Taxidermy

One of my favorite things in life is Science Friday on NPR. They repurpose their Friday radio program in podcasts and also produce videos that are available on their website sciencefriday.com.

http://sciencefriday.com/video/12/17/2010/preserving-the-craft-of-taxidermy.html

Flora Lichtman, Sci Fri's Multimedia Producer, has a truly enviable job of producing the media content for the show, mostly video and a blog. She produced the video below, about a subject dear to my heart--taxidermy. Last year, I read the book Still Live: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom, which includes a great history of the art plus some interesting anecdotes about learning the craft from the best in the business.
Looking at the web page about the video I am reminded that I have to also read Jay Kirk's book Kingdom Under Glass that focuses on the life and work of taxidermist Carl Akeley. A cool film factoid is that Akeley designed and produced a new kind of field motion picture camera that was eventually used in Robert Flaherty's documentary Nanook of the North.

A Murder of Crows, an Unkindness of Ravens

I was tucked into a leather chair enjoying my second cup of coffee of the morning and reading "Still Live: Adventures in Taxidermy" by Melissa Milgrom when she mentioned an "unkindness" of ravens. How have I gone this many years and not heard this term?!


Title: The Raven (Corvus Corax), Source: White, The Rev. Gilbert: “The Natural History of Selborne” (1879). Image provided by www.fromoldbooks.org.

Years ago, I'd learned of another fantastical name for a group of birds, a "murder" of crows, and upon discovering "unkindness" of course I rushed to my computer to learn of more bird group names.

Wikipedia has a page called "List of collective nouns for birds." A few of my favorites are "a seige of bitterns," a "watch of nightingales," a "parliament of owls," there are so many. I feel my life is one step closer to completeness now that I'm aware of this whim to name groups of birds with such fanciful names.

Returning to the book that started this line of query, "Still Life," there is a great review of the book with photos on one my favorite blogs, Morbid Anatomy.

Back to my book and now cold coffee...

Love for Obscura Antiques

I was doing my usual blog reading this morning and I found on the blog Haute Macabre a posting from Nov 7th about Obscura Antiques. Obscura now has a blog and, holy cow, a TV show, Oddities!!

I was introduced to Obscura and the owners Evan and Mike by friend Miss Erin. Every visit to NYC demanded a pilgrimage to the shop and a chance to chat with Evan and Mike and baby-talk with Evan's dog Yak.

Friday update...found a pic I took of Yak! It was impossible for me to take a pic of him in focus. How I adore that dog and his little fang and pokes out on one side!



Here's an image from their blog of the shop, at least one corner of it...


And a video from their Discovery Channel show Oddities...


My two beloved treasures from Obscura (actually the doughboy photo was a gift for my love G)...




Haven't figured out the species of the raccoon-like creature. It doesn't have the markings of the common raccoon (Procyon lotor) and seems too bulky to be any of the other eight species of the Procyonidae family. The facial markings and ears look at bit like a red panda, but not quite.

I need to find a animal biologist!

UPDATE: Thanks Molly! for the comment that this critter might be the famed tanuki (family: canidae, species: nyctereutes procyonoides)! Who knew they were real? I thought they were a bizarre myth!

The markings and basic color seems a pretty close match. It's difficult to identify the species based on the muzzle shape though as the taxidermy specimen could just be overstuffed in that area, obscuring the original shape. And probably too, the taxidermy's original coloring is pretty sun bleached. All that aside, I think until proven otherwise we have a strong case for this guy being a tanuki. Mystery solved! (for now...)

Warm, Cold, Warm, Fog

I have a cold, but nothing a fabulous hot toddy from Absinthe can't temporarily fix!

Had a lovely early evening with friends Erin and Moira - visiting from New Zealand! I learned that unlike Australia that has marsupials, New Zealand has no native mammals, except a couple of species of bats. Love the batties!

New Zealand's Long Tailed Bat

The weather has been cold in the mornings and evenings and lovely during the day. That means layers, layers! The fog was thick and beautiful last night and this morning...after warming up all day, the fog isn't so painful and can be better appreciated for its atmospheric beauty.

Fog last night, waiting for a bus.

Fog this morning, out my window.

Incredibly important and amazing! More evidence that non-human primates (primate: monkey, ape, human) are serious tool users!! I remember in high school being asked in class about tool use.

I raised my hand to share what I had just learned from my idol Jane Goodall, who discovered apes creating and using tools (stripping a branch and using them to get ants out of an anthill). And about 24 years later learning this about the capuchin monkeys is astounding and kinda chokes me up!