I have no idea. But I used my crappy phone cam to capture the event. These birds have one of the loudest, strangest calls of any bird I’ve ever heard, and they provided a short sample of that in the video below, probably because I was pissing them off by gawking at them:
Sandhill cranes are all over Florida year round with even more in the winter as migratory flocks join the year-rounders. They’re large birds with about a six-foot wingspan.
Some anti-seagoing mammalist has stickered most of lower Manhattan with these. Just one of the many things you didn’t think you had to worry about, but if you like paddling about with large gray rubbery bottlenosed mammals, don’t say you weren’t warned!
Either that or it’s just another NYC company trying to sell you T-shirts suitable for that upcoming Thrash concert. They may be unwittingly doing dolphins a favor, even while slandering them: wild dolphins are beginning to turn tail and flee after the umpteen bazillionth encounter with starry-eyed Flipper fanatics.
In any case, I ain’t swimmin’ with ‘em again. Not after that time in ‘96. But I can’t say any more; I accepted a lot of herring to keep my mouth shut.
These poor critters were caught up in an oil slick created by a cargo ship that ran aground off New Zealand. As they await decontamination, they wear knitted sweaters to keep them warm and to prevent them from ingesting toxic oil while attempting to remove the sludgy mess themselves.
It’s sad that they were exposed to the oil, and it sucks that many died. But lord, aren’t the survivors cute in their little sweaters!
I don’t know about you, but it’s been a slightly trying week here one way or another, so far topped by our cat Gus going missing overnight, sparking a neighborhood-wide hunt this morning that eventually led to my finding him sitting in a neighbor’s hedge about 20 yards from the house, impervious to rattlings of kibble packets and plaintive calls from his worried houseslaves. At the moment, I’m assuming something’s freaked him (there’s tree felling and roadworks going on all around us at the moment), rather than anything being seriously wrong, but he’s a bit subdued and confined to the house (he’s going to love this!) under observation for the next day or so, just in case. I’ll take him to the vet on Monday if he’s still not right.
So I felt like something soothing to listen to, and this vid hit the spot. That’s a traditional Swedish nyckelharpa—a bit like a bowed hurdygurdy (played by Mariusz Radwanski)—accompanied by a gorgeous development of the guitar family called the arch-harp guitar (invented by James Kline, who’s playing it here) that makes me go “WANT ONE!!!!”
As ever, think of this as an open thread if you feel the need.
We all knew the Republicans would bring some fresh ideas to the task of jobs creation, and they haven’t disappointed. Their proposals fall into two categories: cutting taxes and slashing regulations. Pursuant to the latter, there’s this:
GOP members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today called attention to a proposed regulation that would restrict the transportation and importation of nine types of snakes, including the Burmese Python.
In a new report entitled “Broken Government: How the Administrative State has Broken President Obama’s Promise of Regulatory Reform,” GOP members cited the proposed snake ban as one of seven examples of red tape choking off job growth in an already ailing economy.
[snip]
In the on-going battle over the dismal state of the jobs market, Republicans argue that a “regulatory tsunami” from the Obama administration is choking off jobs growth. Committee members say the free market should handle the giant pythons and that government tampering would “devastate a small but thriving sector of the economy.”
A rather serpentine report that fairly hisses with barely contained venom, the “Broken Government: How the Broken Administrative State Has Broken the Broken President’s Broken Promise of Motherfucking Snake Regulatory Reform” document urges lawmakers to stand aside and allow private enterprise to bare the fangs of American exceptionalism with an adder in every pot. Or something.
Good Christ, these motherfucking people are motherfucking dumb.
PS: One reason new regulations have been proposed to restrict snake commerce is that there approximately 100,000 pythons roaming the Everglades, dumped there by irresponsible pet owners. TPM again:
One python grew so big that it managed to devour a six-foot alligator before exploding. No really. This actually happened. There’s a photo.
A less ambitious python killed a Florida couple’s child. Perhaps the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee could put on some hip-waders and see how they do in the ‘Glades. Armed with “private enterprise,” of course.
Readers who click through expecting to see a story about a rogue Pegasus crashing a party with murderous intent will be disappointed; it’s an account of an altercation at a residence on a Native American reservation:
Elmer Flying Horse has been sentenced to more than two years in prison, for stabbing a man four times with a kitchen knife, during a fight that occurred on his birthday at an Indian reservation in North Dakota.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland ordered Flying Horse, 25, of Porcupine, N.D., to serve 27 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Hovland went after Flying Horse’s wallet too, ordering him to pay a $100 special assessment to the Crime Victim’s Fund and $8,383.90 in restitution.
On March 31, 2011, Flying Horse, his younger brother and others gathered to celebrate Flying Horse’s birthday at a home on Standing Rock Indian Reservation. During the course of the evening, Flying Horse’s younger brother became involved in a verbal altercation that quickly became a fight with the victim, according to U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon.
Flying Horse joined in the scuffle and, with a kitchen knife, stabbed the victim three times in the upper back and at least one time in the head. The victim required medical treatment for a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain and a punctured lung.
Authorities arrested Flying Horse and charged him with assault with a dangerous weapon and assault resulting in serious bodily injury.
Say, doesn’t “veneration” come from “Venus?” Ben Grelle, aka “the Frogman,” has given us this object of Feliration, and a bunch more, heavy on the Botticelli and the canvas. Go, behold, wonder, and don’t forget the free screen-cleaner. After you behold some of Ben’s other artworks, you’ll need it.
As promised in my post from a week or so ago, here’s the second instalment of my account of one of the busiest months of July I’ve had in a long time.
When Ms. YAFB and I returned from our Sweden trip, it was hard to contain our schadenfreude at the final big-time breaking of the Murdoch/tapping everyone in the world to sell papers story, which had been bubbling under for a few years. The rest of the news wasn’t so hot, not least with the “US debt crisis” kerfuffle seemingly no nearer resolution and people running round with their hair on fire all over the blogosphere, so it was no great hardship to gather our breath and after just a few days head off for a further enforced furlough from contact with the outside world—another cruise on the T.S. Royalist, which some of you may remember from an older post of mine.
I doubt my presence has been missed much over the past few weeks, as my co-bloggers have certainly kept you amused, informed, and wrily exasperated as usual. Ms. YAFB and I have been on not one, but two holidays this July, after a couple of years when we barely managed any—the first to the wedding of a family friend in wildest Sweden, and the second a week’s voyage on the T.S. Royalist, which some of you may recall from a post of mine from a couple of years ago. I won’t subject you to the full Vogon poetry session of endless holiday snaps, but I’ll share a few, and in return hope that you’ll help me get up to speed with what’s going on in the world—I’ve been without radio and TV for most of the month, let alone access to the blogosphere. You can assume I know about the Norwegian massacre, Amy Winehouse’s untimely death, and the still-grinding budget process, but as for the rest, I have a power of reading to catch up with—not least from this blog!
