During lunch break walk at work, I have encountered this little fellow. He flew by and sat on the macadam right next to me – a very conspicuous bright green jewel on the grey dull road. It was really tiny – about the size of a thumbnail. And of course I did not have my camera and macro lenses on me, so you have to do with this rather poor pictures made with my phone.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
F. Schuyler Mathews. Underwood, William Lyman. Familiar Life in field and Forest. The animals, birds, frogs and salamanders. New York. D. Appleton and Company, `1898.
Lilac ©voyager, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Just a cute baby, not much to say.
Montague Browne. Practical Taxidermy. London: “The Bazaar” Office, 1878 — Source.
I have mixed feelings about taxidermy. On the one hand, it’s an interesting art form. It involves a lot of sculpture and the artist needs a good understanding of anatomy and the nature of the animal when it was animate. Taxidermists strive to make the animal look as natural as possible, even if they place it in an unnatural pose or place. It’s very multi-media and there are all sorts of little tricks they use to put things together and make them stay put. Fascinating, eh?
On the other hand, I think that displaying “trophy animals” on the wall or floor is disgusting. I once had a client who was a big game hunter. He had a tiger skin rug and a polar bear skin ‘throw’ on his sofa and hanging on his walls were the skulls of several big game animals. I know there was a moose and a big horn sheep, but I can’t remember what the others were. It was so sad and totally creepy and very unnerving and I had the devil of a time doing the assessment. On my way to the next home visit I had to pull over and catch my breath because I felt like throwing up. He was a pleasant enough man, but when I got back to the office I traded his case with a colleague who didn’t mind the taxidermy.
Forest Rooster greets us at the entrance to the trail. ©voyager, all rights reserved
This morning Jack and I went to a forest trail a few miles outside of town to the east. We don’t come here often because it’s full of mosquitoes, but it’s still early in the season so I thought we’d take the chance. We did see a few mosquitoes, but we didn’t run into any swarms and neither of us got a single bite. This trail is a lot different than our familiar wee forest path. It’s a mixture of conifer and hardwood with several large open areas and a big pond covered in lily pads. It’s also protected by a large, aggressive forest rooster who did not like the looks of Jack.
False Solomon’s Seal, ©voyager, all rights reserved
The day started out rainy, but by noon the sun was shining in an azure blue sky and the day was warm and inviting. Jack and I took ourselves off to the woods and we had a lovely, slow stroll whilst chatting about this and that and listening to the birds sing. We marveled at how quickly things change at this time of year. The white trilliums are still blooming, but the red ones have vanished and so have the happy white flowers of bloodroot. Other things are growing madly. The mayapples have become umbrellas and they’re full of buds. The false Solomon’s Seal is in bud, too, and leaves of many kinds are sprouting up along the entire forest floor. Jack took extra care to sprinkle pee where it was needed the most and by the time we’d gone all the way around his tank was empty and he was doing the air-pee. All in all a brilliant day.
The Marcus Tactical Dog Brush
A few weeks back, Jack and I received a very special gift from Marcus. It’s a dog brush, but not just any dog brush. This little gizmo is the most practical dog grooming tool that we’ve ever used and it has a few little secrets that I hope Marcus won’t mind my sharing. I suppose the best part is the actual grooming surface which is very simply a hacksaw blade. It’s amazing. It pulls out hairs that are still only thinking about coming out and it never clogs. The hair just flies out in a big cloud and I don’t have to stop and de-clog the thing which means that I can keep going as long as my arm holds out and Jack doesn’t have a chance to get restless and wander away. It works so well that it’s an outdoor tool only at our house. I used it inside the first time we tried it and it took days to vacuum up all the hair it set loose. The hacksaw blade also makes the tool useful for lots of other situations such as an unexpected need to escape or sever an artery (hopefully not your own) and I think it’s accurate to call it a “tactical dog brush.”
It’s also a damned good scratcher for an itchy dog. Jack has seasonal allergies and some days his tablets don’t control the itch as well as others. If I see Jack scratching a lot we grab the Marcus tool and out we go for a few passes that send Jack into fits of pleasure. He leans into it, dances from one back foot to the other and gets this sweet, goofy grin that makes me happy, too.
The other good bits of the tool might be harder to replicate. Marcus has taken a beautiful piece of maple shaped it and cut a slot with his bandsaw for the blade. Then he carved a perfect hand-hold groove on the backside. The wood was then smoothed to perfection by the artist and resin impregnated for durability. It’s a joy to hold and sometimes I find myself just stroking the thing because I’m tactile and I like the way it feels. It was then fitted with a perfect silver ‘J’ and sent to Jack.
I’m pretty sure there are easier ways to make a hacksaw into a dog grooming tool, but there are certainly no better ways to do it. Thanks again, Marcus.
Part of the floodplain at our park. ©voyager, all rights reserved
Can anyone tell me what the man in these photos is doing? Jack and I encountered him at our local park yesterday. He was slowly walking from one side of the creek to the other along a measuring tape laid out between the banks. He would move a step or two and stop, then fiddle with his machine and look up to the sky for a while and then fiddle with his machine again until he was satisfied with something and then he’d take another step or two and repeat the process. At the rate he was moving it would take him an hour or more to cross our wee creek. I suspect it’s related to the flooding you can see in the first photo. Two years ago they removed the concrete barriers lining the creek and naturalized the banks. It was an all summer long project and it was quite picturesque when completed. Since then, though, the area around the creek floods easily and essentially makes large areas of the park unusable.
I would have stopped to ask him what he was doing, but the children in the photo were tossing stones into the creek that kept landing close to the poor man and the 2 adults in their group let several minutes pass before stopping the action. I thought the fellow
really didn’t need anyone else annoying him. Also, I didn’t want Jack to go into the creek because the last time he did he came out smelling like a sewer. We watched for a while and finally came home with my curiosity piqued, but not satisfied. If you have a clue or a notion about this endeavor I’d sure appreciate it if you’d share.
That’s curious.©voyager, all rights reserved
Very curious. ©voyager, all rights reserved
What’s he looking for up there? ©voyager, all rights reserved
From the Zoo as well.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The Canopy Cometh ©voyager, all rights reserved
The canopy of the forest is filling in quickly and soon all the light that’s been fueling the growth of spring flowers will turn to shade or bits of dappled sunlight. The trilliums are still blooming madly, though, and we even found a few red trilliums still hanging on. The Jack-in-the-pulpits have sprouted up all over and I can’t recall a year that there have been so many of them. They’re everywhere and some of them are huge. It seemed to take forever for spring to arrive this year, but the woodland flowers are obviously very happy with the conditions.
Open for Business. ©voyager, all rights reserved
A red trillium is a rare sight once the white trilliums bloom. ©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack-in-the-pulpits ©voyager, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
From our recent visit to the zoo
