side.

Fry in hot oil (about 170-180°C). I learned that you need to turn them over after about 1 minute or there will be large air bubbles on the top side and you won’t be able to turn them around anymore.

This recipe yields two big bowls fuul of delicious Faasekiechelcher, but this is all that was left today:

You need to roll them in cinnamon and sugar.

Enjoy!

A Day at the Zoo 11: The Goat and the Peacock

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Like in most zoos, our peacocks roam freely, which means that they have access to the enclosures of other herbivores. In this case, the dwarf goats. They had just been fed and you can imagine who thought that HE had been fed.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

Unfortunately I’d put the shutter time really low before and didn’t notice, so the pics are blurry, although their blurriness also adds to the overall mood.

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

© Giliell, all rights reserved

Well, I guess he was right…