The perfect caddy

If you’re looking for advice on your swing or which club to use, you’ll want a different caddy. But if you want a calm companion who easily carries two golf bags, a llama might be just the right caddy for you.

I saw this pictureat nationalgeographic.com, and was intrigued enough to search for more information. The subject naturally lends itself to some journalistic humor. One article asks this question: Golf Etiquette: Must Golfers Tip Llama Caddies? The question is left unanswered, but the article does point out some ways llama caddies are superior to their human counterparts.

The llama caddies have gained points for on-the-course discretion. They don’t tend to roll their eyes when golfers call for mulligans. They don’t snicker and whisper when golfers become teed off over missed swings. Most important, the llamas do not squeal when golfers alter their scorecards.

LlamaWeb is a one place to learn about llama caddies - and just about anything else about llamas you might want to know. Llamas apparently have some other uses that most of us would never have thought of. Guarding sheep, for instance.

Books: A Friend Like Henry

I don’t normally take an interest in a book about someone else’s pet. Of course that pet is wonderful to the people who know and love it, and its particular habits and quirks are endearing to them. But I suppose I’m not enough of an animal lover to want to read about the animal whose love is tied up with someone who is a complete stranger to me.

This book didn’t interest me until I notice the word autistic in the subtitle: “The Remarkable True Story of an Autistic Boy and the Dog That Unlocked His World.” We had just gotten our new puppy when I decided to buy the book, and I wondered how she might help Al, even if he is hardly “locked” in his own world the way Dale Gardner was.

Somehow the book got buried in a pile of books, and I just unearthed it recently. I read nearly the whole book Tuesday afternoon and evening, while Al was enjoying music and crafts and other activities at VBS (see my recent post Overnight with Noah). This afternoon I finished it – and managed to choke back some tears near the end.

Thinking of our experiences with Al, I can recognize in this account much of what we dealt with. As his autism is much milder, we never went through the total lack of communication that the Gardners had to deal with. I do remember, though, the terrible frustration both he and I felt when he couldn’t tell me what he wanted, the sense that he was sometimes looking through me instead of at me, his indifference as to what adult took care of him, his unwillingness to get near other children, extreme pickiness in eating, throwing up at will, running around in circles, arm flapping, and so on.

Happy Birthday, Kyra!

 

As you can see, Kyra has grown a bit since we first got her. I’ve done my best to display both these photos at roughly the same scale. She’s far from the scared little puppy we first met last September, who would barely leave our side. She’s still a little shy – eager to meet people until she actually gets close, then she runs back, and then forward, and then back…

Walking her is still a challenge. Before she didn’t want to walk, she just wanted to sit or lie on the ground. She still doesn’t want to walk – now she wants to run. She no longer tries to get rid of the leash, she grabs it in her mouth and tries to play tug-of-war with it. She’s not scared of bunnies or birds, now she wants to chase them. And no matter how many times the leash stops her short in her headlong rush, she will do it next time just the same.

She still is fascinated by the toads who share her yard. She still brings home trash when we walk, usually plastic or paper cups, occasionally a napkin. She still won’t go near the yard with a small yapping dog, unless the dog is indoors. And she still doesn’t – and probably never will - understand why the rest of us don’t want to play all day the way she does.

Right now she is resting on the floor. She definitely is “early to bed, early to wise,” and I would probably do well to try to adapt more to her schedule. After all, she’ll be wanting me to get up and take her out at 5 in the morning, no matter what time I go to bed.

Happy Birthday, Kyra. And may you enjoy many more.

A bear in a tight place

The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are an interesting mix of realism and fantasy. Donkeys do eat thistles (according to this website, they are the only animals that do), pigs do eat acorns (according to this website, they fatten up fastest from eating acorns), and of course we know bears like honey. But a kangaroo pouch doesn’t look much like the patch-type pocket Kanga has, and I very much doubt a young pig could manage to get in. For the most part, the animals are anthopomorphized, and tell us a great deal more about human behavior than animal behavior.

Perhaps young bears, though, are prone to sticking their heads into food containers and then getting stuck in them. At least this one did. I’ve never seen a bird feeder quite like that one, so I don’t know what sort of food it was trying to get at. Being an omnivore, I suppose it would be interested in any sort of food, perhaps even being drawn to the scent of the birds that had fed there.

At least it had Mom around, and didn’t have to blunder around afraid of falling into a Heffalump pit.

Books: The Book of Animal Ignorance

I found this rather oddly titled book using the library’s online catalog, trying to answer my 9-year-old’s question about hornets. (A classmate had told him a hornet was part wasp, part queen bee, and part bumblebee, and I assured him that was wrong but I didn’t know exactly how to define what a hornet was.) I doubt I’d have picked it up otherwise, as the title makes it sound like it’s about how much animals don’t know, rather than how much we don’t know about animals. But having read a few pages, I was delighted with it and just had to check it out to read the whole thing.

This book attempts to be a modern version of the medieval bestiary, full of fascinating descriptions of bizarre animals – except that, unlike the bestiaries, this book tells real information about real animals. Unlike many books about animals, which give all kinds of details about habitat, food, reproductive cycle, size, and so on, that are likely to be of interest only to real animal lovers, this one only bothers with the information that is unusual enough to really be interesting.

For instance, while I had heard of some cicadas that only reproduce every seventeen years, I had no idea that others had life cycles tied to other numbers – all of them prime numbers. By avoiding cycles of even numbers of years, it makes it virtually impossible for a species of predators to manage to match its cycle to that of the cicadas. How the cicadas manage this bit of mathematics, scientists don’t know.

Even more odd – to me – they were kept as pets in ancient Greece. I can see the appeal of having fish, even though you can’t play with them and if they have any personality it’s pretty well hidden. But cicadas? (They would be a particularly boring pet if you had the seventeen-year variety, as the larvae spent the intervening years underground. Of course, the ones kept by ancient Greeks weren’t that variety, as those only live in the eastern U.S.)

I could understand a little better the habits of the Native Americans, who deep-fry their cicadas and snack on them. Apparently they taste a lot like asparagus – not one of my favorite foods, but if I had to eat an insect, I’d rather eat one that tasted like asparagus than like – well, what you’d think an insect would taste like.

Then there are cows. They seem pretty boring, and we know lots about them. But did you know they get something called “hardware disease”? Apparently they aren’t too careful what gets mixed in with their food as they munch away, and swallow bits of wire, staples, and nails. To prevent the damage these objects would cause to the cows, farmers feed them magnets, which sit in the first part of the cow’s stomach, attracting those bits of metal and keeping them from going any further along the digestive tract.

Birdwatching

My sister sent me this link a few days ago. If you like birdwatching, and don’t mind doing it via your computer screen instead of outdoors, you might enjoy watching these young red-tailed hawks. Their parents built a nest on a window ledge outside the Franklin Institute, and after checking with both experts on hawks and on state laws regarding hawks, the museum added a wooden extension to the window ledge to make the nest more secure.

The eggs were laid in mid-March, and hatched in mid-April. By now the nestlings are venturing out of the nest onto the window ledge (though they haven’t done so while I was watching, which isn’t surprising because I don’t spend a lot of time watching). They are expected to start flying by the end of the month.

I’m not sure what they’re doing half the time – grooming themselves? Trying to get at itchy spots with their beaks? Lately I see one frequently experiment with extending his (her?) wings a bit, perhaps trying to figure out just what those things are for. It’s fun to watch the young of any species, but it’s particularly fascinating to get such a close look at wild animals.

The camera is showing their activity in real time, and there is no artificial light, so after dark (eastern time), you won’t see anything. But if you check in during the day, you can join the virtual crowd (most times I check in there are about three to four hundred viewers online) at hawk-watching.

Would you want a glowing puppy?

When I posted yesterday about hobbyists who make glow-in-the-dark bacteria, it hadn’t occurred to me that serious researchers work at making larger animals glow. But today (actually tomorrow, but it’s posted already, perhaps in a time zone where it is tomorrow already) National Geographic has a series of photos of various animals that glow. Some glow naturally, but most have had fluorescent protein added. Of these, most glow green, but a couple glow red.

Aside from the novelty of it (can you imagine taking a glowing red dog for a walk? – though you’d have to find an ultraviolet lit place to walk in to get the effect), there are serious scientific reasons for it. Glowing organs, glowing neurons in the brain, glowing intestines – these help researchers to observe more clearly what is happening in the body. In healthy animals, they can observe normal patterns to better understand how the body works. In other cases, a disease is introduced and the glow helps track the progress of the disease.

In the case of the scorpions (which glow under ultraviolet light without any genetic modifications), fluorescence enables scientists to study them without disturbing them. It’s always good to study animals in their natural state – but I imagine in the case of scorpions it’s especially good, as no one wants to upset a scorpion unless the goal is to discover their sting-giving potential.

Fluorescent pet fish aren’t particularly useful (though apparently popular), but they did have the side benefit of forcing countries to develop laws to deal with the issues surrounding genetically modified pets. I wonder – what would it be like to have a glowing green puppy? The dog’s eyes glow green in the dark quite well without modification, and it is sometimes unnerving to wake up and see them glowing in the dark. It would make it easier to find her in the dark, I suppose, so I don’t trip over her (though I don’t think I really want to keep ultraviolet lights on in the bedroom). But waking up to see a glowing green body? – no, I think I’ll stick with the old-fashioned jet-black version.

Movies: Planet Earth

Years ago, when I first heard of the Discovery Channel, I wondered how there could be that many people interested in watching nature shows. Even when they were free I had little interest, and I couldn’t imagine paying to be able to watch them. Then I married a molecular biologist who had loved watching nature shows when he was a boy. And we had boys who took an interest in them, especially our younger son. Now I am considering purchasing Planet Earth.

I suppose it is partly because I want to encourage Al in what he loves, just as we encouraged his older brother in music. I remember reading Ranger Rick as a kid, but it didn’t greatly interest me. (I would guess we got it for my older sister, who always found natural science more interesting than I did.) Al reads Ranger Rick, and this Christmas asked for Zoo Books also, and also announced that he liked Dog Fancy after reading some old copies during puppy obedience class. (I ordered Dogs for Kids for him instead, which he is enjoying – but now the magazine is ceasing publication and the remainder of our subscription will be fulfilled by Dog Fancy.)

Partly it is also my own discovery of an interest in these programs, having seen several nature programs at the IMAX theater. On a TV screen - even on wide-screen – they’re hardly as impressive as on the towering IMAX screen, but the beauty and strangeness captured by skilled nature photographers still amaze me. I consider myself pretty well educated, but there is so much about the natural world that I had no idea about.

The original series of eleven episodes is available on four DVD volumes. We rented Volume 2, which includes the segments on Great Plains, Jungles, and Shallow Seas. Al’s attention span turns out to be slightly less than one full segment, so we watched most of Great Plains two nights ago, and I watched all of Jungles last night, with Al going to bed right before the chimpanzees went on the warpath. As I only rented it for one night, I had to return it without seeing Shallow Seas – but we saw enough for me to decide it’s worth purchasing.

Books: The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story

I saw The Zookeeper’s Wife a few times on the library shelf and the title intrigued me. I took a look, and considered checking it out, but somehow the prospect of reading about a Polish couple (Jan and Antonina Zabinski) who hid Jews from the Nazis during WWII didn’t sound like very relaxing reading. No matter how inspiring the story, it was bound to be full of the horror of war and especially the horror of what the Nazis did to the Jews.

Then I discovered the existence of a local reading group, and that this book would be discussed at their March meeting. I decided it would be a good book to read after all, and to have other book-lovers to discuss it with. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me that it might be difficult to get hold of the library’s copy of the book in the weeks leading up to that meeting (assuming not everyone goes out and buys their own copy). By the time I got a copy through interlibrary loan, I had one week left to read it. I had barely started it by the time the group met (I didn’t go), and it took me over a month to finish the book.

Some books don’t take me more than a week to read (even when they’re not children’s books like the last two I read). But this one, while definitely interesting, is not exactly gripping. There is little suspense - references to interviews given by Jan and Antonina after the war make it clear that both will survive. The action moves slowly, with frequent detours to fill in every detail the author could glean from diaries, letters, interviews, and a wealth of other sources about life in Warsaw during the war.

Some of the detail is fascinating, such as the chapter about Dr. Tenenbaum’s large insect collection. An entomologist who had been friends with Jan since boyhood, Dr.  Szymon Tenenbaum and his wife (herself a dentist) were among the Jews forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto. The German head of the Labor Bureau, an amateur entomologist named Ziegler (who also happens to be a dental patient of Lonia Tenenbaum), turns out to care more about Tenenbaum’s marvelous insect collection than about what ulterior motives Jan might have for cultivating his friendship and making so many visits in and out of the Ghetto.

Another interesting chapter tells about a “beauty institute” set up to teach Jewish women how to appear Aryan and thus escape detection. In terms of appearance, this included dying their dark hair a lighter color and wearing it in a style more typical of Aryans than Jews, wearing glasses that de-emphasized their Semitic noses, wear clothing of inconspicuous colors, and wearing Christian symbols such as a cross. It also dealt with speech patterns, cooking traditional Polish foods, and even learning Christian prayers.

Movies: Under the Sea 3D / Dolphins

I had originally selected Dolphinsas the IMAX movie to watch this afternoon because I thought we had already seen Under the Sea 3D. But I noticed today that Under the Sea 3Dhad just been released last month. Looking through a list of previously released IMAX movies, I realized that what we saw previously must have been Deep Sea 3D and Into the Deep 3D. (I guess underwater IMAX movies are pretty popular.) So we went with the double-feature pricing and went to both movies.

Dolphinswas first, which was good because it wasn’t 3D and not quite as fun to watch. (I always like to save the best for last.) It was very interesting, but it was as much about the humans who are studying dolphin behavior and communication as about the dolphins themselves. The huge IMAX screen is wonderful for majestic vistas or for close-ups of rarely seen wildlife. It isn’t so impressive for watching humans talk about their work.

Their work is very interesting, though, especially the work of Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski. She developed a mobile video/acoustic recorder which she can use underwater, to capture both the sight and sound of dolphins communicating with one another. By setting the underwater microphones a couple feet apart, she is able to determine the direction the sounds came from and match it with the video of the dolphin making the sounds. By correlating sounds with the animal’s “body language” she can begin to understand what sounds represent a greeting, for instance.

Even more intriguing, she discovered that by slowing down the audio on playback, she could detect many more sounds that had been audible at normal speed. Analyzing the patterns of sounds, Dudzinski says they are remarkably similar to the pattern of human languages. Who knows what remarkable things they are saying to one another with their chirps, clicks, and whistles?