Uh-oh.
Orca Flight
Yep, we’re all fucked, ladies and gentlemen. This image (stolen from Facebook) clearly shows that British Columbian killer whales have learned how to fly. And oh, you smug land-going krill? You’re not safe either, as this footage of a flying humpback demonstrates. Being heavier, it’s harder for them to achieve and maintain the airborne state, but once they master this, no life-form is safe.
THEY ARE COMING
Yes, “the wilds of Britain.” See what I did there?
The Guardian captions this “An elk.” Time to stop hiring inbred photo interns, no matter how dazzling their connections.
According to the UK paper of record for Ecologically Sensitive Courtesy Titles, the UK is harbouring a fugitive and desperate band of elk rustlers.
PC Jackie Poole, who is leading the hunt, said: “This is an unusual theft and would have required a vehicle, and probably quite a bit of time, to complete. I would ask people in the area at the time to cast their mind back and see if they remember seeing anything suspicious.
Under “Anything suspicious” we must list the above, a moose impersonating an elk in the Guardian. Could the paper have a vested interest in confusing the issue and preventing innocent Somersettians from recognizing an actual elk when they see one?
Hmmm, one wonders…what are they serving in the executive dining room at the Grauniad this week, eh?
Real Elks, duh
Aquatic Dragon off the coast of Victoria
What a day for nature lovers! Classic Rock radio 101 has reported the sighting of a rare Aquatic Dragon off the coast of Victoria, BC! Praise Cthulhu, we thought they had been hunted to extinction, along with their distant cousins, the Pacific Tree Octopus. This amazing creature, nearly 100m from its savagely curved beak to its tippiest tentacle, once blotted out the skies in its annual migrations from the Arctic plateaus to a still-undiscovered location somewhere in the South Pacific. Such were its numbers, and its fierce fighting ability, that it seemed unthinkable the species could ever be threatened.
That was, of course, before the advent of aircraft. Their soft, boneless bodies proved no match for slashing propellers and insatiable jet intakes, and for a generation or more the skies were greasy with carnage. You think you know how calamari was invented? Let me tell you, it was the act of a hardscrabble wartime population desperate for protein of any kind. When the planes flew overhead, housewives would run into the streets with buckets to catch the crudely hacked pieces of Aquatic Dragon that fell in a slimy torrent from the skies.
And soon, all too soon, it was all over.
WWII had done irreparable damage to the breeding population, and it is believed that nuclear tests in the South Pacific may have destroyed their traditional wintering grounds, leaving them with an unsustainable, nomadic, and doomed few survivors. This latest discovery is heartening in the extreme, for this juvenile specimen attests to the atavistic survival of at least two healthy Aquatic Dragons somewhere off the coast of Vancouver Island. My old alma mater, Miskatonic University, is gathering specialists in marine biology and herpetology to undertake an expedition in search of the creatures.
Hey, what could go wrong?
This was two house-sits ago, out in what I called Buttfuck Nowhere, which it is if you don’t have a car, and I don’t. Also known as New Newfoundland, for the influx of Newfies: such an influx that the local grocery store carries big white plastic pails of “beef navels”. Those are actual beef navels, not some kind of seagoing bovine, because it’s a popular food in Newfoundland, or so I surmise from the fact that the bucket has a map of such on the label. I found a recipe for beef navel pastrami, but otherwise I’m not sure what you do with them.
While I was out there, housesitting at a far too nice place on a perfectly ordinary road surrounded by condos, Walmarts, and Tim Hortonses in all directions, I decided to take the garbage out. In the middle of the night. Well, normally who cares, right? Only on my way back from the dumpster I saw something move under a car, something doggish-size, and being from Vancouver and used to raccoon and skunks and coyotes and such, I just made growling “giddoudahear” kind of noises and something shot off into the brush.
A lynx.
I knew a woman from William’s Lake who used to go out hunting grizzly bears in the woods, just her and her two bear dogs (the kind they tell the white people are extinct, but aren’t). The only thing in the wilderness that scared her was the lynx: apparently they’re just as crazy and aggressive as wolverines, and will attack pretty much anything.
So yeah. Even taking out the garbage can be a bit of an adventure up here.
Parental Eagle is not so much angry as disappointed in you
Time to take a trip in the wayback machine, as well as the puddle jumper! These are some shots I took in June at Pat’s Bay on Vancouver Island, more formally known as Patricia Bay, which is doubtless how it was introduced to the Royals. It is, by the way, a $40 cab ride from downtown Victoria, although thanks to faithful charioteer WestcoastDave on Twitter, I didn’t have to pay.
Ah, social media, you spoil me.
I didn’t even have to pay for the plane ride home on Saltspring Air, thanks to the organizers of Social Media Camp! Since I grew up in planes, I was looking forward to this flight: a true puddle-jump from Pat Bay to one of the Gulf Islands, and then to Coal Harbour in Vancouver, from which I could and did walk home. Nothing like living right downtown! Not only that, but they promised me the handsome ex-Olympian who was also the most polite pilot in Canada. Our pilot was indeed handsome and polite, but as to Olympian histories, well, I thought it was too personal a question to ask. And possibly painful. I mean, what if the answer was, “No, actually my bobsled team was knocked out in the semi-finals and my whole life since then has been a slow, downward spiral, like some tragicomic Bruce Springsteen song.”
Incidentally, the plane we flew in was a 1956 DeHavilland Beaver, a plane of which Canuckistan can be justly proud. I’m thinking Hummingbird604‘s flight home must be the first and only time he spent that long in a beaver.
But there are some good reasons to get out of The Big Smoke occasionally. I think I caught most of them in these pictures.
