Pluvialis Abroad (Again)

Pluvialis is at large again in Central Asia. She blogs on the road from Tashkent and tells us she’s on her way to Khiva. Pluvi is giving many of us a bad case of travel envy.

A Parrot for Life

Congratulations to Rebecca O’Connor who has a new book out on raising and training parrots, “A Parrot for Life.” Get your autographed copies here.

Weather Vane

While house hunting in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, I saw this unique weather vane on a barn outside of the town of Parker. A very realistic model of a B-17!

Tool Making Chimpanzees

We’ve know for quite a long while that chimpanzees use expedient tools – rocks to crack open things and twigs to pull termites out of mounds. But a new report on chimps in Senegal takes this to a whole new level. Female chimps there have been observed making spears and using them to hunt bush …

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Neanderthal Doom

According to this piece in the BBC News, some late Neanderthalers were wiped out by a cold snap even they could not survive: “…a climate downturn may have caused a drought, placing pressure on the last surviving Neanderthals by reducing their supplies of fresh water and killing off the animals they hunted.” (Snip) “These creatures …

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Not a Vegetarian

The ever- carnivorous John McLoughlin sends a quote, which he attributes to one Jethro Trogo: “If ever the world will be ruled by vegetables, I can truthfully say,“I never ate your kind willingly.”

Kazakhs respond to Borat

According to the Moscow Times (link may now be behind firewall), Kazakhstan has decided to counter Borat with a bit of reality. “The Kazakh ambassador has embarked on a tour of universities around the United States to counter the outlandish portrayal of his home country in the movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make …

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New posts

Series of new posts from Steve below. Some of these I’ve had to add photos to (Steve’s connection is positively Magdalenian) so appear out of order. Please scroll down a bit for the first post. Best,Matt

More Doggie Descendants..

AKA “granddogs”– the latest in a series. These are of Dutch Salmon’s lurcher girl “Mona” from Plum and Lash, who caught 30 hares in her first year– and who would be sterile (and illegal to breed) under the new law mentioned below. Photos courtesy Dan Gauss.

Another Mauser

I posted a while back on a beautiful classic Mauser. Unfortunately, it had hidden problems and ultimately it went back. I kept my eyes open and eventually found another 7mm. Mauser, this one a fifties- style custom gun on a Czech military action, with a Belgian Fabrique National sporter barrel, for half the already cheap …

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