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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHqSNStGL8w
What with all the excitement and commotion, it is easy to overlook some of life’s simple pleasures…like watching this enormous python slither across a golf course in Zimbali, South Africa. The python apparently lives near (or just plain is) a water hazard, but every once in a while, he takes a constitutional crawl around the course for exercise and to see what is going on. Of course, just like it does not allow text below pictures, or images which expand to be wider than the window, WordPress prohibits video embeds (unless I pay a hundred dollars a year) so you will have to navigate away from this page to Youtube. I pasted the link above.
I feel like there is surely some sort of larger picture here. The elements seem to go together: a snake in the garden; an apex predator indolently slithering around the golf course; an invasive species invading another creature’s territory…and building an extravagant game there (wait…are both scary creatures native Africans?). However, I cannot quite find the links (snicker) between these elements.
We all know that South Asia and East Asia feature the most populous cities and nations on the planet…in terms of human life. But is this true for ducks as well? Here is a humorous/nightmarish/cute/troubling (?) video clip of hundreds of thousands of ducks stampeding through the roads of a town in Thailand. I was unable to find out all the details, but I will let the madness speak for itself. Keep watching the video—there is an intermission, but more ducks are on the way!
By means of translation and interviews, Yahoo news has provided us with some of the details of this avian stampede writing that, “Jack Sarathat lives in Thailand and was driving through Nakhon Pathom, about an hour west of Bangkok. Suddenly he was forced to bring his car to a halt. About 100,000 ducks were on the loose and taking over the rural road in the Bang Len district.”
Although we know the place and the person on camera, we still don’t know why these ducks were on the move or where they were from (though it must have been some sort of industrial duck farm clearing inventory). The article says that none of the ducks were injured, but they look far too delicious for me to believe that without question.
This video contextualizes the earlier post about Zhu Yigui, a Fujianese duck farmer, who rose to be rebel king of Formosa before the Chinese authorities of the day crushed him like an egg. It is possible I snickered some when I read that his qualification for leadership was the ability to train and lead ducks. I am not laughing now—it is obvious that ducks in aggregate are a mighty force!
Artist’s Interpretation
Well that went fast—in no time we have counted down to the second most popular Ferrebeekeeper post ever. The subject happens to both completely adorable yet also strangely unfamiliar—it is the magnificent bulldozer of the marsupial world, the lovable wombat (Family Vombatidae)!
An adult wombat in the wild
The wombat was the highlight of “furry herbivore mammal week,” a festival of five magnificent fuzzy grazers from around the world (the other equally endearing mammals were the pica, the hyrax, the groundhog, and the rabbit). The post was enlivened by magnificent photos of wombats from unknown sources (sorry, anonymous wombat photographers—I wanted to credit you properly!) and by an illustrated poem from Victorian artist/aesthete/oddball Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
“I like drawing wombats and skinny porcelain-colored women who look like they are from the middle ages!”
I have not found out any additional information about wombats or the wombatiforms (for there were numerous giant extinct species of wombat, which are now sadly extinct), however I have found new footage! As a special treat, here is a photo of a fortunate hipster cuddling with a friendly baby wombat. You should watch to the end when the delighted wombat scrunches up against the bearded Austrian and then rolls on his back in delight. It is really worth seeing and will restore your sense of joy and wonder!
ferrebeekeeper 