January 26, 2007

• There is no debate. We are not always top of the food chain and we should just learn to live with it. And always carry a pen. Oh and: The dead cougars are undergoing tests to determine if either was responsible for the mauling. Well it a bit fucking late now if they weren't, isn't it!!!???
• Mountain lions range from British Colombia to South America Since when do the Brits have their own coffee and cocaine export country?
• Exactly my thoughts, kitfisto, talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted! What do they expect to find on the dead lions, Human DNA??? What a waste of a already endagered species. 34 million Californians versus no more than a thousand mountain lions. Sheesh! Anything that makes you look bigger, including opening your jacket up wide, may confuse a lion enough to deter an attack
• Probably the cougar testing is actually to determine if they can round up a posse and find the actual bad kitty if neither of the ones they have is it. People want retribution, damnit! Also: good one, nunia!
• "Wife fights off cougar with pen" How did the cougar get hold of a pen?
• A cougar that has attacked once is likely to attack again. Even if the cats are endangered, it's better that the potentially dangerous ones are eliminated. Determining which cat on-hand is the killer will reduce the need to spend time and money hunting down the real killer. Thank you OJ Simpson. *open jacket and flaps like a bird*
• She's lucky she had a pen. What if they had been attacked holding only a sword?
• I just now looked at the title.
• Grrrrrrrrr. *scribble, scribble, pen-chewing-contemplation, scribble*
• 
  This reminds me of the story of the Tennessee town that executed an elephant in 1916 for trampling a man to death. They killed it by hanging it from a crane.
• Maybe she borrowed the pen from Bruce McCulloch youtube link.
• Disgusting creatures.
• > They killed it by hanging it from a crane. Wow that's sick and twisted.
• Conservation officers tend to know when to and when to not kill animals in habited areas. We had to live with a black bear during the field season last year which killed a big-eyed baby horse and ate its face! That's clearly a crime of hate, but the conservation officers let it live... where is the justice for the equine? That bear drank a lot of our booze too, and never pitched in when we went to town. It was like living with that guy in the white bronco.
• Most animals are afraid of us. However, once an animal attacks a human its fear of us diminishes and it is likely to attack other people. That's likely why they killed it (and, unfortunately, the other one also since they weren't sure.)
• PETE! Explain yourself. Disgusting creatures. Cougars? Monkeys? Old folks? Dang, she's 65 and he's 70? Way to go, oldsters!! Glad they're both all right. Interesting that the article states ...when the cougar attacked, her husband did not scream. "It was a different, horrible plea for help...", and then that the hospital stitched his lips back together. I'm thinkin' it's important to be able to call for help when necessary. *suggestion made to put in zipper next time Excellent suggestion, Zaph. Just be careful not to wiggle suggestively whilst flashing open your jacket. Actually, the reason cougars love Californians is because they're always running around in spandex outfits. Here's one vote for cougars. If you don't like the wildlife, walk in the mall.
• In regards to Mythopoesis's link: Also interesting (scroll down to "How were elephants killed in the past?") Topsy, Edison, the ASPCA and Electricity.
• previous discussion of elephant executions
• Yikes. Mythopoesis' link is quite disturbing. Never knew of that story before, and it is quite sad. Poor girl... And on preview, I missed that thread...
• well as an opponent of the death penalty, I have to come down firmly on the side of the cougars (one of my all time fav animals--I want one!) they are endangered they are just protecting their territory, themselves and their cubs from a perceived threat I agree with GramMa, walk in the fooking mall! but then again, I hate people and look forward to some global catastrophic event swatting us of the back of the planet like the pesky gadflies we are.
• Well, then, this is for you.
• oh yes, fish tick, I've seen it. I may be the only person who found it ever-so-slightly pornographic (kidding, kind of...) but I do sometimes feel a certain nihilistic, pessimisitic glee at the idea of say, a horrific global pandemic killing 80% of the population.
• The mountain lion was just culling a weak member of the herd. You know, the old, the sick, the crippled, or the weak and stunted. If you fall into that category, stay out from under trees in riparian habitats. Or stay with a tough herd. A watershed employee with a depredation permit from Fish and Game here in California just killed one last week half a mile from here, for killing goats. He was huge!
• The 'elephant hanging' is very odd in the way human motivations are necessarily ascribed to the elephant by the use of a penalty intended for human beings.
• I do sometimes feel a certain nihilistic, pessimisitic glee at the idea of say, a horrific global pandemic killing 80% of the population. Monkeyfilter You are logged in as Medusa. 6204 1241 Members
• sorry! I don't mean to seem so agro. I want all the monkeys to live. except Berek.
• Some folks just need killin'. Let them be trampled to death by vengeful Sunni elephants, then fed to the cougars.
• *puzzles as to retrosurf's meter, rhyme scheme*
• Somewhere between The Dance and Christ in Alabama, I reckon.
• No sense of meter, no sense of rhyme, just excessive control of words on a line. I don't like long text from leftmost to right because of poor tracking of my ancient eyesight. The software that makes, breaks and line feeds is rather at odds with my formatting needs. My shortened lines are not poetry, I think you saw what you expected to see.
• MonkeyFilter: Let them be trampled to death by vengeful Sunni elephants, then fed to the cougars. Sfred: Used to be popular in Europe, too. Just finished Barry Lopez excellent book on wolves. He mentions this practice of an "eye for an eye" retaliation being adapted to animals in the medieval relationship. Maybe they didn't have souls, or any moral mindset, but damn, they still needed punishment.
• -applauds retro-
• I am sure there is a rational explanation for this.
• I am sure there is a rational explanation for this. Well it wouldn't have made any sense if the lion was driving.
• He's passing on a solid yellow lion.
• Why wouldn't a lion enjoy that? Dogs love to hang their heads out the window. I had a tiger cat once* that loved to ride in cars. He thought it was cool to stick his nose out the wing window, too. *obviously, that cat's long gone, as are wing windows on cars
• Earthy Anecdote Wallace Stevens Every time the bucks went clattering Over Oklahoma A firecat bristled in the way. Wherever they went, They went clattering, Until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the right, Because of the firecat. Or until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the left, Because of the firecat. The bucks clattered. The firecat went leaping, To the right, to the left, And Bristled in the way. Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes And slept. WS is not one of my favorites, because he is so often abtruse, and I'm a BlueHorse, and horse's have a walnut-sized brain. But I found this--one of his more simple imagist poems, and I lubs it!
• Nice find. Hadn't seen that one before. Not really a firebreak here: Break We put the puzzle together piece by piece, loving how one curved notch fits so sweetly with another. A yellow smudge becomes the brush of a broom, and two blue arms fill in the last of the sky. We patch together porch swings and autumn trees, matching gold to gold. We hold the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair of brown shoes. We do this as the child circles her room, impatient with her blossoming, tired of the neat house, the made bed, the good food. We let her brood as we shuffle through the pieces, setting each one into place with a satisfied tap, our backs turned for a few hours to a world that is crumbling, a sky that is falling, the pieces we are required to return to. --Dorianne Laux
• BlueHorse: Knew I'd seen this somewhere recently, finally found it again: bees have a brain the size of a grass seed.
• The shortest of distances between multiple points Is determined by the seed-sized brain of a bee. The shortest distance to jump the heights Needs a walnut-brained horse to see. The quickest way to go insane Is in the human cranium.
• Ye have a point there, since BlueHorse stays busy careening betwixt her mare-ship and her Grandma-persona, while beeswacky keeps switching gears between his beesyness and his poet lariatship. I think we bee so kung-foozed, o so kung-foozed! *leers manically*
• Yes, I bee kung-foozed as well as vertically and horizontally challenged. Nice pom, Dan. and horse's have a walnut-sized brain Why is it that typos are so hard to see in the preview window, but poke you in the eye after you've hit post? Trac, dammit! You need to fix that. Anyhoo, onward with the cat poems! To Mrs. Reynold's Cat John Keats Cat! who hast past thy grand climacteric, How many mice and rats hast in thy days Destroy'd?--how many tit bits stolen? Gaze With those bright languid segments green and prick Those velvet ears--but pr'ythee do not stick Thy latent talons in me--and upraise Thy gentle mew--and tell me all thy frays Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick. Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists-- For all the wheezy asthma,--and for all Thy tail's tip is nicked off--and though the fists Of many a maid have given thee many a maul, Still is that fur as soft as when the lists In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.
• An Unusual Cat-Poem My cat is dead But I have decided not to make a big tragedy of it. -- Wendy Cope
• Rescued Orphan Cougar Cubs At the Oregon Zoo Move To Their New Home in North Carolina