This is a video of Kazon doing just that: blowing around like an autumn leaf on gusts of fun. He’s playing in the kitchen with a new toy, and he leaps and jumps and runs and… well, he does all that wonderful cat stuff that beguiles and captivates and enthralls and sings of innocent pleasure and carefree amusement. I did have to lighten this a tad, which ultimately gnarled the WMV version, but it’s also the reason for the somewhat grainy appearance in the MOV as well.
When Kako first was introduced to the fireplace, she ran like a wild woman. It scared her for reasons I couldn’t possibly understand. She’d never been around fire, never been hurt by it, yet she was the epitome of pyrophobia. If the fireplace was active, she made a point of going around it by whatever means would take her the furthest from its reach. She’d climb over furniture, she’d slink around the perimeter of the room, and she’d dash by it as if pursued by the devil himself. In one way, it was funny; in another, it wasn’t funny at all.
But time took its toll and she eventually came to enjoy it. Most important, I’m sure, was the heat. She’s the smallest cat in the house and has fine hair as a coat, so she tends to get cold easier than the others. Once she realized the fireplace would not reach out and grab her in paws of fiery fury, she began investigating it. She grew comfortable around it and, before long, fell in love with it. The transition provided a wonderful process to behold.
When she overcame her phobia and reversed it into mania, she then became obsessive about being near the fireplace when it was active. This video shows just such a time. What you’ll notice is that she sits there—just sits there and stares at the flames. Ah, but things are not always as they seem. Kako loves her reflection. She thinks—no, she knows she’s the hottest momma on the planet, the purtiest feline ever to set foot on Mother Earth. Nothing will convince me she wasn’t sitting in front of the glass looking at her reflection while simultaneously bathing in the warmth it offered. You can almost hear her bestowing all manner of praise on that fine-ass feline she saw in the reflection.
A few notes: I had to lighten the video, so keep that in mind as to its somewhat washed-out quality. Loki makes a very brief appearance as he walks by and slips through the bottom-left corner of the frame; he’s almost unrecognizable because it’s so quick and you see so little of him. That is an episode of Stargate SG-1 playing in the background. Finally, the video is three minutes long for those who want to see the full thing; for everyone else, you can watch the first minute or so and understand what’s in the last two minutes. I already said she’d just sit there and stare at herself. What were you expecting, a song and dance routine?
After a few hundred American white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) showed up close to the same pier I was haunting, an equal number of ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis) and herring gulls (Larus argentatus) swooped in for some unknown reason. I posted a few photos yesterday from that event. Today, you can see the video.
The voices you hear in the background are those of random people walking around the lake. Otherwise, you hear the gulls and an occasional duck. The gulls congregated near the shore for a while—not all of which was captured in this video—and then they calmed down. Their numbers thin at the end as you’ll see. What isn’t obvious is that many of them landed on the pier while others scattered about the shore, and many more landed in the water.
Meanwhile, the pelicans assembled en masse to preen and do their pelican stuff—whatever that might be.
The cloudy day and clamoring of the birds made for a wonderful and relaxing time.
How about a brief video of Kako playing in the living room? Sound acceptable? Good.
There are no decapitated bodies, no bloodshed, no wailing or gnashing of teeth. Surprisingly, she’s just entertaining herself with a toy—until the end when she hears someone else playing in the kitchen. Since she stood and ran away at that point, the video is short and sweet.
With overcast skies, a slight breeze, and warm temperatures, I could not help taking a walk at the lake this morning. Promises of hard freezes and wintry precipitation later in the week also will spurn me to visit the wildlife refuge, but this morning’s excursion was more to relieve stress than it was anything else. Yet I still found time to capture some videos and photographs while I attempted to lose myself in nature.
Standing near the shore behind one of the local piers, I watched with awe-filled eyes the arrival of hundreds of American white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos). I had already photographed and videoed several on a nearby log as they preened and perched under gray skies in dim morning light. But watching the air above the water’s surface fill with these large birds as they glided in for web-footed landings made for a fascinating diversion. I do not know why so many of them began congregating at the same time where only a dozen or so had been before. I do know it offered a captivating scene.
The video below was made in haste only after I had watched for several minutes the inbound squadrons joining the growing raft on the lake. I apologize in advance for the quality and the movement. My focus remained on the event and the birds more than on producing a documentary nature film. Despite its shortcomings, I think you will get at least some feel for what I witnessed.
A few notes. Most of the birds you hear are ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis) and herring gulls (Larus argentatus), and you also see many of them flying through the foreground of the video. They were moving into the area en masse along with the pelicans. I do not know what kind of ducks you hear occasionally in the background. There are many species living at the lake and I know three or four were represented in the large group behind where I stood. While I heard them as I stood there, you might not pick them out on the video, but the presence of several American coots (Fulica americana) behind me augmented the experience. Because I had not planned for this video and only grabbed the camera after experiencing a V8 moment while I rested on the shore filling the time with a charismatic avian spectacle, I was unable to get clear shots of the pelican landings—the inbound glide, the jutted web-footed approach, the smooth slide along the water’s surface as natural landing gear slowed them, and the eventual sinking to comfortable floating positions. I wish I had been able to grab some of that for you; it was enchanting to watch.