ankewehner.de » Animals

Microfiction: Birdwatching

Anke — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:37:20 +0000

Birdwatching turned out a lot more interesting than he had expected, when Eric noticed a thrush with an aviator helmet and goggles. He watched it attack a model plane that was being flown on the nearby “miniature airfield”. Getting the attention of his parents took so long that the bird brought the plane down meanwhile.
Eric was sorely disappointed they did not even consider going to find the owner of the model plane and ask what they had seen, but dismissed what he said out of hand. As a result, he resolved to save up for a really good camera.

Microfiction: At windows, on Rooftops

Anke — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:09:22 +0000

The girl had been puring her heart out to the cat for a week when her mother found out.
“Don’t touch that useless beast, it has fleas!”
“No, he doesn’t! And he’s not useless, he’ll find Daddy, he said!”
Her mother sighed. “Your Daddy is gone and won’t come back, no matter how much you wish it. And cats can’t understand what you say, let alone talk.”
The girl took refuge in sullen silence, and her mother shooed the cat out of the window.
The small ginger tom met up with a bigger grey cat who had been waiting nearby. Instead of a greeting, he said, “My, humans are so silly. She didn’t even think to ask me if I could talk.”
“The girl believing your promises isn’t exactly clever, either.”
“Well, no.” He stretched. “I have better things to do than chasing some guy. Nothing, for example.”

Comic: Find

Anke — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:55:30 +0000

I did (and posted, here) the first page back in October, but now that I finally completed it, I decided to upload both as one file. Since it’s pretty big, click below to view it:

2009, and Fuzzy things

Anke — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:48:30 +0000

Another year’s over. I don’t feel like writing up a detailed look back on my year. I feel like I’m growing, but slowly. I think during the last month I did a lot to get out of my chronic habit of putting things off, at least as far as housework is concerned, but I need to get that to grow and include all aspects of my life. One other thing I need to work on is deciding what to pursue and what to let drop.

Right now I feel more focused ont he future than the past, and I think that’d be a good thing to keep up.

Have some links instead:
Celebrate what’s right with the world, a video that might make you feel all warm and fuzzy. I loved the last story.

Some images found on deviantart:

Incidentally, this is the 100th post published on this blog. Nice timing, entirely unplanned.

Three (more or less) animal videos

Anke — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:53:31 +0000

Octopus wants to be a clam. Tool use hasn’t been an exclusively human thing for a while.

There’s a new Simon’s Cat video up at youtube. It has a birdee. ^_^

There had been a great version of Bohemian Rhapsody on the Muppets Studio youtube channel, but now it’s gone due to copyright kerfuffle. Ehwell, it still has The Blue Danube (performed by chickens), Ode to Joy (performed by Beaker), and Ringing of the Bells (featuring Animal, see post title)

Microfiction: All the Nuts

Anke — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:09:31 +0000

The Badger’s Den had had a strict “no fights” policy for longer than anybody could remember, not even the turtle who had never introduced itself, but dropped in on occasion in the summertime, watching generations of voles, foxes, and even badgers pass. The current owner and barkeeper, Bartholomew, had served a lot of different guests. Owls were not that common, but one of them stood out. He had come to the Den with the air of someone who wanted to get drunk. It took little prompting from Bartholomew for him to unload his troubles.

“See, there’s this woman,” – owl, naturally – “Ignatia.” Judging from his sigh, even her name alone was better than a life supply of fresh mice, and Bartholomew suffered through some disjointed, lovestruck praise of her looks, prowess and character. “So, well, I had a chance with her, but of course what was needed was a nest. I’d found a nice hollow, and she was inside inspecting it, when a squirrel started throwing nuts at us. It was so quick I couldn’t catch it, completely fearless, and it ruined everything.”

“You can’t have given up that soon, right?”

“Oh, that monster wasn’t the only one. The first day at the second nest, a mouse showed up. It hooted and acted as if it was an owl and our child.”

After a pause, Bartholomew asked, “Couldn’t you have eaten it?”

“Are you crazy? It clearly was, and we didn’t want to catch whatever made it so.”

“That makes sense.” What the badger did not say was that they sounded like a pair of complete pushovers.

“See. Well, anyway, now Ignatia is looking for someone who doesn’t attract lunatics, and I’m all alone.”

“Don’t worry too much; I’m sure someone will fall for you.” It’s all part of the job.

There was a thump followed by shuffling noises at the entrance, as a bat awkwardly crawled in. “Yoo-Hoo, Orville,” he called.

“Already has. That’s the problem.” Orville downed the rest of his drink in one go and tried to ignore the newcomer. The evening went downhill from there.

Insectoid post

Anke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:50:15 +0000

In case you didn’t know yet, I like insects, spiders and the like. So, bit of a themed post.

A short video I captured of an ant dragging a rather hefty lunch home:

Bits of my stuff:

Links:
Moths Use Sonar-Jamming Defense to Fend Off Hunting Bats
Dancing caterpillars put off predators (cute photo, found via neatorama)
a bug sculptures photoset on flickr

Origami arthropods found on deviantart, different creators:

That artist of the last one has a lot of other great models in his gallery, only with the thumbnail links disabled.

Random Link Roundup

Anke — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:00:31 +0000

Just some stuff I thought was interesting.

Amazing Earth Photos: Solar Eclipses from Space – The “Field of Science” site linked from that page has bigger photos, but not all, in particular the one of Central America is missing.

The Root Bridges of Cherrapungee – The greenest architecture I have seen yet. (Link via Neatorama)

Giant Pterosaurs and how they lift off – I may have linked that before, but in case I haven’t, well, I just think everybody should see the image of a pterosaur the size of a giraffe at least once.

Ninja-Pirate-Zombie Cupcakes Flickr set. Braaainssss!

Dark Roasted Blend: Jet Engines on Trucks (For Fun and Profit) – Blog entry with quite a few photos. I particularly like the fire-engine on steroids built from military leftovers.

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity – 20 minute video speech on creativity, how people think about it/creators, and how said creators might deal with problems brought by those attitudes. Gets a bit very spiritual at the end, but all in all interesting and funny. She gets plus points for not using any slides. (Link via Jessica Douglas’ DA gallery)

Links – Bird photos

Anke — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:39:41 +0000

These are some photos I found on deviantArt and liked:

Frosty

Anke — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:56:51 +0000

Last Monday was the last day of a two-weeks-straight frost spell, and I had a look around outside.

Frost itself can be stupendously pretty when you get up close:

Those were taken at the edges of the university parking lot. Since that one is pretty close to the Moselle, and since I’d heard that this not unimportant water-street had been closed for ships due to ice, I went and had a look. I stuck around for a short while, and saw an icebreaker pass through to push the floes around.

I can hardly believe it. Never seen anything like that before. Just for comparison I took some photos the day before yesterday, and yesterday as well:

And I got lucky in another way. I not only saw a kingfisher, but I even caught a photo! The photo’s not good, but here it is, anyway

On the way home I decided to have a look at the Wied, a small river – I don’t think anything bigger than a kayak goes there.

Excluding a few spots, it was frozen solid. Two people were ice skating – ON THE RIVER, I TELL YOU! I’ve never seen a river completely frozen before. And, well, while I don’t even have ice skates, I did take a walk. It did turn out a nice day for birdspotting here, too.

Around the edges I found some more wonderful ice and frost structures. I couldn’t really capture any properly… They were so amazing. You could see the water had been higher when the first layer of ice formed, then ther was another layer underneath that formed with lower water, and the structures that formed between, and the air bubbles, and the light, and the frost growing on the edges. Breathtakingly beautiful.

Nature is fucking amazing.