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Yogi the Instructor
Driving through Yellowstone, I watch a black bear stand on her hind legs at the roadside, teaching her cubs to beg. She rises, sways slightly, forepaws lifted in a gesture that tourists find irresistible. This is her curriculum: stand tall, look needy, wait for the windows to roll down. The cubs aren’t interested. They scramble […]
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What It Means to Be Human
Various domesticated bird species usually run around the farm, including guinea fowl. We love our guinea fowl because they spend their days eating bugs: including ticks, flies, and other noxious pests. Guinea fowl are funny creatures, with colorful bald heads, speckled feathers, long legs, and oddly shaped bodies. We often view them as comic relief […]
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The Trauma Will Be Instagrammed: Wombat Handlings Down Under
The influencer might be defined as a modern, junked cretin of arrested moral and ethical capacity – with specific skills. Such an individual, for instance, is often able to use technological platforms with aptitude for two mundane purposes: to manipulate the gullible and rake in the cash. The essence of this effort lies in the […]
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The Government’s War on “Backyard” Farms
On the front page of the CDC website is the following headline: Which then opens into the following: Are you ready to give away your chickens? Move from the country? Wear gloves and a mask when caring for backyard chickens? Stop buying eggs from your local farmer or, all of the above? But hold your […]
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Andy and Opie Go Fishing
It was such a bucolic setting. Even now, more than fifty years later, I can still see little Opie (Ron Howard) in his rolled-up jeans scrambling beside Andy; both carry fishing poles as they head to the lake. It introduced every episode of The Andy Griffith Show, along with that catchy whistled tune. It’s what first comes to mind when […]
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Rigging Avian Ballots: New Zealand’s Bird of the Century Competition
They can be a serious lot in New Zealand. They got upset at – forgive this author such reference – the use of a rule in cricket back in February 1981 which led to expressions of misty anger from the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Muldoon. While permissible within the laws of cricket, sides […]
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A Tree of Life — Right outside my Window
Whenever I need a brief respite from my work, I get out on my fire escape for a little air: Astoria, Queens, New York City, USA air. From my wrought iron perch, I am regularly treated to a wide range of urban bird companions. In these moments, I can’t help but imagine what it might […]
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EO: Three Hooves up in High Heaven
Films featuring animals as screen filled protagonists, often in an imperfect, callous human world, have been made before. There was Robert Bresson’s 1966 Au Hasard Balthazar, which introduced audiences to a saintly donkey subject to the terrible things human beings are so often prone to inflict. In recent times, the documentary black-and-white film Gunda, directed […]
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More Like Cousteau’s Son, Not Bradley Cooper’s Twin!
I’m back at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport Oregon, part of the Oregon State University campus harboring marine mammal-fisheries-benthic-ocean researchers and students. The topic: How humans decimated whale populations through hundreds of years of industrial whaling, leaving some species and populations on the brink of extinction. But despite these impacts, many whale populations […]
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