"I was minding my own business, gardening, when it struck up from behind and boofed me on the head.... I’ve decided to wear a hat today because I don’t want it to happen again."

Said Paul Boys, 64, quoted in "In pursuit of the hawk divebombing tall men in Hertfordshire/A Harris’s hawk is terrorising the village of Flamstead, where about 20 people have been attacked in the past fortnight" (London Times).

The hawk was minding his own business too, but its business is boofing tall men.

"Boof," the noun, has been around since 1825. It's "A blow that makes a sound like a rapid, brief movement of air" (OED).

I like the village name, Flamstead, which just means "place of the Flemings." There's an annual Flamstead Scarecrow Festival....

"Lemurs are strange in the way that the reclusive and wealthy are strange; having had the island of Madagascar to themselves evolve in..."

"... they have idiosyncratic habits. Male ring-tailed lemurs have scent glands on their wrists, and engage in 'stink-fighting,' battles in which they stand two feet apart and wipe their hands on their tails, then shake the tail at their opponent, all the while maintaining an aggressive stare until one or the other retreats. It feels no madder than current forms of diplomacy. It’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive."

Writes Katherine Rundell, in "Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures" (commission earned) quoted in "A Pretty Girl, a Novel with Voices, and Ring-Tailed Lemurs" (Paris Review).

Hadn't used my "animals are jerks" tag in a long time.

"Democrats need — but so far lack — a consistent national message for the midterm elections.... Even the abortion rights movement has seemed distracted by semantics..."

"... moving, for example, to replace the phrase 'a woman’s right to choose' with 'a person’s right to choose.' That well-intended inclusion of transgender and nonbinary people unfortunately blurs the essential message that the coming abortion ban is a frontal assault on women’s rights. Instead of playing into the talons of the opposition, let’s make sure every voter knows what these toxic turkeys are up to as they shrug off sexual assault and push for a nationwide abortion ban: They are vitiating a half-century of progress for women."

From "The turkeys of toxic masculinity strut their stuff" by Dana Milbank (WaPo). 

1. The reference to turkeys has to do with an actual turkey that has been biting and scratching people on Anacostia Riverwalk Trail in Washington D.C. There's an analogy there. It's intended to be funny. An aggressive bird. Like the bird is a jerk. But surely the Republicans are jerks.

2. Milbank wrote "the coming abortion ban" just before the draft opinion leaked. I don't think he had any idea how soon it was coming.

3. There's a price to be paid for all the speech control that been undertaken to display superficial deference to transgender and nonbinary people. We've been suppressing awareness of the difference between male and female bodies, as if the vulnerability to pregnancy does not dramatically affect life for a woman. Life isn't just about how you feel inside about things you think of as gender. There's an outward reality that has to do with a very particular right that we fought so long to get acknowledged, struggled for 5 decades to keep, and lost just yesterday. And we're supposed to modify how we speak and not say "woman"!

"If you could speak to animals, which animals would you want to talk to?"/"Deep-sea fish."

From "The Stylist Embracing Messy Hair/Meet Dylan Chavles." Just a New York Magazine set of questions for a person, this one happening to be a hair stylist who stole the idea that I had when I was 10. I became famous in my own fantasy as the designer of The Mess-Up, the brilliant new approach to hairstyling done by messing it up.

And I'm also pretty sure that deep sea fish have nothing interesting to say. You know, they're under a lot of pressure, but they don't even notice.

ADDED: There's always Wittgenstein:



That's just the last 2 panels. Go here for the full story.

"So, then, how much suffering and death of nonhuman life would we be willing to countenance to save Shakespeare, our sciences and so forth?"

"Unless we believe there is such a profound moral gap between the status of human and nonhuman animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by the harm and suffering we inflict upon animals. There is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals and too certain a prospect that this is going to continue and probably increase; it would overwhelm anything we might place on the other side of the ledger.... One might ask here whether, given this view, it would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering. Although I do not have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans. To demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying...."

Writes philosophy professor Todd May in "Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?/Our species possesses inherent value, but we are devastating the earth and causing unimaginable animal suffering" in a NYT op-ed.

I know he's just playing with ideas and going to one of those "Modest Proposal" extremes, so I just want to call him out on one thing: Animals are cruel to each other. I'm willing to concede that humans are the worst and that our kind of cruelty is different because we can understand what we are doing and because we use our powers to amplify and extend cruelty. But without us, what would the other animals do to each other? There would be no humans around to perceive and bemoan it as cruelty, but it's already the case that the animals don't know we're feeling compassion for them.

"Yeah, they’ve been fighting and killing each other. They have mole-rat wars to determine who’s going to be the queen..."

".. or who’s going to breed with the queen. We’re hoping things will calm down a little bit now."

For the annals of civility.

The problem with this tweet is that you are a foul, disgusting liar and a stain on American public life. The stench of your deceit and your views pollutes your district, your state, your party, and the United States. https://t.co/6Aate5nHSb

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) December 16, 2018

I had to look up whether John Podhoretz has expressed pieties about civility. I found this quote: "I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion" (from a NYT interview). So, I'm only putting the "civility bullshit" tag on this post because I'm discussing it, not because Podhoretz is doing it. I associate The Weekly Standard with the notion of elevating political discourse, but I haven't read it enough to know if they affected a tone of civility and chastised others for not keeping it. I read Podhoretz's quote about King as consistent with his "scorpion" assertion.

I assume the "scorpion" metaphor alludes to the "Scorpion and the Frog" fable:

A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. Considering this, the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks the scorpion why, the scorpion replies that it was in its nature to do so....

This seems to be the inspiration for that awful snake poem Trump likes to recite.

The origin of "The Scorpion and the Frog" is unknown, but it might have been inspired by an ancient Persian story with a scorpion and a turtle, and there is this nice 1847 illustration for that:

Here we are.

ADDED: Here's an older video of jack rabbits fighting.



It's interesting, I think — if you want to understand the art of film — that the first video feels immediately and continuously hilarious and the second video — much longer and with insistent music — may not even make you laugh at all.

My first stab at analysis is that the darkness and absence of context in the first video makes it feel abstract and allegorical, causing you to instantly visualize the rabbits as stand-ins for human beings: I know people like that. Silly people are like that. Hey, we're all kind of like that.

You go hurtling through important thoughts quickly. It's not a nature film of curious animal behavior. It's a horror flick shocking us with a harsh look at how stupid we are.

"This video makes me nervous. The only reason that you can be sure that the monkey doesn't just snap a puppy's neck for the hell of it..."

"... is because it's been widely shared as a 'cute' video. The owner had no way of knowing it wouldn't."

That prompts somebody else share his "monkey story":

When I was vacationing in Thailand about 20 years ago, I was in a busy restaurant that had a small monkey chained to a perch in the corner. I felt sorry for it and went over to give it some attention. I fed it a treat of some sort from my table and allowed it to perch on my shoulder. Then it shoved its fingers into my eye sockets, driving my lids deep into the space between my eyeballs and eyebrows. It wrapped it's legs around my neck and started humping the back of my head, coming before I was able to tear it off.

I came to realize that having a monkey for a pet would be as much fun as taking care of an incontinent, criminally insane person.

"This is the best example of animals being jerks that I think I have ever seen."

Top comment for this.

I'm blogging this mainly because I have a tag for animals are jerks. 

IN THE COMMENTS:& Michelle Dulak Thomson put up the URL to this excellent video in which the cats are only scantily jerky:

In Oregon, owls are stealing people's hats.

"It was kind of amazing how it just swooped down and grabbed my hat like that... It just pulled it right off my head like it was nothing!”

Stop pestering groundhogs!

Possibly what "Jimmy" the groundhog was thinking when the mayor of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin put his ear next to the mouth of the little beast, who proceeded to take a brisk chomp.

"That evening, this woman was tickling Dusty’s tummy and it just looked so inviting...."

"Just after I got into the water, Dusty left the woman she was with and went ballistic – I found out afterwards that she’s very territorial when she is with somebody. Her tail was flapping wildly, and at first I thought it was a display, but then something twigged: maybe she’s angry. I knew I had to get out of the water, so I swam towards the pier, but within microseconds Dusty had ploughed into me with her snout. It was very powerful and painful, and the speed was amazing. I went hurtling forwards....."

People, can you just leave the dolphins alone? They don't want to swim with you, despite the "expression" you see on their faces. The love you think you are experiencing is nothing more than self-love. Stay home, save your money, and stare in a mirror until you get a deep, accurate assessment of how true your self-love is. Is there a fixed smile on your face? I hope not, but if there is, it's not because you share the spirit of the dolphin. The dolphin is "smiling" because nature played a dirty trick on him, drawing idiot humans into his domain. Get out. Leave the dolphin alone.

ADDED: I just read the last paragraph of the linked article:

After the man pulled me out of the water, Dusty swam away, but then she came back and was bobbing vertically next to me, looking at me. We locked eyes and I felt there was complete remorse in her. She was a totally different dolphin; the anger had gone. The people on the pier were in awe.

The people on the pier were fools. You felt there was complete remorse. Sheer nonsense. She was a totally different dolphin. But you were the same fool you have always been.

Tell me again about how people travel to broaden their minds and gain insight and understanding. And this is a travel story. That dolphin Dusty "starred in an Irish tourist board ad campaign." Oh, here is is:



Yeah, go to Ireland for the dolphins. And toss your tiny daughter in the water with a powerful, unpredictable beast. Because Ireland really wants a huge pile of your money, and what says Ireland more than dolphins? Good lord! Take your kids to a beach closer to home if you must inject excitement into their lives. I continue to believe that a soothing, calm environment is best for children. Give them a place to discover their own ways of having fun. That pleasant room where the girl in the ad sits in a chair and imagines where she could be is exactly where she belongs so she can imagine her own things, not some damned list dreamed up by the Irish tourist board.

The "Benghazi is a circus" meme.

Spotted today in this NYT editorial: "Center Ring at the Republican Circus."

Previously spotted...



... when Jane Harman delivered Benghazi talking points on "Fox News Sunday" and began with: "This is a circus."

Actually, the text of the NYT editorial doesn't use the "circus" metaphor, but it does begin "The hottest competition in Washington this week is among House Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court...." and "kangaroo court" does sound sort of circus-like — some spectacle involving animals.

Why did the noble kangaroo get connected to the idea of an improperly constituted, unfair tribunal?

There is some debate over the origin of the term kangaroo court, but some sources suggest that it may have been popularized during the California Gold Rush of 1848, as a description of the hastily carried-out proceedings used to deal with the issue of claim jumping miners. Other sources claim that the term comes from the notion of justice proceeding "by leaps," like a kangaroo. Some[who?] have suggested that the phrase could refer to the pouch of a kangaroo, meaning the court is in someone's pocket. 

The question hich animal would make the worst judge is an interesting one. It's easy to quip that the human animal makes the worst judge. Only the human animal ever gets the idea of conducting anything even resembling a judicial procedure.

That said, I would not like to be tried by a bird.


("Up Before the Beak" from Punch's Almanack For 1882 ("beak" was slang for "judge."))

"Males relentlessly bound from partner to partner, as massive hormone releases in their bodies cause their immune systems to crash and their fur to fall out."

"They bleed internally. Some males even go blind, yet still stumble around the leaf litter hoping for one last tryst. In a few short weeks, every single male lies dead, leaving the females to raise their offspring...."

At the Cat-Mask Café...

... we can see through your disguise.

IN THE COMMENTS: Sigivald said:

All ducks are wearing dog masks. 

Animals are jerks.

I've had that tag for a long time. Glad to see Buzzfeed has caught up.

"A minor war has broken out south of Qunfudah in the village of Kiad where large groups of hungry baboons from nearby valleys are attacking residences..."

"Hussein Al-Barakati, a resident of Kiad, said that he feared for his mother’s safety as she lives alone near the valley...."

Adel Medini, from the town of Helli, has his own take on the recent scourge of baboons: “It’s a daily game of hide and seek. The baboons are targeting empty houses and are well aware of what they are doing. The assault on the village is not random, as some believe. They proceed according to studied plans. That’s why their attacks do not fail. For example, imagine a resident who is absent from their home for a period of time. Even though it’s just one day, he is surprised to return to find his home in disarray. Some people in this situation thought that thieves had broken into and ransacked their houses … The problem is that the village’s houses are old and non-roofed, and our daily guest is hungry.”

Salem Al-Barakati said that the main reason that the baboons are difficult to stymie is because of their high intelligence. They easily match wits with those out to drive them away.

Via Walter Russell Mead:

It’s not just in Saudi Arabia that baboons see human beings as a prey animal. At the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, there is a parking lot for tourists coming to see the beautiful wild landscape where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. Baboons lurk on the edge of the parking lot, watching tourists come and go. They look for car doors that aren’t locked, windows that are left opened, absent-minded tourists carrying food....

[T]he baboons in that parking lot... clearly felt only contempt for their squishy, soft, clawless and short toothed cousins. You could see it in their hard and glittering eyes.

They easily match wits....

Dolphins are snobs.

Don't let those phony "smiles" fool you.

"Readers can expect to learn more about some the world's craziest and nastiest animals."

"The animals in the book are all fabulously unusual in some way; my book sheds light on these creatures. Expect to be terrified of nature, yet in awe at the same time. And oh, laughs galore--apparently, my talent for wildlife narration has translated well to the printed page, love!"

"The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger" is so inherently YouTube that it's hard to figure out how Randall will work as a book. Do you read it out loud in that voice?

But think about how bookselling works these days. The book is a media event, an occasion for appearances on various radio and TV shows. Remember, book is also a verb. And who wouldn't want to book Randall? And therefore it makes commercial sense to publish Randall's book, even if all people really want is to watch hisYouTube videos.