In my last post I made the case for why we are not, in fact, slaves to nature and our genes. Today allow me to do the opposite. First let me set the stage. You are on a tiny island – maybe the size of a few city blocks – looking out to sea. You could […]
Animals
Bowhunting season in Western Colorado opened yesterday, which means the rut is underway, the next season coming into view. By the time you see this, I will be sitting in the quiet of the woods with my 12 year old boy listening for bugling elk, their haunting, whale-like calls rising through dusk aspens and sea-green […]
It wasn’t just the initial intensity of the pain — a hot, vibrant shard plunging into my metatarsus and radiating up my shinbone — but its duration. From approximately 10 o’clock in the morning, when I stepped barefoot onto a reddish-brown ant in my San Fernando Valley backyard, until well after sunset, the agony […]
When my first daughter started getting teased for her obsession with sharks I comforted her by lying that everyone had an animal they especially loved. When pressed I randomly choose frogs (I was hung over and just wanted quiet), which started a pro-frog avalanche: Walls filled with frog paintings, desks with frog playdoh figurines, and […]
Note: Read part 1 here. Last week, my dog Molly invited me to try a chemistry experiment. That’s right, she stuck her nose in a skunk’s butt. You can guess what happened next. “To fire, the skunk extrudes a pair of nozzles from its rear.” (Caution: this video is graphic. You cannot unsee it. Consider yourself warned.)
If you’ve trolled the Internet any time in the last decade, you know that animals and their silly antics are very happening. And no wonder. For the most part the creatures we interact with are adorable and waggish, even if they can be annoying, childish, and smelly. Hell, they sound like husbands. What’s not to love? Those precious looks and […]
The park where I first saw the dog is a patch of green that’s separated from the mountains by several highways and several hills. There’s a coast guard station on one side, houses on the other, a mid-speed thoroughfare bordering its front. Early one morning, when it was foggy and my eyes were foggy, too, […]
This weekend the movie Ant-Man opened. It’s the latest in the pretty-entertaining crop of movies based on Marvel Comics characters, like Iron Man and The Avengers. I haven’t seen Ant-Man yet. But I’m not going to let that stop me from telling film executives what their next insect-based superhero movies should be. There’s already been […]