Monthly Archives: June 2006

Opossum butt

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After I accidentally kicked over the bowl of cat food out on the patio, I decided I would just leave it there for the raccoons.  Of course, I would augment it with a few other items.  I sliced an apple, grabbed some almonds, and then headed back out to the patio.  I placed some almonds with the cat food and placed some more outside the fence.  It was then I realized I didn’t have the apple with me, so I went back inside.  When I stepped back outside the door with the fruit in hand, the crunch-crunch-crunch in the darkness immediately drew my attention to the pile of cat food.  There stood an opossum staring back at me.

He immediately headed back to the fence, but I have seen recently that he is having increasing difficulty getting through it.  He’s still growing, and I think we can all agree that he’s eating well.  Suffice it to say he didn’t get through the fence.  While he tried to push through, I aimed the camera and snapped a photo.  It was pitch black outside and trying to snap photos was near impossible since I couldn’t see anything through the lens or viewfinder.  Essentially, I had to aim and shoot and hope it focused on the right thing.

As you can see from the picture below, it did.  This is opossum butt, raw and savage and in your face.  I also want to point out that his front end is already through the fence at this point, so you can see the challenge he faces with the rest of his body (another JLo booty if I’ve ever seen one).

Rear view of an opossum trying to escape through the fence (144_4470)

I had to fight the urge to laugh when he reversed back onto the patio.  He couldn’t fit through the fence — again.  Because I was being absolutely silent and absolutely still, he turned and looked around the patio for a brief moment (I knew he couldn’t see me clearly in the dark, especially if I didn’t move).  Another urge to laugh had to be suppressed when he went right back to the food and began eating.

Rear view of an opossum trying to escape through the fence (144_4472)

Yes, that’s his tongue sticking out.  I guess that was his opinion of the flash going off several times in his face.  And check out the creepy little “hands” he has both front and back.  Very odd thing, those feet, although I’m hoping to get a better picture so you can see how weird they are.

Anyway, I stood there quietly and stopped taking pictures so he could eat in peace.  I backed slowly to the door and tried yet failed miserably to get back inside as quietly as possible.  Despite the amount of noise I made fumbling with the door, stumbling through it, and struggling to get it closed (including several failed attempts), all that did was make him pause for several seconds before returning to his meal.  That’s where I left him.  I put out the apple later.

Open thread

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I find it interesting that a single insect not seen for 80 years appears to exist only in a single ravine in California.  That says a lot about biodiversity in very small ecosystems.  Oh, and it’s the only known species of millipede that even approaches having 1,000 legs as their name implies.

The 36th Skeptics’ Circle is over at Dr. Charles’ place.  As he puts it, it’s “a selection of critical thinkings from bloggers who aren’t trying to sell you crystals or watered-down snake oil.”

It should be #55, but instead we have Tangled Bank #54 (version 2).  I added the version 2 as someone else seems to have miscounted — or I’ve smoked too much crack.  In any case, and despite the brusque presentation, you’ll find a fantastic assortment of science blogging covering a tremendously diverse number of topics.

I hope you have $510,678 available.  “Taxpayers owe more than a half-million dollars per household for financial promises made by government, mostly to cover the cost of retirement benefits for baby boomers… Federal, state and local governments have added nearly $10 trillion to taxpayer liabilities in the past two years, bringing the total of government’s unfunded obligations to an unprecedented $57.8 trillion.”  You must realize that America’s economy could easily tank with such overwhelming public debt hanging over the heads of taxpayers.

A new species of mini-dinosaur has been unearthed in northern Germany.

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam

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To continue the line of thought started with Inter spem et metum…

I just returned from taking Wylie for a long walk at the lake, time filled with Frisbee fun and undisturbed, quiet contemplation.  It was like fading into the background noise of dawn’s zephyr.

Within depths hitherto unknown to me struggles some long forgotten beast, a wounded and suffering creature, a thing striving not to drown in its own tears of torment.

Failing to comprehend this disposition, searches of id, ego, and superego lay fruitless in a wasteland of reflection.  What vexes me so?

Answers elude me.  Weight heretofore unfamiliar besets me sans explanation.  It is a mysterious place that I have gone to in recent weeks, an alien landscape of fatigue and worry and sorrow.  It is the smothering of self in places to which I dare not go yet which already surround me.

I stand perplexed and unguided, tossed about by tumultuously uncontrolled feelings riding high upon my own bewilderment.  Where is this place?  Why am I here?

Is it too much Animal Planet with the contemptible ups and downs in the likes of Animal Precinct, The Little Zoo That Could, Animal Planet Heroes, Emergency Vets, Growing Up…, and similar programs demonstrable of both the admirable best and horrifically worst of humanity?  Is it my continuing and growing concern for both Chira and Vazra?  Or is the oppressive heat zapping me of strength?  Is it concern over sudden estrangement from a few?  Perhaps something else entirely?

This conundrum befuddles me.  For reasons I fail to understand, a frustrating slowness of mind plagues my every thought while a dispirited cloak of sadness envelopes my essence.  Have I become lost?

Even now I cling to the last vestiges of answers I can not grasp as they elude me, and I stand exposed in the radiant fire of unknowing.  I live as dead and breathe as buried whilst the core of me dances unseen in shadows deep.

Thing by cherished thing slips away from me.  Witnessed plodding and devastation of my nature engender unease and cataclysmic apprehension.

In light of this darkness, blogging in the next few — or even several — days will undoubtedly embrace less prolific thoughts and will instead delve only into those topics of more shallow origins.  Imaginably, I suspect at the heart of the matter is a certain sense of cognitive and emotional fatigue, the indescribable malaise of the spirit if you will, and reaching the surface for breath and light increasingly eludes my capabilities.

I therefore preemptively beg your pardon while I seek to recharge my life batteries through introspection and contemplation.  As I focus on this solipsistic endeavor to understand this unaccounted force acting against me, what is presented here will undoubtedly be of a more undemanding nature.

Lend me your patience.

The Berlin Nine

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This is a must-read and must-see.  It is the story of an abandoned house in New Hampshire, a home left by its human owners without regard for the one dog and nine cats they abandoned there, ten animals imprisoned behind locked doors with no hope for escape.  It took the death of one cat whose body was visible through a window before anyone knew what was happening.

“One full-grown cat weighed 2.8 pounds…”

12:30 A.M. the van pulled up. Nine cats, one dog. Ten emaciated, flea-bitten, dehydrated, exhausted and wretched animals. One cat lay still. His body packed in a plastic bag, starved to death, flea bitten with swollen, no longer achingly painful ears. He would never know the comfort of anxious, caring help, of freedom from pain, a full belly, and the gentle touch of loving hands. It was his unmoving position on a windowsill that finally alerted neighbors that something was wrong, very wrong, in the abandoned apartment. But their call came too late for him.

For weeks he had managed to survive in that hell hearing the sounds of normal life outside the windows, seeing rain that would ease his thirst fall out of his reach, crying for someone to open the door and set him free, only to die while others were rescued. What story would he tell us if he could, of their abandonment and imprisonment, neglect, abuse and slow starvation? What story would he tell of his treatment by the human race?

After you read the entire article, take a look at the survivors.

My expressions on this matter find their way to the keyboard through tear-filled eyes and the bubbling anger within.  I can not begin to fathom the senselessly cruel and inhumane mentality behind such an atrocity.  And you wonder why I dislike people as much as I do.