Wordless Wednesday featuring a New Born Squirrel Monkey

Meet the Toco Toucan

I had heard that Toco toucans are amazing birds. Now that I've seen them in person I can't disagree. They look like cartoon characters, all long colorful beak and short dark body. One wonders why they don't simply topple over at the first hint of a gentle breeze!

Looks can be deceiving though; the beak is actually quite light. Its interior is something like a honeycomb crafted from keratin (the material that also makes up human fingernails), but even so it is nothing short of incredible that the toucan's skull can support such a huge seven and a half inch construction.

Tocos are fairly common in the wilds of South America where they congregate in small flocks of about six birds. The males and females both display the outsized beak, using it to catch insects, frogs, and lizards. It is also deployed as a tool to pluck eggs from nests and fruit from small branches they couldn't otherwise access.

Despite the unwieldy shape of their heads they have evolved to rest in hollow trees. They accomplish this by turning their necks completely around and tucking their beaks along the ridge of their backs. They then turn their tails to drape over their beaks, and so transform into a small ball of feathers. As many as six birds may occupy a single wooden cavity in this manner.

Of course, there are some trade-offs to this lifestyle. Flying well is one. That doesn't seem to bother them much though. They simply hop through the tree tops. Escaping predators would seem like a huge downside here, but in fact flocks of toucans employ a little known rule of the jungle: the most ridiculous-looking animals get the last laugh. And in fact Tocos do, often surrounding birds of prey and jeering loudly at them until they become annoyed enough to leave the area. After all, they have the bigger beak.


Thanks to Bone Clones for the photo of the Toco skull!

Wordless Wednesday featuring Emmett (3rd Edition)

Kreative Blogger Award: 7 Things About Me

Not to brag, but I just received the Kreative Blogger Award. Okay, maybe I'll brag just a little since it was bestowed upon me by Scrivener's Retreat, a beautiful blog run by the wicked imagination behind the etsy shop of the same name. If you have a pet and a sense of humor, I strongly suggest that you visit her shop.

By accepting it, I am bound by the rules of the award. It requires me to list seven little-known facts about myself and select seven bloggers I admire in the creative arts field. So here goes...

1. My husband and I have never been without a black cat in our home. He already had Lucy, a wonderful feline, when we moved in together over 17 years ago. Later we rescued Fredo who lives with us to this day.

2. I have two sizable scars on my left hand. One is from an angry seagull who bit me when I was washing cooking oil off of him (seagulls are notorious dumpster divers and sometimes encounter old buckets of grease. Yuck!), and the other is from a spider monkey.

3. Masked and Anonymous is one of my very favorite movies. I'm probably the only person who can make this claim, and I hope it doesn't cost me any blog readers.

4. I went to a "gifted" school from fourth to eighth grade, but I couldn't hack the math.

5. My math-O-phobia made me believe that I couldn't hack any sort of real science in college. Then, in my mid-twenties, I read The Selfish Gene. Richard Dawkins convinced me to pursue a zoology degree. Thanks Mr. Dawkins!

6. I once rescued a sea lion out of the back of a police cruiser. It had wedged itself between the back seat and the front divider. It's still a mystery to me how the officers got it in there though.

7. I am slightly obsessed by the idea of time travel. Although this might be a well-known fact about me.

I will tag:

Peggy Bechko

Weird Bug Lady

What the French, Toast?

Trash You Up

AAA1 Quality Blog, Ltd.

ModdyBoy80!

Pink Dandy Chatter

Wordless Wednesday featuring The Trolls

Another Reason to Love Coffee

Some days coffee is the only thing that stands between me and an unfortunately timed nap behind the wheel of my Miata. Other days it just makes the morning (and the afternoon) better. Pretty much any day is a day that I could wax rhapsodical about caffeine. But who knew it could also help plants grow?

Turns out, in California at least, coffee grounds are great for the soil around plants. Especially acid-loving plants like gardenias. That's because the soil in the western United States is less acidic than the soil back east, where this trick probably doesn't work very well. Hmm, I live in California. I  have lots of coffee grounds. And I have (I think) a gardenia.


Sadly, the plant is puny and doesn't want to produce any flowers.

Maybe it wants some coffee grounds? I spread some around its base yesterday.

Today, I noticed what might be buds. Then again, they might be new leaf growth. Whatever they are, they probably predate my caffeine application since I've been watering the plant more lately too. Hopefully the grounds will at least make it less of a runt? They should, since they're quite nitrogen-rich, and nitrogen is a key component of fertilizer. Supposedly they will also repel ants, slugs, snails, and cats who want to use fresh soil as a litter box.

It'll be interesting to see if this works. If it doesn't, and the plant dies, I I can easily blame the grounds and not my sleep-deprived self. Thanks, coffee!

This Just In: Sea Lions Love Comics!

A few months ago we finally made it back to San Francisco. Much as we love it there it's just far enough away that we seldom get around to making the trek. True, we did attend the Treasure Island Music Festival last fall, but that was all about the rock and the roll and the giant Ferris wheel, not about sight seeing.





This time, though, was for my birthday. So along with visits to all the museums and bookstores (and of course the Tiki Room) we had to visit the sea lions that hang out on Pier 39. I helped to rescue more than a few marine mammals during my tenure as a wildlife vet tech a few years back, so I thought they would be happy to see me. Boy was I wrong! Hardly any of the big stinky critters even bothered to show up.

As it turns out, I shouldn't have felt slighted. In fact, we were lucky to see the few that did show up. Last November the 1,700 or so sea lions that had been hanging around Pier 39 for the last 20 years decamped suddenly for parts unknown. Only recently have a few stragglers returned. No one knows why they left, no one knows where they've been, and no one knows if they'll return.

Today, however, I learned where they are right now: Oregon. That's right, all those sea lions just packed up last fall and moved to the Oregon coast. What could possibly be in Oregon to tempt them? More fish? Well, maybe. Rain? They're already soaked. Hipsters? They can see plenty of those in San Francisco. I believe that leaves just one thing: comic books. As far as I can tell, a large percentage of American comic book creators live in and around Portland. The sea lions must just be getting as close as they can to this comic book mecca.

Will they ever return to Pier 39? I think it's unlikely. The rents in San Francisco are a little high for most comics professionals.