Tag: Animals

Champion Ratkiller DeGlopper

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In 1944, rats were ravaging farms, gnawing into sill beams, eating poultry and eggs and consuming livestock feed. Rats were estimated to destroy $45 worth of food a year, at a time when chicken and livestock feed were hard to come by.

Little Robert De Glopper was made of sturdier stock than children these days, and consequently made himself quite a profit at 3 cents per dead rat. Ten rats an hour would match the minimum wage of 30 cents.

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Can you imagine if today’s town clerks had to count rat tails?

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War bond prizes were given to the boy or girl who 1) killed the most rats, 2)the heaviest rats, or 3) the ones with the longest tails. Such fun before TV and video games existed! Even dogs and cats were cited for meritorious work.

Late Afternoon Cattle Drive

Day 1 Ft Worth 020We spent a long weekend in Ft. Worth and caught this 4pm daily cattle drive in The Stockyards. The day before had been a lovely sunny and 75, but a cold front took it down to freezing that night, and folks were bundled up in scarves and hoodies.

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This guy led the drive down the cobblestone street.

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That solid longhorn (in beautiful burnt orange!) made me laugh, because he kept nudging the cow in front of him with his horns.

Day 1 Ft Worth 024It only lasted a few minutes, but it was hard not to want to step out and touch them.

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Big Hoss brought up the caboose, and then it was over. Afterward, we got some old-time bottled soda and meandered through the shops. A fun way to round out the twilight hours. But this sign did catch my editor’s eye and caused me to grimace.

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Silverback Gorilla

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Imposing, grand, primitive, huge…yet with human eyes and expressions, enormous black fingers delicately and expertly stripping away thorns from vegetation, possibly ignoring you altogether or looking you straight in the eye.  Respect and awe is given, from human to ape. 

These are the words my aunt wrote of her trip to Rwanda earlier this month, in which she was able to witness some of the last remaining mountain gorillas on the planet.

“A silverback gorilla is the mature, experienced male leader of a group of mountain gorillas in the wild. Named for the silver saddles across his back, the silverback is responsible for the safety of his group. A group of gorillas, also called a troop, can contain from 5 to 30 gorillas. The silverback decides where the troop travels, where it forages for food, where it will rest and where it will sleep at night.” (http://animals.mom.me)

 I thought these images she and her husband captured were too awesome not to share with my readers!

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Okapis Have Zebra Thighs

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Okapis are odd creatures. Like God reused zebra leg parts on them. Maybe that’s why their name sounds like “Oh, copy.”

I don’t know what this is, but it’s licking a pole. Maybe an antelope.

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Licking a pole. I’m pretty sure that’s part of Miley’s latest cardio routine.

And you know what this is. Doesn’t his foot look uncomfortably contorted? Rhinoceros horns are made from a protein called keratin, the same substance used in my Suave hair treatment.

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This thing getting right up in your face is a hyena. Reminds me of when Mufasa got right up in those young hyena’s faces in The Lion King. Don’t let their dingo-dogginess fool you. Death to hyenas!

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Then there were some birds:

pink flamingos, which remind me of a Port Aransas souvenir t-shirt I scored in the 80s

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whatever these are (maybe zebra birds)

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and this duck, who seems to be saying to the turtle, “Zero bothers given.”

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And that’s the last of the San Antonio Zoo pics. Now I have to go bake some brownies and clean off the back porch table so the boys can eat crispy beef tacos out there for dinner (we always have a 0% chance of rain, so no worries of precip) and take some Vitamin D supplements that won’t absorb in my body anyway and get the hub’s load of laundry out of the washer and into the dryer, and at some point get to the store to try out that Dr. Scholl’s foot assessment machine and see if their $50 insoles can help my heels feel better. Hope you have a good weekend!