Honestly I just wanted to play around with gradients. But gradients without anything on the horizon lack something, so I added horses. Since I can’t draw horses, now you
can draw them. And watch them parade across the screen alongside horses drawn by people you probably wouldn’t like. Or maybe you would, how should I know?!
…
I love a good (by which I mean stupid) use of a .horse domain name. I’m not sure anything will ever beat endless.horse, but gradient.horse might be a close second.
Draw a horse. Watch it get animated and run wild and free with the horses that other people have drawn. That is all.
Did you know that about 1 in 12 sheep is gay? And we are not just talking about rams. According to scientists, same-sex behaviour has been documented in over 1500 species. You see,
queerness is quite prevalent on planet Earth. But sadly, there are still many people that have a problem with it. The shocking truth is: 62 countries still criminalize same-sex
relationships – that’s right, it’s illegal to be gay in one third of the world! And even where it is not illegal, cases of queer hostility are increasing – including in Germany.
This is why we are getting the help from a gay flock of rams in a small town in Germany: We are using their wool to create fashion products that support projects for the queer
community.
Meet the world’s first gay flock of sheep
Sadly, gay rams are often sent to slaughter because they can’t fulfill a farm’s “breeding role.” We rescue them before that happens, giving them a safe home where they can live and
love freely. Each year, their wool is crafted into fashion, with profits donated to the queer charity LSVD+. You can also adopt a gay ram – helping cover food and
medicine to keep them happy and healthy for life. Every adoption comes with a digital certificate you can print at home.
…
Well this is just adorable.
About 1 in 12 rams (and a similar proportion of ewes) show a strong preference for other sheep of their same sex. Which is useless for breeders, who expect their rams to be able to
impregnate 40 ewes per fortnight, so such rams tend to be destroyed.
But this farm in Germany has started rescuing them and allowing people to “adopt a gay sheep” to help sponsor their care and upkeep. They also collect a small amount of wool from their
queer flock and make products (which almost-immediately sell out).
So yeah: there’s a flock of homosexual sheep living happily together on a farm in Germany, and that’s just awesome.
I’d love to write a longer review to praise the art style and the concept, but there’s not much to say. Just… go and give it a shot; it’ll improve your day, I’m sure.
As a semi-regular at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention who likes to get up earlier then the others I share my tent with, I’ve done my fair share of early morning geocaching in this neck of
the woods.
Of course: over the years this practice has exhausted most of tree caches local to Cropredy and my morning walks have begun to take me further and further afield. But this is certainly
the first time I’ve walked to the next county in search of a cache!
Coming across the fields from Williamscot via Prescote Farm treated me to gorgeous rolling hills free fields of freshly-harvested corn getting picked at by families of deer, while the
red kites above went looking for their breakfasts.
The final hill up to the GZ required a bit of a push for my legs which were dancing until late last night, but soon I was close and the cache was quickly found in the second place I
looked.
How do birds hear the calls of species of bird other than their own? Is it like background noise that they can talk (sing) over, filtering out everything but the calls of their own
kind, like how you can talk over the murmur of a cocktail party until the second somebody says your name? Or is it more like something they consciously observe and work around, like
waiting for your turn to speak in a group conversation flitting between several different topics?
Either way: is such communication strategy an instinctive or a learned behaviour? It seems likely that at least part of birdsong communication is gained after hatching because birds
from noisy cities are louder than their country cousins (although you wouldn’t know it, to listen out of the bedroom window of my rural home, this morning!).
Today, while I cooked dinner, I introduced my two children (aged 10 and 8) to Goat Simulator.
Within half an hour, they’d added an imaginative twist and a role-playing element. My eldest had decreed themselves Angel of Goats and the younger Goat Devil and the two were locked in
an endless battle to control the holy land at the top of a rollercoaster.
The shrieks of joy and surprise from the living room could be heard throughout the entire house. Perhaps our whole village.
Not quite ready for wintering indoors, our village’s hardy sheep are enjoying pasturing in the large field near the school this beautiful but chilly morning.
A lot of attention is paid, often in retrospect, to the experience of the first times in our lives. The first laugh; the first kiss; the first day at your job1.
But for every first, there must inevitably be a last.
I recall a moment when I was… perhaps the age our eldest child is now. As I listened to the bats in our garden, my mother told me about how she couldn’t hear them as clearly as she
could when she was my age. The human ear isn’t well-equipped to hear that frequency that bats use, and while children can often pick out the sounds, the ability tends to fade with age.
“Helloooo? Are you even listening to me?”
This recollection came as I stayed up late the other month to watch the Perseids. I lay in the hammock in our garden under a fabulously clear sky as the sun finished setting, and –
after being still and quiet for a time – realised that the local bat colony were out foraging for insects. They flew around and very close to me, and it occurred to me that I
couldn’t hear them at all.
There must necessarily have been a “last time” that I heard a bat’s echolocation. I remember a time about ten years ago, at the first house in Oxford of
Ruth, JTA and I (along with
Paul), standing in the back garden and listening to those high-pitched chirps. But I can’t tell you when the very
last time was. At the time it will have felt unremarkable rather than noteworthy.
First times can often be identified contemporaneously. For example: I was able to acknowledge my first time on a looping rollercoaster at the time.
The Tower of Terror at Camelot, circa 1994, was my first looping rollercoaster2.
The ride was disassembled in 2000 and, minus its “tower” theming3lived on for a while as Twist ‘N’ Shout at Loudoun Castle in Ayrshire, Scotland before that park
shut down. I looked at some recent satellite photography and I’m confident it’s now been demolished.
Last times are often invisible at the time. You don’t see the significance of the everyday and routine except in hindsight.
I wonder what it would be like if we had the same level of consciousness of last times as we did of firsts. How differently might we treat a final phone call to a loved one or the
ultimate visit to a special place if we knew, at the time, that there would be no more?
Would such a world be more-comforting, providing closure at every turn? Or would it lead to a paralytic anticipatory grief: “I can’t visit my friend; what if I find out that
it’s the last time?”
Footnotes
1 While watching a wooden train toy jiggle down a length of string, reportedly; Sarah
Titlow, behind the school outbuilding, circa 1988; and
five years ago this week, respectively.
2 Can’t see the loop? It’s inside the tower. A clever bit of design conceals the
inversion from outside the ride; also the track later re-enters the fort (on the left of the photo) to “thread the needle” through the centre of the loop. When they were running three
trains (two in motion at once) at the proper cadence, it was quite impressive as you’d loop around while a second train went through the middle, and then go through the middle while a
third train did the loop!
3 I’m told that the “tower” caught fire during disassembly and was destroyed.
First, bees had to push a blue lever that was blocking a red lever… too complex for a bee to solve on its own. So scientists trained some bees by offering separate rewards for the
first and second steps.
These trained bees were then paired with bees who had never seen the puzzle, and the reward for the first step was removed.
Some of the untrained bees were able to learn both steps of the puzzle by watching the trained bees, without ever receiving a reward for the first step.
…
This news story is great for two reasons.
Firstly, it’s a really interesting experimental result. Just when you think humankind’s learned everything they ever will about the humble bumblebee (humblebee?), there’s something more
to discover.
That a bee can be trained to solve a complex puzzle by teaching it to solve each step independently and then later combining the steps isn’t surprising. But that these trained bees can
pass on their knowledge to their peers (bee-ers?); who can then, one assumes, pass it on to yet other bees. Social learning.
Which, logically, means that a bee that learns to solve the two-lever puzzle second-hand would have a chance of solving an even more-complex three-lever puzzle; assuming such a thing is
within the limits of the species’ problem-solving competence (I don’t know for sure whether they can do this, but I’m a firm bee-lever).
But the second reason I love this story is that it’s a great metaphor in itself for scientific progress. The two-lever problem is, to an untrained bee, unsolvable. But
if it gets a low-effort boost (a free-bee, as it were) by learning from those that came before it, it can make a new discovery.
(I suppose the secret third reason the news story had me buzzing was that I appreciated the opportunities for puns that it presented. But you already knew that I larva pun, right?)
One for joy, two for joy, three for joy, four for joy… basically any natural number of magpies brings me joy.
They’re smart (among the smartest corvids, who are already among the smartest birds).
They’re curious. They’re sociable. And they’re ever so pretty.
They’re common enough that you can see them pretty-much anywhere.
They steal things. They solve puzzles. They’re just awesome.
This is photo of a magpie riding a pig through the snow, which is objectively fantastic. No further explanation is required, nor given.
Also, did you know where their name comes from? It’s really cool:
In Medieval Latin, they’re called pica. It probably comes from Greek kitta, meaning “false appetite” and possibly related to the birds’ propensity for theft,
and/or from a presumed PIE1 root meaning “pointed” and referring to its beak shape.
In Old French, this became pie. They’re still called la pie in French today. Old English took this and also used pie.
By the 17th century, there came a fashion in English slang to give birds common names.
Sometimes the common name died out, such as with Old English wrenna which became wren and was extended to Jenny wren, which you’ll still hear nowadays
but mostly people just say wren.
Sometimes the original name disappeared, like with Old English ruddock2 which became
redbreast and was extended to Robin redbreast from which we get the modern name robin (although again, you’ll still sometimes hear robin
reabreast).
Magpie, though, retains both parts!3Mag in this case is short for
Margaret, a name historically associated with idle chatter4.
So we get pica > pie > Maggie pie > Mag pie > magpie! Amazing!
This magpie’s looking pretty chill. Also pretty. Also chill.
I probably have a soft spot for animals with distinct black-and-white colouration – other favourite animals might include the plains zebra, European badger, black-and-white ruffed
lemur, Malayan tapir, Holstein cattle, Atlantic puffin… – but the magpie’s the best of them. It hits the sweet spot in all those characteristics listed above, and it’s just a wonderful
year-around presence in my part of the world.
Footnotes
1 It’s somewhat confusing writing about the PIE roots of the word pie…
2Ruddock shares a root with “ruddy”, which is frankly a better description of
the colour of a robin’s breast than “red”.
3 Another example of a bird which gained a common name and retained both that and its
previous name is the jackdaw.
4 Reflective, perhaps, of the long bursts of “kcha-kcha-kcha-kcha-kcha-” chattering sounds
magpies make to assert themselves. The RSPB
have a great recording if you don’t know what I’m talking about – you’ll recognise the sound when you hear it! – but they also make a load of other vocalisations in the wild and can even learn to imitate human speech!
There’s a bird feeder in my garden. I’ve had it for about a decade now – Ruth got it for me, I think, as a thirtiethbirthday present – and it’s still going strong and mostly-intact, despite having been uprooted on several
occasions to move house.
I like that I can see it from my desk.
A woodpecker’s been a regular visitor this winter.
This month, though, it lost a piece, when one of its seed cages was stolen in a daring daylight heist by a duo of squirrels who climbed up the (“climb-proof”) pole, hung upside-down
from the hooks, and unscrewed the mechanism that held the feeder in place.
Not content to merely pour out and devour the contents, the miscreants made off with the entire feeder cage. It hasn’t been seen since. I’ve scoured the lawn, checked behind
the bushes, peered around bins and fence posts… it’s nowhere to be found. It’s driving me a little crazy that it’s vanished so-thoroughly.
Artists’ recreation of one of the culprits. (Courtesy @mikebirdy.)
I can only assume that the squirrels, having observed that the feeder would routinely be refilled once empty, decided that it’d be much more-convenient for them if it the feeder were
closer to their home:
“Hey, Coco!”
“Yeah, Peanut?”
“Every time we steal the nuts in this cage, more nuts appear…”
“Yeah, it’s a magic cage. Everysquirrel knows that, Peanut!”
“…but we have to come all the way down here to eat them…”
“It’s a bit of a drag, isn’t it?”
“…so I’ve been thinking, Coco: wouldn’t it be easier if the cage was… in our tree?”
Scene of the crime.
I like to imagine that the squirrels who live in whatever-tree the feeder’s now hidden in are in the process of developing some kind of cargo cult around it. Once a week, squirrels sit
and pray at the foot of the cage, hoping to appease the magical god who refills it. Over time, only the elders will remember seeing the feeder ever being full, and admonish their
increasingly-sceptical youngers ones to maintain their disciplined worship. In decades to come, squirrel archaeologists will rediscover the relics of this ancient (in squirrel-years)
religion and wonder what inspired it.
Or maybe they dumped the feeder behind the shed. I’d better go check.
My favourite thing about geese… is the etymologies of all the phrases relating to geese. There’s so many, and they’re all amazing. I started reading about one, then –
silly goose that I am – found another, and another, and another…
Have a gander at this photo.
For example:
Barnacle geese are so-called because medieval
Europeans believed that they grew out of a kind of barnacle called a goose barnacle, whose shell pattern… kinda, sorta
looks like barnacle goose feathers? Barnacle geese breed on remote Arctic islands and so people never saw their chicks, which – coupled with the fact that migration wasn’t understood
– lead to a crazy myth that lives on in the species name to this day. Incidentally, this strange belief led to these geese being classified as a fish for the purpose of
fasting during Lent, and so permitted. (This from the time period that brought us the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, of course. I’ve written about both previously.)
Gooseberries may have a similar etymology. Folks have tried to connect it to old Dutch or Germanic words, but inconclusively: given that they appear at the opposite
end of the year to some of the migratory birds goose, the same kind of thinking that gave us “barnacle geese” could be seen as an explanation for gooseberries’ name, too. But really:
nobody has a clue about this one. Fun fact: the French name for the fruit is groseille à maquereau, literally “mackerel currant”!
A gaggle is the collective noun for geese, seemingly derived from the sound they make. It’s also been used to describe groups of humans, especially if they’re
gossiping (and disproportionately directed towards women). “Gaggle” is only correct when the geese are on the ground, by the way: the collective noun for a group of airborne geese is
skein or plump depending on whether they’re in a delta shape or not, respectively. What a fascinating and confusing language we have!
John Stephen Farmer helps us with a variety of goose-related sexual slang though, because, well, that was his jam. He observes that a goose’s neck was a penis and
gooseberries were testicles, goose-grease is vaginal juices. Related: did you ever hear the euphemism for where babies come from “under a
gooseberry bush“? It makes a lot more sense when you realise that gooseberry bush was slang for pubic hair.
Hey there, you big honker.
An actor whose performance wasn’t up to scratch might describe the experience of being goosed; that is – hissed at by the crowd. Alternatively,
goosing can refer to a a pinch on the buttocks possibly in reference to geese pecking humans at about that same height.
If you have a gander at something you take a good look at
it. Some have claimed that this is rhyming slang – “have a look” coming from “gander and duck” – but I don’t buy it. Firstly, why wouldn’t it be “goose and duck” (or “gander and
drake“, which doesn’t rhyme with “look” at all). And fake, retroactively-described rhyming roots are very common: so-called mockney rhyming slang! I suspect
it’s inspired by the way a goose cranes its neck to peer at something that interests it! (“Crane” as a verb is of course also a bird-inspired word!)
Goosebumps might appear on your skin when you’re cold or scared, and the name alludes to the appearance of plucked poultry. Many languages use geese, but some use
chickens (e.g. French chair de poule, “chicken flesh”). Fun fact: Slavic languages often use anthills as the metaphor for goosebumps, such as Russian мурашки по коже (“anthill skin”). Recently, people talk of tapping into goosebumps if they’re using their fear as a motivator.
The childrens game of duck duck goose is played by declaring somebody to be a “goose” and then running away before they catch you. Chasing – or at risk of being
chased by! – geese is common in metaphors: if somebody wouldn’t say boo to a goosethey’re
timid. A wild goose chase (yet another of the many phrases for which we
can possibly thank Shakespeare, although he probably only popularised this one) begins without consideration of where it might end up.
If humans tell children they were found under a gooseberry bush, where do geese tell their chicks they came from?
If those children are like their parents, you might observe that a wild goose never laid a tame egg: that traits are inherited and predetermined.
Until 1889, the area between Blackfriars and Tower Bridge in London – basically everything around Borough tube
station up to the river – was considered to be outside the jurisdiction of both London and Surrey, and fell under the authority of the Bishop of Winchester. For a few hundred years it
was the go-to place to find a prostitute South of the Thames, because the Bishop would license them to be able to trade there. These prostitutes were known as Winchester geese. As a result, to be
bitten by a Winchestergoose was to contract a venereal disease, and goosebumps became a slang term for the symptoms of some such
diseases.
Perennial achillea ptarmica is known, among other names, as goose tongue,
and I don’t know why. The shape of the plant isn’t particularly similar to that of a goose’s tongue, so I think it might instead relate to the effect of chewing the leaves, which
release a spicy oil that might make your tongue feel “pecked”? Goose tongue can also refer to plantago
maritima, whose dense rosettes do look a little like goose tongues, I guess. Honestly, I’ve no clue about this one.
If you’re sailing directly downwind, you might goose-wing your
sails, putting the mainsail away from the wind and the jib towards it, for balance and to easily maintain your direction. Of course, a modern triangular-sailed boat usually goes
faster broad reach (i.e. at an angle of about 45º to the wind) by enough that it’s faster to zig-zag downwind rather than go directly downwind, but I can see how one might sometimes
want to try this anatidaetian maneuver.
I feel like the “Cross Bones Graveyard” ought to have been where pirates were buried, but prostitutes is pretty good too.
Geese make their way all over our vocabulary. If it’s snowing, the old woman is plucking her
goose. If it’s fair to give two people the same thing (and especially if one might consider not doing so on account of their sex), you might say that what’s good
for the goose is good for the gander, which apparentlyused to use
the word “sauce” instead of “good”. I’ve no idea where the idea of cooking someone’s goose comes from, nor why anybody thinks that a goose step
march might look anything like the way a goose walks waddles.
I told this story to a few guildies a while back and decided to archive it in a longer format; so here is the story of The Great Flamingo Uprising of 2010 as told to me by my
favorite cousin who was a keeper at the time.
In addition to the aviary/jungle exhibit, our zoo has several species of birds that pretty much have the run of the place. They started with a small flock of flamingos and some
free-range peacocks that I’m almost certain came from my old piano teacher’s farm. She preferred them to chickens. At some point in time they also acquired a pair of white swans
(“hellbirds”) and some ornamental asian duckies to decorate the pond next to the picnic area. Pigeons, crows, assorted ducks and a large number of opportunistic Canada geese moved
in on their own.
…
I lost it at the bit where the koi blooped again.
Morals: geese are evil, swans are eviler, flamingos and peacocks are weird as fuck, and this story’s hilarious.
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