Kim was an African spot- nosed guenon, a really lovely little monkey and unlike many captive primates quite sane, but she was also a domineering little prima donna; she treated people the way Ataika tends to treat dogs, as lesser beings that were good as servants but who occasionally needed a good bite to keep …
Author: Steve Bodio
Quote of the Day
(From Jonathan Hanson): The countryside is a soggy sort of place where animals and birds wander about uncooked – Gladys Mitchell
Cute Puppy
Because nobody can resist and it is all Win: Paul Domski with a Chris Mason galgo pup, photo by Daniela Imre last weekend.
More Antique Images of “Salukis”…
Or whatever you want to call them. This one is French- Algerian from the 19th century. What interests me is that it is a very heavily feathered dog, like a “mountain” Central Asian dog today (“Khalag tazi”?), but from a place where there are only smooth “sloughis” now. There may be reasons for this, all …
Photoblogging: “Mongoliana”
I have been– I hope forgivably– absent, doing an article, a review, and a long shot (double? triple?) book proposal. As I type too slowly these days, and dictation is still slow for technicalia and odd language, I haven’t had the energy for much blogging; I have done over 12,000 words in the last week …
Blind Cave Cockatoos: An Exchange (Real Zoo # 6)
The Real Zoo had a blind Cockatoo named Cookie, who did not live in a cave. In one of our discussions I mentioned The Incident of the Blind Cave Cockatoo. I should add that in those days I, Paul, and our supervisor Richard were the three people with the responsibility to teach the flock of …
Headline of the Week
From Arthur Wilderson: “Swedish flamingoes massacred in frenzied anteater attack”. It is actually true if a bit breathless… Prompted by this and perhaps the recent Zoo posts, Arthur added some thoughts on a distant relative, the ground-dwelling late- Pleistocene monster Megatherium: “I saw a mounted megatherium skeleton in Chicago’s Field Museum. I was pretty impressed, …
“Une Chienne de Barbarie”
Another non- Arab or at least geographically North African portrait, from the Louvre, courtesy of Daniela. The given title as I got it was “”Un Chien de Barbarie”, but given the obvious I have changed the sex in the title! Daniela called the portrait “a little ‘Taik”– see below (top, most recent, by GG)…
Queen Victoria’s Hound?
Terence Clark sent a fine Landseer portrait from the 19th century of what appears to be a female saluki– or, better, tazi; actually to my eye the dog seems eastern, Asian, even specifically “Turkmeni”. She is doing the rarely portrayed “propitiating” smile and but for color resembles Ataika I think. Terence said, quoting the Country …
Old Bird
Last week, Anne Price of the REF e- mailed to tell me that her Harris tiercel Indiana Jones had died, very much of old age and attendant frailties. Anne: “This morning I said goodbye Indiana Jones, a.k.a. Indi, my Harris Hawk. I would be lying if I said I weren’t sad, but he was kind …