Archive: Posts about Flora and Fauna
December 4th, 2007, 5 Comments »
Our bedroom is on the top floor of our limestone farmhouse. There’s kind of an outdoor landing outside our bedroom door, which you cross to descend stairs into the rest of the house. We’ve occasionally seen cats on this landing, as they cross rooftops and balconies and lick their tongues into the corners of the evening.
Last week, on three separate occasions, we’ve found, well, piles of crap in various corners of this landing. Large piles of crap for a cat. If the location wasn’t accessible only to cats, you’d think a dog was responsible (some of the cats around here are big, muscular beasts). And, without getting too graphic, these cats were not getting enough fibre in their diets.
What to do? The cats come and do their business in the middle of the night. There was no way to fence off the landing, or access to it from the roof. There was only one solution.
I made like Farley Mowat, and marked my territory. We figured a little human urine might turn off the fickle felines.
And we were right. It’s been four nights now, and there’s no cat poo in sight. Darren 1, Feral Cats 0.
5 Comments »
November 23rd, 2007, 2 Comments »
Gwendolyn sends along a bizarre story from Northern Ireland:
The only salmon farm in Northern Ireland has lost its entire population of more than 100,000 fish, worth some $2 million, to a spectacular jellyfish attack, its owners said Wednesday.
The Northern Salmon Co. Ltd. said billions of jellyfish–in a dense pack of about 10 square miles and 35 feet deep–overwhelmed the fish last week in two net pens about a mile off the coast of the Glens of Antrim, north of Belfast.
Managing director John Russell said the company’s dozen workers tried to rescue the salmon, but their three boats struggled for hours to push their way through the mass of jellyfish. All the fish were dead or dying from stings and stress by the time the boats reached the pens, he said.
The boat couldn’t get through? Man, that’s a lot of Pelagia nocticula. Apparently Jellyfish aren’t big fans of fish-farming either.
UPDATE: The Telegraph features a couple of photos of the jellyfish hordes. Where can I find more?
2 Comments »
November 21st, 2007, 3 Comments »
I’m test-driving a new-to-me enterprise class web stats package on my site at the moment. More on that later, possibly. Anyhow, I noticed that a bunch of people were finding my site based on the search phrase ‘how to kill a turkey’.
First off, what kind of situation have these people found themselves in?
- Did someone just deposit a live turkey on their doorstep?
- Did the orders get mixed up at Butterball, and they were shipped a live turkey instead of a dead one?.
- Are they barricaded in their home while angry turkeys crowd the front porch, shaking their wattles threateningly through the screen door?
Unfortunately for those searchers, the page they’re finding on my site won’t help them. The post’s topic does, however, bear repeating, given its innovative and seasonal (heh) nature.
It’s Season Shot, and is downright clever:
Season Shot is made of tightly packed seasoning bound by a fully biodegradable food product. The seasoning is actually injected into the bird on impact seasoning the meat from the inside out. When the bird is cooked the seasoning pellets melt into the meat spreading the flavor to the entire bird. Forget worrying about shot breaking your teeth and start wondering about which flavor shot to use!
How smart is that?
3 Comments »
November 20th, 2007, 6 Comments »
I’m a pretty casual, uh, ovo-pecto-vegetarian, or some such nonsense. I don’t eat red meat. I have had Jello on occasion, and probably other products that use gelatin–an animal extract–but I guess I’m not quite committed enough to care.
Others, however, are, and I totally respect their devotion to vegetarianism, veganism and other related isms. Beth is one such vegetarian, and she recently wrote an interesting post (with video) describing the saga of the tainted vegan marshmallows:
Googling “Vegan Supreme Marshmallows” yielded this: as it turns out, the company that he been supplying the vegetarian gelatin substitute to the company that made V.S.M. was just lying - they were just selling regular old animal bone & skin-derived gelatin! Which means that I had been eating gelatin! And, to add insult to injury, I was paying $8 a bag to do so! So gross!!!
Apparently you can now get non-controversial vegan marshmallows from this online store. They don’t look quite as Stay Puft as the originals, but they’re guilt-free. Except, you know, for the calories.
6 Comments »
October 3rd, 2007, 8 Comments »
We have this cat that spends about 40% of her time in our farmhouse. I recently discovered that she had several ticks, grossly engorged with blood, attached to her head and shoulders.
I alerted the cat’s owners–two retired British fellows who live down the street–but they seemed a little prissy on the removal. So, I consulted the Internet, put on some gardening gloves and got to work. The quarter is for scale (it, happily, didn’t come out of the cat), and to instruct my victims of the nationality of their killer:
I was quite pleased with myself–this sort of hands-on-mammals stuff really isn’t my domain of expertise.
There was a little parable in how we went about it, too. For the first tick, one of us held the cat while I tried to pull out the offending insect. There was plenty of drama, as the cat doesn’t like to be held, and I suspect she could tell everybody was tense. So, there were several aborted attempts and she only let us do it once.
The next time, I just walked up to her while she was sleeping and quietly went to work. She let me take out all three without so much as batting a, uh, claw. The lesson, I guess, is that sometimes a haiku beats a sonnet. Or is that too abstract?
8 Comments »
September 29th, 2007, 9 Comments »
While my parents were visiting last month, they spotted fishermen loading palm fronds into their small fishing boats before heading out. They later asked me what they used them for. I had no idea.
Today, coincidentally, I learned why they need the palm fronds. Can you guess?
UPDATE: Filmgoerjuan did not guess, but he found the correct answer nonetheless. The fish in the photo is called a lampuki. From Wikipedia:
Fishermen cut and gather the larger, lower fronds from palm trees which they then weave into large flat rafts. The rafts are pulled out to sea with small boats. During midday lampuki school underneath the rafts, seeking the shade. The fishermen use large mesh nets to catch the schooling lampuki. The fishing method has not changed significantly since Roman times.
Here’s a Geocities page with some photos of fishermen weaving the rafts together.
That said, I also really like Heather’s idea about pirate hats. “Arrrr! Where be the lampuki?”
9 Comments »
July 16th, 2007, 1 Comment »
I did a lot of housework this weekend, and thus caught up on a bunch of podcasts. I’m quite enjoying the CBC’s cultural magazine show, Q. They have this weekly web correspondent who reports on fun stuff from the Web. I’d heard of everything else he talked about with the exception of What Jeff Killed was new to me.
Welcome to What Jeff Killed, your authoritative source for news and information about Jeff The Giant Orange Cat and his favorite pastime: killing things.
DISCLAIMER: This Web site contains disgusting/disturbing images, has no value whatsoever, and due to its content should not be viewed by anyone. Read the full disclaimer.
Yeah, Jeff kills some big things. Some of those photos are particularly visceral.
I don’t think that web guy has his schtick quite sorted out. He sang the praises of Battle at Kruger, and even mentioned the 6.7 million people who’d seen it. He also mentioned ye olde Dramatic Chipmunk. Isn’t his job to find stuff on the web that people haven’t seen?
1 Comment »
July 13th, 2007, 6 Comments »
We periodically feed this cat who lives a few doors down. She tends to eat and run, so we named her Dine and Dash. Or, if you prefer, Dine ‘n’ Dash.
Yesterdat, I was working upstairs and I heard her downstairs, yowling at the top of her little cat lungs. I eventually went down to see what the fuss was about. She’d returned the feeding favour:
It was an enormous locust or cricket or grasshopper. I don’t know how to tell the difference. But seriously, it was as long as my hand. I could have hired this one out to do stunt work in that Hilary Swank movie. Get a million of these badboys, and you’ve got yourself a plague of Biblical proportion. I searched my memory, and this is probably twice the size of the next biggest insect I’ve ever seen outside of a zoo.
As cat’s will, Dine ‘n’ Dash grew bored with her prey, and didn’t want to eat it or otherwise finish it off. I gently swept it into our dust pan and deposited it on the deck. It walked, with the plodding pace of a war veteran in chronic pain, into the fields beyond our house.
6 Comments »
June 24th, 2007, 10 Comments »
This morning I was stung by a Pelagia noctiluca, a small luminous jellyfish. I was snorkeling out beyond the bay where I usually go, and had spotted plenty of jellies in the water. I was being careful, but I guess the current carried this one into my outstretched arm.
It hurt like a big, bad bee sting (heh). I thrashed around a bit, swiping at my arm and generally looking like shark bait. A section of my arm went numb for a few moments. Then it just throbbed as I made the long swim back to shore.
Yes, I could have, uh, peed on it when I got back to shore, but I opted to just drive home and apply a more acidic fluid: vinegar. It had a nearly immediate effect. After a cold compress and about six hours, I can barely feel the sting.
Other Photos of Stings
I got to thinking about what else can sting me, both under the waves and on top of them. That led to a long, gross search for photos of stings in Flickr that looked way, way worse than my lame discolouration. I thought I’d assemble them here for your edification. They’re after the jump, because some are fairly disgusting, and I don’t want to be responsible for anybody losing their lunch on their keyboard. In most cases, you can click for even more close-up grossness.
Read more…
10 Comments »
June 14th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Ever since reading Freakonomics, I’ve had a well-nigh Kabalarian interest in names and their impacts on our lives. I recently encountered a couple of articles which furthered my name-related knowledge.
1 Comment »
