I rarely let April Fools’ Day go by unremarked. Lately, I’ve been on the “April Fish” kick, playing on the French version of April Fools’ Day. I don’t know why, but the idea of sticking a paper fish on someone’s back just strikes me as charming, strange and—for some reason—very French. It’s a bigger deal than you might think. I do know that the chocolate shops in France begin to fill their windows with large chocolate fish in late March, just like chocolate Easter bunnies. Before the April Fish thing, April Fools’ Day often was a day for letting Ludwig speak his mind. I enjoy doing that, too.
The Cat Gets His Tongue
By Jimmy Johnson
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114 responses to “The Cat Gets His Tongue”
BTW, Jackie, my total weight loss since 1 January is 13.6 pounds. Still fighting the good fight…dinner tonight is shrimp yakimeshi and cucumber-celery-sweet onion-red bell pepper salad.
Hope you get on the program soon.
Ghost, I’m about a pound ahead of my schedule this year: so far, I’ve gained about four pounds, and my goal was a pound a month.
I meant the one in the black mesh dress, Ghost. I didn’t look at the whole thing, but she is certainly an eye-catcher.
Sorry Ghost, I am actually eating now and still losing. You obviously have a short way to goal, whereas I have a year ahead of me at least.
Know you have worked hard and you have inspired me to both eat and stick with healthy foods . Your dinner sounds great. Did have my oysters and a small baked sweet potato, small salad, sent bread, hush puppies , butter, sugars and bread back untouched.
I have promised no more not eating and small amounts at least three times a day. I stashed fruit and yogurt in fridge in room. No simple carbs, potatoes starches, fats or Diet Coke, no juices, just water and a couple of unsweetened teas. I do feel immensely better.
I should have had grilled shrimp but I don’t get oysters in OK. I am in town of about 3500, limited choices. Had to go tip my mama’s favorite waitress $25. She’s been out with chemo and cancer, was off at time of funeral.
A couple of weeks ago a hawk, probably a Cooper’s, got two male Red-winged Blackbirds in two days — right outside the large window beside the kitchen table. It was sad, but interesting. While I ate a late breakfast (been sleeping late) the hawk efficiently picked all the feathers off the blackbirds, then ate the meat — that part I couldn’t see too well, okay with me! I had an excellent view of the hawk’s handsome slate grey wing feathers, from maybe ten yards away.
Jackie
We almost always request “no fries – no chips” doesn’t always happen but we try.
emb
Favorite recipe for eel pout = nail pout to board, bake at 450* for 6 hrs,
throw away fish, eat board.
We have a Red Tail that hunts around here (he sits on the power pole [remember when they were all Telephone Poles]) One day she/he was chasing a pigeon – one flying for its supper the other for its life.
Just looked at my PBS schedule – the 7pm CDT time is probably a national feed.
April 8 Nature = Animal Homes: The Nest
April 15 Nature = Animal Homes: Location, Location, Location.
Finding a base for operations – beavers, tortoises, humming birds 7 wood rats.
April 22 Nature = Animal Homes: Animal Cities
Debbe
April 7 9pm CDT – Frontline: The Trouble with Chickens – it is about pathogens in our meat
particularly chicken.
I do find that Frontline usually has an ax to grind or makes things a little sensational for my taste.
Why are CT shows an hour ahead of ET? Do the network programmers think the Midwest
goes to bed earlier? The farmers in Ohio wait till 11 for the news but Iowa won’t stay up past
10:30? (Another remember – News was only 15 min.)
A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
Has anyone seen the lightning strike in Central OK?
Had a strike on a telephone pole less than 75 feet from me when I was about 12,
Carl Lewis had nothing on the jump I made.
Old Bear: One day she/he was chasing a pigeon – one flying for its supper the other for its life.
That reminds me of a favorite old joke:
Two strangers were out backpacking in the woods. They came upon each other and decided to walk the next bit together. Around a bend in the trail they came face to face with a bear. One stranger drops to his knee, fetches his running shoes from his backpack and begins the removing his hiking boots. The other stranger just stares and says, “There is no way you can run faster than that bear.”
The kneeling stranger stands up and replies, “I don’t have to be faster than the bear. I only have to be faster than you.”
If you go to :
http://video.tpt.org/program/nature/
you can see previews of above mentioned shows and watch complete show after it airs.
But 12 of that 15 was news, not ads.
Charlotte: NH is well within both the winter and breeding range of the Goshawk, larger cousin of both Cooper’s and Sharp-Shinned. Its front is lightly barred pale gray, rather than rusty like its smaller cousins. Here is most of a column I wrote in 2002 [slightly altered], which mentions goshawks but goes further; one of the more exciting moments in this prof’s life.
“Years ago, Pearl Maki was the college’s Curator-Naturalist, a grant-funded position. Pearl did many good things for the biology department, including educational work with school children and preparing some of the best bird mounts around. One March day she came to my office carrying the body of a large grey hawk: “Look what the DNR found on the roadside near Warroad.”
“Without closely examining the bird, I asked, “Goshawk?” Goshawks are large accipiters (bird-hawks or “true” hawks), rounded-winged, maneuverable woodland hawks that prey mostly on smaller birds. Goshawks barely get this far south in summer, but are uncommon winter residents. Their more common local relatives are the smaller Cooper’s hawk and still smaller sharp-shinned hawk. I’d seen a wild goshawk only once, during a fall migration hawk-watch near Duluth.
“Pearl calmly extended the bird’s long, pointed wing and I gasped, ‘Gyrfalcon!’ Gyrfalcons (JUR-fawl-kuns) are large, arctic and subarctic falcons, as big as goshawks but almost unheard of in the lower 48. I had never hoped to see one outside of a zoo or museum.
“Raptors (hawks and owls) have long fascinated people, including kings and others who used various hawks in the sport of falconry. Peregrine falcons, and sometimes gyrfalcons, were so highly regarded that often only the nobility were allowed to hunt with them. Now we’re more democratic; properly trained commoners can obtain falconry licenses. The February 13, 2002 student weekly paper profiled our newest invertebrate zoologist, Dr. Jane Eyre. Jane is a licensed falconer.
“We’ll stick to hawks today, order Falconiformes. (Don’t worry, there’s no test at the end.) In Britain, ‘hawk’ refers to accipiters only. There, falcons are falcons, eagles are eagles, harriers (or marsh hawks) are harriers, vultures are vultures, but soaring hawks, like our red-tailed hawk, are ‘buzzards.’ The colonists mistakenly called New World vultures buzzards, but good birdwatchers call them vultures. When zoologists formally classified birds, in the 1700s, most put New World vultures (turkey vulture, black vulture, and the condors) into the Falconiformes, along with the Old World vultures. New World and Old World vultures look much alike, and both feed on carrion, so why not?
“However, based on the anatomy of the bony palate, some objected to putting American vultures in the Falconiformes. They said the similarity of New World and Old World vultures was convergence, the acquisition, in distantly related lineages, of similar adaptations. It happens at all levels, within orders as well as between. Eagles are not a single lineage; they’re just big soaring hawks. Bald and golden eagles are no more closely related to each other than either is to the smaller true buzzards.
“There the controversy stood; most ornithologists classifying American vultures in the Falconiformes, a few saying their anatomy more closely allied them with storks (order Ciconiiformes). Paleontology was little help; fossil flying birds are rare because their light bones are too fragile to fossilize commonly or well. Fortunately, a new kind of evidence showed up in the late 20th century: molecular similarities. Careful examination of organisms’ DNA gives us a good handle on how long ago the lineages leading to present-day species diverged. The minority seemed to be right: present-day hawks, eagles, falcons, buzzards, and Old World vultures are all descended from a common ancestor. New World vultures are [we thought] more closely related to storks; their resemblance to Old World vultures is convergence.
“All scientific conclusions are tentative [and this one is less sure in 2015 than was thought when I wrote this column]. However, scientists know better than to carve it in stone. Most agree it is the most reasonable conclusion, and few still classify American vultures with hawks and their kin. Our business is explaining the workings and history of the natural world as best we can by studying it. It’s good work, and every once in a while, we get to gasp, ‘Gyrfalcon!’ ”
Peace. emb
emb
Yes – new news
Ludwig is always trying to get a word in… and Arlo is always having to correct him. There was even a week-long series in which they had an argument about letting him speak. But as we all know, it is only legal for him to speak on Christmas Eve.
http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2009/12/31
Has anyone seen this? I did find other info on rainbow universes not dated today, but the April 1 byline date has me worried about authenticity.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/lhc-accidental-rainbow-universe/
A cat may not speak American but that does not mean he can not be understood.
Our Tippy let me know in no uncertain terms he did not like being outside so long.
He was very verbal about it.
emb
?
See if this works
Firefox – “Edit” drop down to “Special Characters” Choose your poison.
I use “Accented Latin” in correspondence.
Dear emb, your essay on the Gyrfalcon et al was most interesting. Here in Southern NH I have never seen any of those large raptors (and I haven’t travelled to look, either). The very handsome Hawk I saw tearing up the Blackbirds was not awfully big, and was hard to I.D. in either Peterson’s or Sibley’s. Had a classic Hawk profile … fierce.
TR, a darker version of that story is that all you need to survive an encounter with a bear is a .22 pistol and a hiking companion you don’t like. When the bear starts toward you, whip out the pistol, shoot the HCYDL in the knee, and stroll briskly away.
David, that makes as much sense to me as most theoretical physics…and more than some of it.
Debbe 😉 Because I was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VxoXn-0Ezs
“Old Bear: A cat may not speak American but that does not mean he can not be understood.
Our Tippy let me know in no uncertain terms he did not like being outside so long.
He was very verbal about it.
“emb”
?
If you think I understand cats better than others because I’m a mammalogist, I don’t. We had several cats over the years, and got along fine with those that remained long enough for the 3 of us [wife, cat, emb] to adjust to one another. Wife had cats when she was a kid; I didn’t. My several months experience w/ M. Trouve’ in 2014 was basically a disaster. I hope the vet tech that saved him from euthanizing has had good luck. I enjoyed him some, but he was a constant trouble maker. When he sunk his upper canines into my hand, he became an instant legal liability, so I had to get rid of him.
Peace, emb
emd
was trying to write sigma –
Firefox has handy special fonts – On the PC I know the ALT codes.
GR 😉 because knew I couldn’t stick around
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh_CdJo3x8c
(and yes, there was a time I had those moves too 🙂 )
Good morning Villagers..
Denise, you’re not gonna believe this, but I do have a cardboard box in my dining room that little Kyler sits in perfectly…..he does enjoy that box too. My husband took him four wheeling last night, he loved it. We had him bundled up good and he sat well in the padded sit with arms around it, so he was safely tucked in. He loved it.
Nodak…thanks for the explanation. I figured it had something to do with MSU. Go Green!!!
Gotta go….work clothes in dryer.
ya’ll have a blessed day.
and yes, there really is a French Lick, Indiana…..google it. It has quite a history. It’s about a 30 minute drive from me.
clothes still drying…..
Old Bear….thanks for the referral, before they ‘take out the hens’, they sacrifice about three of them to check the quality of meat…..I’ve heard it goes in animal food…..
and Jerry has been MIA for way too long……..
Debbe 😉 I’ll bet you did, hon! Lawdy, that was almost as interesting as the Sundress Lady.
Also too quiet lately has been Lady Mindy. I’d suspect that things had gotten worse at work for her, but I’m not sure that’s possible.
Since we often share books and authors, I am rereading a favorite “The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua” by Randy Wayne White. Adventure, travel and fishing. I noticed on the book jacket he’d written a series of mystery books with a character Doc Ford.
Still carrying ‘Hemingway’s Boat” and wish it didn’t weigh so much while holding it in bed. I have not learned to read ebooks but maybe I will try to read on the Nook or the new tablet I need to activate
But I like the feel of a real book in my hands. But I am trying to at least use this Smartphone although not gotten very far.
Had several interesting conversations yesterday on mortality and life, the best of which were with my 12 year younger cousin who had buried another family member the day before. He was the younger brother I never had and most of his memories of me are like Ghosts can’t be told here and involved my creative language, high speed driving skills , free spirit and independence, love of knowledge, music, arts and theater, fearless opinions, pinball skills and everyman in several parishes and schools in love with me.
He said he’d been thinking about the people who shaped his adult life and I was a major one. So Ghost, women who are not Mrs. Robinson can alter young boys lives. He said to keep living, I deserved happiness.
Wish I could tell some but the most sanitized involves the deer. Convertible, a gravel road, high speed and a one lane ancient bridge. He said when the car went sideways through the bridge, the deer was face to face with him in passenger seat but I had my arm across holding him while other arm held wheel.
Still a legend I suppose . Randy White wrote a legendary column for Outside magazine called ‘Out There” and I understand people who want to live on the edge.