Before Q Blog, I had a website, which vanished. I regretted the loss of only one piece, an essay and review of a work by Michael Gruber. Recently, reading him at his excellent website (link above) and commenting on him, I found a printed copy, which I will print here. Not only does it point …
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Invincible Ignorance?
I hate to rant but (I can see everybody believes THAT)… Well, first Reid provoked me with this, knowing that it was like poking a stick at a hot rattlesnake. At first I just sputtered. “I can’t even debunk this– it is like Mary McCarthy’s famous remark on Lilian Hellman: “Every word she says is …
What “Exotics”…
… did Dr. John Burchard keep? He writes: “The ‘exotics’ I myself have kept at one time or another include a wolf, coatis, corvids large and small, raptors from sparrowhawk and merlin up to and including Gyrfalcon, Goshawk and Golden Eagle (the latter quite capable of killing someone, especially a child), boa constrictors up to …
Rocky Mountain Airshow
Last Saturday Connie and I drove up to Broomfield to see the Rocky Mountain Airshow at the Rocky Mountain Regional Airport. It was our first time to attend one of these. There were a fair number of aircraft on static display including this mobbed A-26. The orange markings on this C-130 show that it is …
This week in the neighborhood
It’s been a great week for wildlife encounters. I was driving down the highway and watched a group of swallows wheeling and flying quickly, with a Swainson’s hawk in their midst. The group flew near the New Fork River bridge and I actually saw the hawk grab a swallow! The hawk flew with the small …
Quote
“In Britain, an editor will permit a writer to make an allusion if he, the editor, understands it. In America, an editor might well understand it but he will want it taken out, for fear the readers won’t”.– Clive James in the Atlantic ???
A face for Lane…
It is dated– from the 90’s– and he informs me he rarely wears a hat. But this is the best photo I have of Lane Batot and one of his many dogs, on a drizzly day atop one of his backyard mountains…
Even Odder Riding Rhyme
I posted on my childhood “trotting rhyme” from the Piedmont earlier, but Peculiar found a modern one that is… well, merely descriptive words fail. It is about riding on a Tardigrade, the enigmatic microscopic beastie also known as a “water bear”. I want a bonny tardigrade to serve me for a steed. I’d harness him …
Bouriy and Yantar
In a comment to Mark in the post on Lauren below, Constant Commenter and dog- in- law Lane Batot of North Carolina explains that he does not have a computer, but that “Mister Bodio recently got a whole bunch of photos of the pups from me that he perhaps can scan(?) and post(?)” Asked and …
A little More from John Burchard
One of the wisest naturalists I know, Dr John Burchard, on the subjects below and more: I firmly support the right to keep “exotics” in captivity and/or partial or complete liberty (our wolf lived free in the desert on weekends, and our coatis mostly lived free in our very normal residential neighborhood, for example). Much …