manimals: part one

will you permit me a couple of only-marginally-political posts? this is part one. (part two here)
(update, more here)

Cheney is in the news, as you know, for shooting Harry Whittington, 78, a millionaire civil attorney and "a campaign contributor during a weekend quail hunt on a friend's South Texas ranch"


He is "an Austin attorney who gave $1,000 to President Bush's 2000 campaign and $2,000 to his 2004 re-election bid, was among a handful of people accompanying the vice president when the accident occurred Saturday afternoon." (link)

Poor Harry.

Most argue that a Bush donor who is a friend of Cheney deserves some sympathy.

I have a weirder story which crossed my path today. As I think I've mentioned before - I live on a little farmlet thingy on the coast - and (for some strange reason) I have a bunch of different animals around the place - mostly birds - some in aviaries (canaries, budgies, cockatiels et al), some 'free range' (hens), and some wild (kookaburras, parrots, cockatoos).

In any case, I have some free range hens ("But we need the eggs") called "Silkies" - weird looking things. As it happens, they are 'really good mothers' - and one of them was struggling to have babies. I also have some quails - terrible mothers apparently - and they leave eggs all around the place.

In an evolutionary quirk, many birds assume that the eggs in their nest are their offspring, and apparently baby birds assume that the creature that incubated them for weeks is their mother.
Hence we have stories like The Ugly Duckling, and odd versions of 'maternal bonding' and the more nefarious 'cuckolding' and what have you.

A few weeks ago, before Preznit Blinky outlawed man-animal hybrids in his SOTU, I snuck a few stray quail eggs into the nest of aforementioned barren silky hen - and today i bore witness to the frankensteinian result. George Bush is right - God must be furious at the outcome.

mother hen was apparently very embarassed about What She Had Done and didn't like me getting close enough to pictorially document the atrocity - knowing that it would be splashed across tabloids worldwide - but i was able to snap a couple of quick pics.

here's one. i'm not sure why (or how!) the baby quail scaled the Mother Mountain - but it did. Probably against God's wishes.


being the paparazzo that i am - i was able to grab one other quick pic. you can click on both pics to get a better view - i recommend that you do.


And just to wrap up the post - let me remind you that I'm sure that Cheney *accidentally* shot a Republican lawyer - he was really trying to shoot a defenseless little quail *like this one*

(and i know that in the second pic the little baby quail looks a little wet and shiny - but its actually cute and fluffy - and it has a sibling who is equally gorgeous)

(update, more pix here)