Category:
Animals
Animals
Dead Opossum Design
Reported in the Los Angeles Times (June 3, 1980). Sounds like an urban legend to me. But maybe there really was a lady in Riverside who was matching her home furnishings to her dead opossum.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 08, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Telephones, Interior Decorating
Sparkie Williams, famous budgie
Sparkie Williams is apparently one of the most famous birds of all time, but I just found out about him.
Sparkie Williams (stuffed)
Some details about him from Animal Facts and Feats by Gerald Wood:
More details from Wikipedia:
Sparkie was courted by bird seed sellers and fronted the advertisement campaign for Capern's bird seed for two years. He was recorded talking with budgie expert Philip Marsden on BBC radio, and appeared on the BBC Tonight programme with Cliff Michelmore. When Sparkie died on Tuesday 4 December 1962, Mattie Williams had him stuffed and mounted on a wooden perch at the renowned taxidermy establishment, Rowland Ward Ltd. of Piccadilly, London. He was then taken on a tour of Britain in an exhibition of his life and work, before coming back to the Hancock Museum in 1996.[1] Sparkie Williams is acclaimed as the world's most outstanding talking bird in the Guinness Book of Records.
The BBC's archive on Facebook has a video of an interview with Sparkie's owner, with stuffied Sparkie beside her.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 01, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Animals
Robin orders sparrow to be shot
Aug 1979: Frustrated by a sparrow that was chirping in his church when a guitar recital was going to be recorded, Rev. Robin Clark ordered the bird to be shot.I'm sure that, after that, no one made a sound during the recital.
The Vancouver Columbian - Aug 8, 1979
I couldn't find a recording of the sparrow-death recital, but here's some music by Konrad Ragossnig.
Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 31, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Animals, Death, Music
Visit Gay’s Lion Farm
The Wikipedia page.A very detailed article on the place, with lots of photos.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 02, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Eccentrics, Hollywood, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s
Wild Hog Hop
The sound effects make it special.Encyclopedia entry on the musician.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 19, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Music, 1950s
Win a Pony!
Maybe this 1950s contest was the inspiration for the famous episode of THE SIMPSONS where Bart won an elephant.A survey of newspaper records indicate the contest ran multiple times from 1952 to 1955. I wonder how many ponies were actually accepted and delivered?
But Roy and Dale could never cause any trouble, could they?
Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 18, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Television, Children, Cereal, Wild West and US Frontier
Artwork Khrushchev Probably Would Not Have Liked 48
His Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 26, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Art, Cryptozoology, Nineteenth Century
Glock Stallions
Glock is well-known as a gun manufacturer. What's less well known is that they also sell horse semen. link: Glock Stallions
Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 09, 2022 -
Comments (7)
Category: Animals, Weapons
Poronkusema
As explained by Ziya Tong in The Reality Bubble: how science reveals the hidden truths that shape our world (2019):In Finland, the indigenous Sami people have a very special unit of measurement. It's called a poronkusema, which is defined as the distance a reindeer can travel before it needs to stop and urinate. The Sami, who have lived alongside reindeer for centuries, attentively noted that the animals won't walk and relieve themselves at the same time. And so, once approximately every 7.5 kilometres, a poronkusema, they stop and empty their bladders. While this measurement may seem a touch absurd to non-reindeer herders, it should be said that before the metric system came along, many countries and cultures had their own rather peculiar systems. It's likely that people of the future will find it just as weird that we described the unfathomable loss of our rainforests in terms of "football fields."
I found a Finnish-language book titled Poronkusema, but the google-translated blurb is somewhat incomprehensible and doesn't mention anything about urinating reindeers.
Poronkusema is a humane, unadorned and dramatic story about acceptance, forgiveness, equality and growing up. Poronkusema is a series of events with a flavor of the life of the main character and his close circle, not too salty smoothed, where treatment and head and tail are missing. Mother's forgiveness and acceptance of loved ones as they are. How can the death of a child change and shape the future of family members and close friends. This is the countdown for this story. You'll jump like a fly on a moldy ceiling and juice up juicy coincidences like peeking into locker rooms in elementary school. We were kind of the usual The Usual Suspects, like from that classic Yankee movie directed by Bryan Singer. The only difference. We weren't that good looking.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 07, 2022 -
Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Instruments and Measuring Devices, Body Fluids
Wingless Chickens
Because he disliked "gnawing on stringy chicken wings," Peter Baumann bred wingless chickens. This was back in the 1940s. Evidently his wingless chickens failed to interest the chicken industry. I haven't been able to find out what became of his flock.To illustrate the helpless quality of these wingless birds, photographer Francis Miller dropped one from six feet to show how it failed to fly, as opposed to a winged chicken that glided downwards.
Images from Life - July 18, 1949:
"Wingless chicken (below) plummets helplessly downward when dropped from 6-foot height, while normal bird settles gently with wings spread"
Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 13, 2022 -
Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Farming, 1940s
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