Here’s a handy chart from The Times showing how tall Hazel Blears is, as compared to (i) hitherto well-documented and in some cases actually-existing varieties of penguin and (ii) the Extinct Giant Tropical Penguin discussed below. [Thanks, David E.]
Reading this story reminded me of Sam the Eagle’s talk on the conservation of endangered species from this episode of the Muppet Show. I was going to link to it on YouTube, where I saw it again quite recently for the first time in absolutely ages, but some killjoy has removed it, so I can’t. But perhaps you remember it, too.
Over here.
The BBC, covering the issues that matter, over here.
(The Virtual Stoa’s favourite polydactyl lives in Marin County, California; but I don’t think Alison Thomas is interested in him, owing to her less than fully cosmopolitan attitude, when it comes to cats.)
I rather admire Walrus two (currently in a fjord off the east coast of Baffin Island).
By my reckoning Enkidu caught two mice in the first two years of his life, and three mice in the last two weeks. So either he’s getting much, much better at catching mice, or else the mouse population in Jericho has recently gone through the roof. (I wonder which.)
Rather touchingly, he brought in last night’s mouse shortly before midnight, played with the corpse for bit under the table, and then placed it in his food-bowl before starting to devour it.
Adam H sends me pictures of his MIT Philosophy Department mug. And it’s a fine mug.
Front:
Back:
In other mug-related news, our “Tough on Crime” bright green Labour 1997 campaign pledge mug is not long for the world, and now leaks coffee. Symbolically, it is choosing to bow out at the same time as the man who gave those words their immortality.
I missed last nights Dispatches on the bin wars — the one where they collected some of our rubbish for us in a nice yellow wheelie-bin — so if anyone can fill me in on the state of play here in Oxford, that’d be useful.
In possibly related news, I realised last night that there’s at least one mouse on the loose in our house, and that when Andromache has been parked in front of her food bowl for lengthy periods without eating, this isn’t a protest against the muck we feed her so much as her patient vigil in front of the mouse-hole.
Enkidu recently disappeared for (we think) three nights in a row, which isn’t typical behaviour, and in the end I found him on the corner of Victor St and Canal St where there’s a little alleyway that goes down to the canal, and I brought him home. (This confirms what other neighbours had told me, that he spends his time hanging out down at the canal, and this may be where he finds his mice.)
Anyway, this is by way of background to the fact that my friend Max Pensky, who has been a visiting philosopher at Oxford this year, is living round the corner from us in Jericho, on the street to which Enkidu is a frequent visitor, and has now turned to haiku.
First, there was this:
Enkidu’s return:
Indignant but glad he’s found
Like any good cat.
Then, yesterday, this:
Peripherally
Glimpsed, black-white quicksilver flash.
“Flink,” the Germans say.
And, this morning, the third instalment:
Dialectic of
Enkidu’s extremities:
Quite sharp, or quite soft.
Enkidu and Andromache, two today (probably).
Here’s a birthday portrait of Enkidu:
And here’s a birthday portrait of Andromache:
UPDATE! [11.30pm] Enkidu has marked his birthday by catching a mouse, bringing it inside, and playing with it on the carpet!
As befits his Sumerian origins (more or less), Enkidu appears to have perfected his proskynesis technique (though I doubt I’ll ever capture this on film).
Over here [thanks , NB]
My first attempt to keep worms has failed, after a pitifully short three months, and I have to live with the knowledge that I am a worm-killer.
I think I forgot the elementary lesson that it’s far better to underfeed than to overfeed. They seemed to be doing pretty well when I left, three weeks ago, motoring through whatever we gave them. Thinking that they’d need quite a bit of food in our absence, I went through the fridge and shredded a lot of the remaining vegetable matter into their tub. But instead what’s happened is that a lot of the food in the tub has rotted, and I think the worms have been poisoned by the horrible smelly goo.
Poor worms.
Enkidu is being very friendly at the moment, which I like to think is reciprocal altruism, looking back to the time when he was the one with the damaged limb and I was (one of the ones) looking after him.
(What you can’t see in this photo is that these two cats are enjoying the music of the late, lamented Waylon Jennings.)
For reasons I don’t fully understand, one of the shower-curtain-rings has found its way into the garden, and has come to the attention of Andromache.
Splendid news, over here.
In other rhino-related non-news, if you consult leading Anglo-dictionaries about the plural of the word “rhinoceros”, you will be able to take your pick from “rhinocoeros”, “rhinoceroses”, “rhinocerotes”, “rhinoceroes”, “rhinocero’s”, “rhinoceri”, “rhinocerons” or “rhinocerontes”. I think this is very fine.
UPDATE [29.1.2007]: See the baby rhino (58kg) walking around over at the BBC.
We haven’t had a picture of Enkidu for a while. Here he is, in his favourite Place.
By special request, here’s a picture of Babar the Elephant (and Celeste).
They have a poster up in Blackwells café right now for “Babar et les ballons”, but the mood at the Stoa is that Babar looks best in a balloon when he’s waving his handkerchief from the balloon, as above.
I think I envy cats most for their ability to make themselves comfortable pretty much anywhere. Here’s Andromache, relaxing on some books:
I’ve just returned home after a period of wandering over the last few weeks that has taken me to Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco — and to the elephant seals on the beach outside Hearst Castle.
Oxford seems unchanged, and I’m pleased to learn from the telly that Life of Brian was marketed in Sweden with the slogan, “The film that is so funny, it was banned in Norway”.
Here’s Andromache, wrestling with a blue thing on a stick:
Oh, I’m very pleased to see this again:
Readers with long memories will recall that Enkidu became interested in cricket almost immediately, after coming to live with us in the Summer of 2005. Here and here, for example. And now that the Ashes are being contested again, Enkidu’s interest has reawakened.
I’ve been leaving the radio on at night, very quietly, so that I can fall asleep while Justin Langer is scoring runs, wake up while Ricky Ponting is scoring runs, lucky me, and if I drift into consciousness in the middle of the night I can easily register the latest score before drifting back into sleep. And after finding alternative places to sleep for a month or more, Enkidu chose Wednesday night, the first day of the Test Match, to come and settle down at the foot of my bed again: he was there at the start of play and still there at the close, and I don’t think he went anywhere else in between. So that’s a lot of Test Match Special that he got to hear.
He slept on my bed last night, too, though he had pushed off by the time the England batsmen were starting their innings. And here he is, later this morning, watching the highlights being streamed through the BBC website:
