Posted in dog breeds on October 29, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized on October 28, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Not this particular bird.
What is unusual about this strain or variety of canary?
Posted in wildlife on October 28, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Not this particular canary.
What’s unusual about this strain or variety of canary?
Posted in wildlife, tagged platypus, Tasmania, thylacine on October 28, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I asked this question yesterday about this depiction: “What is wrong with this picture?”
What I was looking for is that the size is all wrong. A thylacine was as big a Labrador (of the standard size).
The platypus is 17-20 inches long, and it weighs 1.5 to 5 pounds.
It is far smaller in the real world than this depiction suggests.
Even a thylacine cub that was of the age in which it could hunt would still be much larger than a platypus.
Now, one of the comments said that platypuses don’t exist in Tasmania.
Well, actually they do.
The darker shade on this map represents the platypus’s range:
Now, I must admit that the only reason why I knew they were found in Tasmania is because I used to watch the Crocodile Hunter rather religiously.
The only episode that included a platypus was the episode in which he wandered around Tasmania.
I notice that this platypus has spurs, which means it’s a male. These spurs deliver a venom that can kill a dog. A platypus of the size of the one in that picture probably could kill a horse!
Posted in Absolute Piffle on October 28, 2009 |
Posted in dog breeds, working dogs, working retrievers, tagged retriever training, retrieving poodle, working poodle on October 28, 2009 | 7 Comments »
The logic behind having a young puppy work ducks is that they are still in their critical period for socialization and may not have yet developed a distaste for an oily bird.
Check out the breeder’s website to find out more.
As I’ve said before the poodle-type dog is the oldest retriever. Gervase Markham in 1621 described how to use a poodle-type dog (called a water rug or an English rough water dog) as a retriever (including how to clip them!)
Posted in Absolute Piffle, history, West Virginia, tagged Alexander Spotswood, golden horseshoe, West Virginia on October 28, 2009 |
I mentioned in that post about Traveller that I am a Knight of the Golden Horseshoe. I earned this honor after I scored high enough on a test about West Virginia’s history, culture, politics, and the economy. This test is given to eighth graders, because it is in the eighth grade that all West Virginia students must take West Virginia History and Studies.
The title comes from a 1715 safari across the Blue Ridge led by the colonial Virginia lieutenant governor Alexander Spotswood. Upon returning from their journey, r Spotswood gave the members of his party a golden horseshoe to recognize their achievement
I didn’t have to cross the wilderness beyond the Blue Ridge to get my golden horseshoe. (In fact, the area where he visited is now a rather densely populated part of the Shenandoah Valley and isn’t wilderness at all.) I just had to take a test.
To get an idea of the kind of test I took, here is the 1955 Golden Horseshoe test.
Mine was scored on a scan-tron, so it was a bit more technologically advanced than that test.
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