F is for Flying Squirrel

F is traditionally a phase in the A-Z challenge when the initial enthusiasm dies, fewer people start hopping and commenting and it's the first time you find yourself thinking f it....

Traditionally in these kinds of scenarios, we regroup, herd together the few remaining brain cells that are left and try to cobble together a few lines about flying squirrels. Rude not to really...

In my research on flying squirrels I draw lightly on flyingsquirrels.com which was conceived and developed  to make people more aware of "North America's two species of these fascinating, nocturnal, tree dwelling, forest dependent gliding mammals."

Also Steve Patterson from flyingsquirrels.com says if you don't cite him he'll get all squirrely.

"Leave the copying of other folk's work to the 'Homer and Bart Simpsons" of this world. Plagarism will hurt YOU far more than anyone else!" warns Steve, making me wonder if he has an army of flying squirrels at his disposal poised to clinically attack the nuts of evil plagirisers, as effectively as Veruca Salt is dealt with by the squirrels in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Steve's love of flying squirrels may not be universal. "Flying squirrel damage includes accumulated droppings, urine stains, chewing and gnawing on wood, and degradation of insulation.," warns one pest control website. Flying squirrels may look cute but they don't make great pets.

Flying squirrels don't really fly either, at least not like birds. They glide between trees They are smaller than the grey squirrels we usually see squinting evilly at us from trees and can be found in North America and Siberia. The direction and speed of the squirrels in midair is varied by changing the positions of its two arms and legs, largely controlled by small cartilaginous wrist bones. Wikipedia states flying squirrels only need to attend flying school for a few weeks to get their wings.

"At birth, flying squirrels are mostly hairless, apart from their whiskers, and most of their senses are not present. By week five of their lives, they are almost fully developed. At that point, they can respond to their environment and start to develop a mind of their own. Through the upcoming weeks of their lives, they practice leaping and gliding. After two and a half months, their gliding skills are perfected, they are ready to leave their nest and are capable of independent survival."

It now occurs to me I am really rather bored with flying squirrels.

Useless Fact About Flying Squirrels.

They have been known to fly as far as 90 meters (295 feet). This makes them great for blog hopping.

What Not To Say to a Flying Squirrel

Any chance of an upgrade?

E is for Emu

The Emu is a large flightless bird that lives in Australia. Whenever I have seen them in a zoo, I have been rather glad they have been on the other side of the fence. The Emu has a beady eye and a pecky beak. It would gladly take a stab at you for the hell of it.

Feeling peckish? (LT Shears)

As it happens, the Emu loomed large and terrifying over my childhood thanks to a rather unfunny man called Rod Hull who spent much of his life with his hand up the backside of a puppet called Emu that attacked folks on live TV.

Later on there was speculation that Hull was a bit pervy and used Emu to grope people. I mentioned this in passing in a previous blog.

In his biography the ex darts player, Eric Bristow, who was admittedly seeking publicity, told the Sun, Hull was a pervert.

"He used the puppet to feel up women and stick his hand between people's legs. It was out of order," said Bristow, who went on to launch into a diatribe about how he would knock him out cold on live TV if his "f..... silly bird" came anywhere near him.

Hull drew 11 million viewers at the peak of his fame with his show. He died penniless in 1999 after he fell off a roof during a botched repair.

The Emu is the second tallest bird in the world after the Ostrich, another bird that can't fly, thank God.

Emus, by their nature, are curious birds who Emus do not sleep through the night but get their kips in several short stints sitting down. Emus are farmed for their meat, oil and leather. The toe and claw of an Emu are 15 centimetres wide and their feet alone remind me of those of a raptor in Jurassic Park.

Useless Fact About an Emu.

Females are more aggressive and angry than males during the courting period, often fighting one another off for access to mates. Scientists have found thise behavior in few other places outside the Emu population of Eastern Australia, and some nightclubs in the north of England.

What Not to Say to An Emu

Bet ya can't peck me baby.

D is for Duck Billed Platypus

The DBP is something of a WTF creature, if you know what I mean. The platypus lives in Eastern Australia and is quirky in the way you will only find in a country where folks throw bent sticks in the air so as they can come back to them, as a passtime.

The platypus is a mammal. It has a flat, streamlined body. But in some ways it's as if its creator decided to use little bits of other creatures and was having a laugh.

The platypus has a muzzle shaped like the bill of a duck, webbed feet, and a tail like that of a beaver. The bill may look like a duck's but it is not hard like that of a bird. It is actually an elongated muzzle covered with a leathery skin rather than a hard beak. The bill and feet of a platypus are dark black while the fur is usually a dark brown color. The platypus also possesses a spur on it hind legs that can be used to inject venom into another creature. In humans this can cause agonizing pain so platypets are not a great idea. It can be fatal to smaller creatures.

If you are not confused enough already this is one of only five mammals to lay eggs, rather than giving birth to its young live. The platypus also walks like a reptile. It's one mixed up bunny.

Platypuses also have a sense of electroreception: they locate their prey in part by detecting electric fields generated by muscular contractions. Platypuses have been heard to emit a low growl when disturbed and a range of other vocalisations have been reported in specimens in captivity, although the rumor that they can sing like the Bee Gees is just that. Much is muddled about these creatures. There's not even an accepted plural in relation to them; is it Platipuses or Platipi - who knows?

Despite, or maybe because of their quirkiness, these animals have featured heavily in popular culture. Syd the platypus was one of the three mascots chosen for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. There's a Green Day song "Platypus (I Hate You)", Robin Williams refers to them as proof that God has a sense of humor in Dogma, and I find it hard to escape from Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb.

Useless Fact About the Duck Billed Platypus

They don't have passports. Once they are taken out of Oz they never do well. As of 2013^[update], there are apparently no platypuses in captivity outside of Australia. Three unsuccessful attempts were made to bring the animals to the Bronx Zoo, in 1922, 1947, and 1958; of these, only two of the three animals introduced back in 1947 survived longer than 18 months. Fair dinkum mate - they wouldn't give a XXXX for any place outside Oz.

What Not To Say to a Platypus

Here's some bread ducky, ducky

C is for Camel

It didn't take long. Just two days into the A-Z challenge and my forward planning has gone to rats (ha a R) and I'm playing catch up. On the positive side the 529 visits to this blog on Tuesday was the highest this year I believe, and an improvement on a month ago when I wrote a whining entry about how my blog was dying. Yay for the A-Z challenge. It appeals to my inner nerd. It may kill me yet.

If you think the bad tempered camels that hang out by the pyramids of Giza are formidable you should meet their handlers.

A Bactrian camel has two humps

The fact we were on an organized tour and the handlers had been paid up front made little difference to their technique of trying to get more money out of us. One of them squinted at me, confused by my Canadian bumbag, which was a gift from Canada strangely enough.

"Mr. Canada, Mr. Canada," he said, holding out a grubby palm.

"Nope," I said.

"Engleeesh, Engleesh."

I nodded sadly as the camel's neck shot up and I was high in the air on the neck of the grunting beast.

The handler shot me a predatory grin through shattered teeth. "Marks and Spencer. Tally Ho," he chuckled.

"Yes. We all say Tally Ho all the time in England."

Still I felt more like the hunted than the hunter as he whipped the camel's backside and we jerked off towards a particularly empty stretch of desert. I had heard the tales. If the tip wasn't big enough the camel received the mother of all whips to the ass and I'd end up marooned in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.

To some extent I can relate to the Tripadvisor review written by Barbara from Santa Cruz in 2006.

"Unfortunately for me, my camel ride amongst the Pyramids was a horribly scary experience. Scary being that the handler of my camel was an 8 year old boy who hassled me the whole time about me giving him my watch, my shoes, etc. Then he took me away from the group and wouldn't take me back to them unless I gave him money," she wrote.

Camels can be awkward as well as their handlers but then, so too might you, if you spent most of the day with people like Barbara from California on your back.

The camel is an even-toed ungulate with distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back.

You are more likely to encounter a dromedary, which is a one humped beast found in Africa and Arabia than a Bactrian Camel which is a more shaggy animal found in central Asia which has two humps.

There are also New World camels in South America but these are more commonly known as Llamas.

Although camels can be disagreeable and have terrible halitosis, these are definitely the chaps you want with you if you find yourself making a long trip across the Sahara.

Camels do not water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: the concentration of body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates.

Useless Fact About Camels

The male dromedary camel has an organ on its neck called a dulla, which is a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when he's in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. All of which sounds delightful.

What Not to Say to A Camel

Aim not to tell crude jokes about his toes.

B is for Baboon

Baboons earn the sacred B spot in the A-Z challenge because they are so loathsome.

My childhood is haunted by trips to soulless concrete zoos in Britain when I’d peer into the baboon enclosure to be exposed to scenes of screaming, fighting, gang rape and the like committed by oversized monkeys with raw red bottoms; all of which probably explains why I was scarred for life.

A male baboon acting like the mane man (Dick Mudde)

If there’s one species that makes me want to be a creationist and believe mankind was created in a flash of lightning rather than evolved from primates, it’s the aggressive old baboon.

To me the most offensive aspect of the baboon is its sticky out red bottom. Most self respecting beasts would want to keep a backside like that hidden away. Not the baboon, it seems. It makes me feel no better to know their inflamed looking butts have a use. Apparently a female baboon initiates mating by presenting her swollen rump to the male's face. Lovely.

Wikipedia – which I will draw on heavily during this challenge because I am feeling lazy – describes the aggression displayed by baboons which includes a “quick flashing of the eyelids accompanied by a yawn to show off the teeth.”

Apparently some males succeed in taking a female from another's harem, in an act called a "takeover".

“In many species, infant baboons are taken by the males as hostages during fights,” adds Wikipedia.

It seems not only are baboons ugly sex offenders but they’ll also resort to child kidnap. There are five species of baboon and they live in Africa and Arabia. They are the Olive Baboon, the Guinea Baboon, the Chacma Baboon, the Yellow Baboon and the Hamadryas Baboon.

Ancient Egyptians considered the Hamadryas baboons to be sacred and related them with Thoth, the god of letters. Frankly I find the idea of baboons being scared laughable, perhaps explaining why the Egyptians all ended up mummified.

Useless Fact About Baboons

Baboons take part in social groomingn by picking parasites, dead skin, nefarious gunk, dirt and other unpleasant objects from each other's fur. The act strengthens social bonds within the group but the picking order is also a pecking order with the boboon who is being groomed having a higher status in the group than the one doing the grooming. Having a pal to pick out your lice is the kind of baboon equivalent of having a butler.

What Not to Say to a Baboon

Maybe I can get you a pair of pants

A is for Anteater

Groan. Has the A to Z Challenge really arrived already? So much for being prepared....

I have always been a big fan of anteaters. For some reason during my childhood I would always find myself making friends with people with big noses. I'm not sure if this was a subliminal thing because I liked anteaters of if my affinity with people with big noses led me to relate to anteaters later in life.

The giant anteater (Malene Thyssen)

I'm also rather keen on anteaters because I really have no time for pesky ants.

Anteaters I guess are the animal kingdom's answer to Orkin pest control and unlike Orkin you don't have to hang around for someone to turn up and pay them. Unfortunately my last attempt to procure a Giant Anteater from PetsMart was not entirely successful and I was instead flogged a budgie.

The Giant Anteater is the coolest of the lot and usually hangs out in South America. The lot of an anteater is not a fun one as they tend to spend all day - um eating ants, strangely enough. How many? Up to 35,000 a day although I have no idea who compliled this stat.

There's also the small matter that ants can sting. Wikipedia states: "To avoid the jaws, sting, and other defences of the invertebrates, anteaters have adopted the feeding strategy to lick up as many ants and termites as quickly as possible — an anteater normally spends about a minute at a nest before moving on to another — and a giant anteater has to visit up to 200 nests to consume the thousands of insects it needs to satisfy its caloric requirements."

All in all it's a hell of a lot easier to go out for a curry, if you ask me. Oh yeah and anteaters are xenarthrans - so there.

The anteater's tongue is also covered in tiny hooks and flicks 150 times a minute. If you are an ant in the path of one of these critters my best advice to you is be very afraid. If you see one of these coming your way, you really are in for Antmageddon.

Useless Fact About Anteaters


They have a body temperature fluctuating between 33 and 36 °C (91 and 97 °F) which is among the lowest body temperatures of any mammal.

What Not to Say to an Anteater

Move over Barry Manilow, you're making the bed cold.

Where on Earth is Wichita?

Last night I found myself in a bar watching college basketball with a couple of mates. It was either that or dressing up as Scary Easter Bunny - strapping on some big teeth and growling : "No chocolate eggs for you!"

Seriously, what have chocolate eggs got to do with Easter and resurrection etc? What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Wichita by night (Andrea Allen)

Back to college basketball. The honest truth is I haven't assimilated well to American sports. I saw one Super Bowl that was won by the Green Bay Packers and found myself wondering:

1 What are the rules here?

2 Why is it so long?

3 Why do they stop all the time?

I was glad the packers won because they were playing the Steelers and Steelers fans always strike me as loud, overly pale and in-yer-face. Packers fans are probably pale too but I guess it's so cold up there they are probably green so that's OK.

I knew bugger all about NCAA basketball but at least basketball is easy to understand. I played it a bit at school in England, although it's nothing like the US experience in that there was little expectation and no cheer leaders. Generally I sucked but there was one majestic game in which I shot almost from the half way line and it went in the hoop.

I'm not saying I was like John Updike's antihero Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom who goes through his midlife crisis with dreams of his basketball glory days at school. In fact, I had forgotten about the magical trajectory of ball through hoop, until I started writing this post.

The game I was watching on Saturday was Wichita State v Ohio State and I instantly found myself identifying with Wichita. This was no surprise because Brits normally relate to the underdog. But all the way through this unlikely victory it bothered me that I had no real idea where Wichita was, although a song from the White Stripes kept going through my head.

I concluded Wichita was somewhere flat and cold, North Dakota probably. But when I checked it out today  I discovered it's the biggest city in Kansas, with a population of 384,000 plus which doesn't strike me as very many people for a largest city, unless they are all crowded into a phone box at one time.

This surprised me because I assumed Kansas would be the biggest city in Kansas, but there's some speculation it might not even be in Kansas which is all screwed up if you ask me.

I pulled up some pics of Wichita and concluded I'd be bored there after a couple of days. No wonder the students get a lot of basketball practice in. Wichita is known as the air capital of the world and is also responsible for giving us Pizza Hut. This made me realize it has been a long time since I've been in Pizza Hut and they really might want to replace those dumb looking buildings with red roofs with something that cries out : "Visit me now."

Anyhow I have no desire to live in Wichita as it appears to be far too far away from the ocean. But I may take more interest in basketball and check out Wichita's progress in the Final Four or the Fab Four, or whatever it calls itself.

In saying that, as I left the sports bar I saw an English Premiership game being played in another room on a glass screen. It was Manchester City v. Newcastle.

At this point one of my friends asked me if I was OK. I was drooling on the glass.

The Moon and Sixpence, Gauguin and Artistic Disintegration

It occurs to me now that as writers we disintegrate for our art. I have been wondering if this is the case ever since I recently read The Moon and Sixpence by W Somerset Maugham.

In the novel Charles Stickland is an unremarkable and dull stockbroker from England who unexpectedly leaves his social climbing wife and children to become a penniless writer in Paris.

One of Gauguin's paintings from Tahiti

Strickland shows no interest in his comfortable previous life and is driven only to paint. He goes from Paris to the seedy underworld of Marseilles and eventually to Tahiti. He is ridiculed for most of his life and dies an appalling death in paradise. Only after his death is his genius recognized.

The novel is loosely based on the life of Paul Gauguin, the leading French Post-Impressionist painter, who worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen before his family fell apart and he became a painter in Paris.

The search for an elusive paradise took him in 1891 to French Polynesia where he sought to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional".

Tahiti, marooned in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean seems to conform to all of our ideals of a paradise lost.

"Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is a mystery in their sombre depths, down which murmur and splash cool streams, and you feel that in these umbrageous places life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways," writes Maugham.

"Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the enjoyment of the moment."

Artists crave such places because of their solitude and majesty. We crave them every time we find ourselves looking for a bathroom part in Lowe's.

The Big Reveal - A Blog Hop Before the A-Z Challenge

It's time to reveal my Big Reveal, co-hosted, and more effectively hosted by Mina Lobo at Some Dark Romantic. I was somewhat skeptical about this idea at first but it seems we have attracted 60 plus hoppers which is none too shabby, even if the A-Z Challenge has probably attracted a couple more.

A rather hectic workload and the fact I have mislaid my laptop power cord will make my big reveal short. Were I a stripper I would be booed off stage and pelted with rotten tomatoes. Fortunately for all concerned, I am not a stripper.

Last year my A-Z Challenge theme was music. The year before it was random stuff. This year it will be animals because - let's face it folks - there are lots of them and we can neglect some of the more obscure ones in the rush to see the tigers at the zoo. As my great uncle Albert always said (or would have said if I had one), never neglect the tapir in the rush to see the tiger, just because the poor boy has an unfortunate nose. I can't think of one beginning with X off the top of my head but maybe it will come. Have a great weekend fellow A-Z sufferers.

And while Brits in the US may appear at the top of this badge, this was mainly Mina's baby so do make sure to visit her blog to find out what it's really all about.

And visit all these great bloggers below now, as I surely will when I find that pesky power cord.


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Is Blogging an Art Form That Has Had Its Day?

In the 2011 French movie The Artist George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is the superstar of the silent screen. Everywhere he goes he's feted and starlets swoon at his feet.

Yet his downfall is just around the corner, although nobody realizes it in the roaring Hollywood of 1927. When he refuses to do "talkies" dismissing movies with words as a gimmick, his fate is sealed. As his star wanes that of Peppy Miller, his one time lover and movie extra, rises inexorably.

 

AllMoviePhoto.com

I thought of The Artist when I read Jennifer Fabulous' blog Is blogging dead? When we got into blogging a few years ago it was edgy, avant-garde, even. Now, it seems, every man, dog, cat and cat's half strangled mouse has a blog and nobody is excited about it anymore. Like everybody else's my blog's visits seems to have been cut in half. The stats look like a cardiograph of someone with a terminal disease. Sometimes it feels like being in the market square trying to flog a Betamax player.

In some ways this is sad. While the pressure to blog can produce some tripe, occasionally I stumble on some truly moving blogs out there such as Kittie Moore's blog about her father.

But sadly some other good bloggers seem to have tuned out and moved on.

Can the future really be no more expansive than a tweet or a status update, or will it move on to something different altogether, leaving us slapping around our blogs like Monty Python's dead parrot?  At this rate it's going to feel like being back in the world of newspapers again.

In England in the 1830s desperate agricultural workers in the South of England went around rioting and smashing up the threshing machines that were killing their livelihoods, enlisting a menacing, but fictitious figure called Captain Swing to write threatening letters.

"Sir, Your name is down amongst the Black hearts in the Black Book and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are Parson Justasses, to make your wills. Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions, Ye have not yet done as ye ought,.... Swing.

The Swing Riots failed to stop progress.

In the 1980s and 1990s I saw those old characters with the ink stained hands walk out of print factories for the last time and into oblivion. Who knows where they went and what they did? As the Wapping riots can testify, they didn't always go without a fight. But go they did.

Makes you wonder about Blogger doesn't it?

Gigi Redux

In December I blogged in over dramatic terms about the degeneration of the human spirit in relation to my stolen cat Gigi.

I am pleased to report the boy has shown up alive and well, albieit a bit smelly. In fact three cats that vanished from our street, were later found at various times in the same part of the city about two miles away from home.

Finally the call came in and Gigs was back. My wife is apt to point out I put up no posters related to the disappearance of the boy; did not sort out the amber cat alert etc., did not pace the mean streets until the early hours etc. In my defense I spend a few cold hours in the cemetery and checking out a report by a listless teenager who took me down a muddy lane by the same cemetery where I feared I was about to be ambushed by a crowd of thugs.

But yeah generally I did very little. I am an existentialist and I would be lying if I didn't find myself believing some of the worst sayings of the naysayers who told me Gigs had probably ended up in Lo Mein down at House of Willy Wong.

Always disconcerting when a fortune cookie says "look for wisdom and your cat in Chop Suey."

My lack of urgency is curious when I consider I have always championed the cause of the boy and defended him when he has clawed furniture and been threatened with a return to the farm from whence he came. Maybe I just put my legs up and trusted to Karma.

But OK I'm no saint. And indeed some of the Saints were no saints if you know what I mean.

Butler's Lives tell us Saint Christina the Astonishing was unable to bear the smell of human beings and lived "by begging, dressed in rags, and in many ways behaved in a very terrifying manner."

It adds: "There is little in the recorded history of Christina ... to make us think she was other than a pathological case."

The disappearance and reappearance of Gigs has made me ponder more weighy things (momentarily). When we come back again are we ever the same? I can think of a lot of football players who returned to clubs to great acclaim, only to be a shadow of their former selves. We are told Jesus Christ returned again to earth but failed to do anything whizzy with loaves and fishes to please the crowd this time, and just reappeared to disappear.

Similarly in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, which (implausibly) is one of my favorite novels, Michael Henchard is reunited with the wife and daughter he sold while on a bender 18 years earlier, but things are never quite the same second time around for the man who has now risen to the lofty position of Mayor. I'm not convinced by my own rationale here because things may not have been so peachy first time around if you are going to auction off your wife and daughter.

In contrast Gigs is showing no sign that he has been held in a dungeon and abused by a kitty fiddler, I am relieved to say. He's still his same good natured self, although he's want to cause lacerations when annoyed. And he can be an arsy bunny.

Indeed the catnapping incident has improved his condition. No longer confined to a garage for long periods, he now has a free run of the house and is probably on course to get up to 25 pounds again.

This post had run out of speed because I am in Starbucks and distracted (naturally). I have just discovered the barista (yup still hate that word) who I have given funny looks to when he puts on that annoying fake Italian accent is indeed Italian. Oh well.