Another link to love, dear readers: California Academy of Sciences promises to let you watch the penguins “swim, flirt, nest, and relax” via its penguin-cam. You can also watch the tuxedoed charmers feed every day at 10:30am and 3:30pm. As she writes the author is watching them do… fuck all really. But feeding time is something to see, and nicely coincides with the mandatory coffee and cookie breaktimes that the author of BV is petitioning congress to institute as a universal workplace practice in the U.S.. You’re welcome.
The author had not intended to post today, but was utterly undone by the following story and simply had to share: Santra, a female brown bear in Finland’s Ahtari Zoo, is apparently the latest adherent to the yoga craze that has been sweeping the globe for the last decade or so (more if you gew up, as the author did, in the land that the sixties forgot… to leave).
In any case, it was obvious to all in attendance that Santra is well on her way to yogi status as she demonstrated a variety of poses over a fifteen-minute span. Namaste, yoga bear.
Neat trick, that, since the pitcher plant is carnivorous. Perhaps even these tiny frogs are too big a bite for the pitcher plant to chew.
And perhaps the author’s love for these creatures of diminutive size is a reaction to the smallness she feels in the face of almost insurmountable personal hurdles, and a respect for their ability to adapt and persevere. Or perhaps that pop psychobabble should go the way of poor Ornithomimosauria, long extinct and similarly toothless.
But the bottom line, dear readers, is that that tiny frog is damned cute, don’t you think?
The author has been remiss, and has neglected to deliver promised entries. Well, dear readers, that is changing, starting now, with a new link I love.
Hooray, tiny animals has all of the squishy cutsiepoo appeal that the author of BV secretly loves in an alarmingly pre-adolescent way. Enjoy, and return for more posts.
it’s ridiculous how easy it is to make the author of BV get misty these days. And before you even think it, bite your tongue. she is *NOT* pregnant. Just sensitive.
Citizens the German town of Föhren have been in a tizzy for the past year, wondering what kind of sick freak would going around stealing single shoes from their doorsteps in the middle of the night, leaving their mates behind. More than 100 mismatched hiking shoes, Wellingtons, steel-capped workman’s boots, flipflops and smelly old bedroom slippers went missing.
Well, folkes, as it turns out, it’s one shoe-loving vixen (aren’t we all) that has absconded with the missing footwear. Just one shoe at a time mind you, as she has to carry them home in her mouth.
Locals have offered two explanations for her kleptomania: either 1) she has been gathering the footwear as toys for her pups, or 2) “She’s clearly got a thing about shoes.” Claro.
This second option is the opinion of one Rudolf Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt, the local count (a count!!!!), who adds that “the shoes may well be intended as toys for the cubs because there are bite marks made by little teeth on the shoelaces.” This is very cute. And not at all what one (at least, dear readers, one American with little to no experience with german nobility) would expect a count to be occupying his time with. But the author of BV has a quibble with Count RRvonK: he is quoted as saying “It’s impressive that she found the time to steal them in addition to getting food.”
Silly man. Today’s liberated, self-sufficient, upwardly-mobile vixen can work a full-time job, keep a fabulous home, cook herself and her loved ones gourmet meals, and though things like sex and balancing her checkbook may fall by the wayside, she will always, always, always have Time for Shoes.
The author of BV would like to be clear: wild and exotic animals are not pets. They belong in the fields and forests and streams, making nice with other wild and exotic animals. And the Slow Loris, a south/southeast asian primate currently considered threatened/endangered, is no exception. These little charmers, which have long been hunted for their eyes (used in local traditional medicine), deserve a break, and should NOT be sought and poached, ripped heartlessly from their native lands, for no reason but our own gratification.
Every so often, one discovers something so simultaneously cute and creepy that one is obliged to share it with the world. (for teh author of BV, this is a somewhat more frequent occurance).
For once, dear readers, the source of cute and creepy is not a kitty video, but a guinea pig song and dance number (you may have noticed that I am becoming rather inordinately fond of the little buggers). Wonder if the chairman of the board ever did it “the guinea pig way”… No matter, albinoblacksheep has made it happen.
The angry old canard’s full name Donald Fauntleroy Duck, and his official birthady is recognized today to commemorate the release of his debut film, The Wise Little Hen… for which, true to the bad luck for which he is famous, he didn’t even get a screen credit.
He was recognized in 1942, however, when he recieved an Oscar for his appearence in the short film Der Fuehrer’s Face in which Donald plays a worker in an artillery factory in “Nutzi Land,” and who can ever forget such classics as “How to have an Accident at Work?”
You can, dear reader? well, shucks. here ya go:
let’s face it, If there is one star on teh walk of fame that the author of Bv can get a real kick out of… it’s the Duck’s.
The author of BV deos not often direct her (few) readers to read other blogs, lest you intrepid souls desert me for greener fields. One suspects you may be a bit shifty that way. But today is something of an exception.
You see, a friend recently directed my attention to a blog after my own heart. Fuck you, Penguin is in some ways BV’s doppelganger. BV’s dark and twisty evil twin. The heads to BV’s tails. The yin to BV’s yang. The… well, you get the point.
This clever monkey’s recent headlines include such stunners as:
While the author writhes a bit in frustration that she didn’t think of the latter headline first, you, dear readers, should take a look, enjoy… but please… come back.
Apparently, dear readers, someone at the Huffington Post thinks that animal hijinks constitue breaking news… or at least, a worthwhile diversion from the ills of the breaking news…
The “Cute/ridiculous animal thing of the day” section is, of you enjoy the cute/creepy kitty videos portion of BV, right. up. your. alley. Thanks again to lowlyadjunct for this excellent find.
We (and by “we”, dear readers, I mean, of course, “I”) am sure that you will find the following video (which is, in the words of lowlyadjunct, “a video of a couch eating a cat and then spitting it back out again”) ample reason to check beneath your couch cushions. You never know what you might find under there…
Joel Armstrong , a 43-year-old banker in Washington state, had been been watching a mother duck nest on a ledge outside his office window for 35 days, so he was not surprised to see them when he got to town on saturday for the city’s annual Lilac festival.
He was, however, surprised to see two of the little yellow bundles launch themselves from their preciptous perch. The mother duck, who stood watching at ground level, might have anticipated the worst– had Armstrong not stepped up to the plate.
Because Armstrong channeled his inner A-Rod by rushing to the scene, fielding each fuzzy yellow pop-fly handily as they launched themselves into the air and hurtled towards the ground.
Emboldened by their fellows’ good fortune, four more hatchlings followed suit. Armstrong’s catching arm was strong: he lowered each one safely to the impatient mother duck, who seemed to approve of Armstrong’s technique. (Armstrong ultimately had to use a ladder to retrieve the final two ducklings, who were more risk-averse, or less enthsiastic baseball fans, than were their brothers and sisters.)
Finally the mother duck and Armstrong, task completed, led the ducklings, side by side, down two blocks of the parade route to the Spokane river, hearkening to the resounding cheers of the approving parade-goers who lined both sides of the street, providing witness to Armstrong’s infield skills- neglected since grade school, but the best investment this banker ever made.
There are very simply no words, dear readers, for how this warms the cockles of the author’s heart. But folkes: keep your dogs safely secured, and put collars on them. The street is no place for Man (and woman’s) best friend.
I come to you tonight, dear readers, with a bone to pick. The bone in question bellongs to the common practice of naming that has brought nothing but confusion and misery.Take the guinea pig.
Neither a pig nor from Guinea, the poor little rodents have been subjected to medical testing, have been a food source for the andean people since time immemorial, and have, most recently, been subjected to the most humiliting of indignities: competitive breeding and showing. And they do not look remotely like pigs. Consider the following images :
One is hairy, yes? The other, not so much. One has a pink snout, the other prominant whiskers.
…and yet… the cavy family is, structurally speaking, pig-like, with heads large in relation to their bodies, thick necks, and “rounded rumps with no tail of any consequence”…and they do pierce the ears with unpleasantly porcine squeals…. And anyone who has ever owned and/or known a Guinea pigs knows that they do spend an inordinate amount of time eating…
…and the Andeans, who keep them in cages next to the stove, claim that they are really quite tasty…
nevertheless. The name is asinine and we should not stand for it.
But lest you think that the author of BV loves the cuddly cava itself any less than the other members of our natural world, I have an adorable video picked out for you, of Guinea pigs swimming in a bathtub. Entirely adorable. Far more so than a pig would be in the same circumstances.
The author does not know what the folkes in this video are saying, but she sincerely hopes that they aren’t reciting a recipe for guinea pig stew.
What do you get when you combine welsh shepherds, sheep, herding dogs, electricians, lighting techs, and copius light emitting diodes? Genius. Dear Readers, we don’t CARE if this is a thinly veiled advertisement. This is, very simply put, the best. video. ever.
Bestiarum Vocabulum 
