Randy Rainbow weighs in on Alternative Facts

This is how I’d like to see the White House Press Corps respond to this administration’s bullshit artists.

The Watering Hole; Friday June 12 2015; Forty Days & Forty Nights

Relax, no Noah here, no forty days and forty nights of God’s wrath. This is about important stuff. Like geese. Little geese. Goslings. The first forty days and forty nights of their young lives.

Yesterday, June 11, was the fortieth day since a brood of three goslings first showed up in this really big world. We’ve tried to watch them with (weather permitting) regularity, always in the company of a long-lens digital camera, always hoping to snag evidence of existence, of growth. The results are admittedly sketchy, lacking in scientific detail. But still, the moments captured are, indeed, both cute and revealing, also definitive evidence of Mark Twain’s thesis that the “descent” of man (e.g. politicians, preachers, Limbaugh, etc.) from the higher animals (geese!) is far from a myth!

Anyway, below is a series of  “Progressive” (gosling style) photos taken over that span of forty days. The only verbal descriptions attached (or needed) are the dates and days elapsed from one view to the next. Hopefully, the photos tell the more complete story.

May 2, 2015; Day zero

May 3, one day elapsed

May 16, 14 days elapsed

May 22, 20 days

May 27, 25 days

May 29, 27 days

June 3, 32 days

June 8, 37 days

June 11, 40 days

June 11, 40 days; the surviving pair

Sadly, sometime between May 29 (day 27) and June 3 (day 32), one of the little critters disappeared and has not been seen since. I assume a predator of one sort or another (dog, fox, coyote, cougar, even human? — all are common in the lake’s vicinity) managed to score a quick supper, maybe breakfast. The two remaining, however, are likely to make the gosling-goose transition within the month. Genuine feathers are already starting to show, the wings are developing, etc. It’s likely their immediate future will be this, from June 23, 2014:

June 23 2014 — almost a goose!

Ok, that’s it. Evidence that even in today’s world, progress in the form of ‘maturing’ and ‘growing up’ remains possible — at least it does “out there.” Humans should maybe pay attention, maybe try it sometime.

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The Watering Hole; Thursday May 21 2015; “Difficult standards for people to live up to.”

“Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections,
predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal.
Difficult standards for people to live up to.”
Alfred A. Montapert

About two weeks ago, I posted here a series of ten photos, taken on May 2 and 3, of a Canadian Goose “family” which included three newly hatched goslings, probably out on one of their very first forays into their new world.

Then a week ago and for no apparent reason, those three little guys were nowhere to be seen. I noted here our fears that the “odds against them being somewhere — even in the nest — unsupervised are quite high. Dare we hope? In any case, time will tell if they’re still around or gone for good. We do intend to keep a close eye on the situation and will report back if anything happens to pop up.”

Later that same day, fellow bird-watcher Woody-the-Goose-Guy stopped by late in the afternoon to say he’d spotted the little ones in another corner of the lake. So last weekend when the weather finally cleared up long enough for us to go take a look, we got lucky. There they were!

Here’s the “family” as of May 16, pretty close to exactly two weeks since the goslings first left the nest (note that the newbies have grown a bit in those two weeks — apparently there’s adequate chow available!).

So all is well, at least with what appears to be the ONLY local Canadian Goose family that has managed to reproduce this year, and that’s out of an overall population where potential mating pairs likely number in the hundreds. Also curious, there are only three goslings; usually in years past the number is typically more like six, maybe seven goslings per family. So what’s up with that?

I asked Woody-the-Goose-Guy the same question, and he explained that “they” (Homo sapiens sapiens) who monitor and control the local goose population are sending their people out during spring nesting season with instruction to locate eggs and coat them with vegetable oil. That prevents the embryos from developing (by disallowing the eggs to “breathe”), and when most eggs don’t hatch there are obviously going to be far fewer goslings and, as a result, far less goose crap on the lake’s paved walkway come late summer/early fall — which means far less complaining by people who are offended by goose crap. Problem solved. More or less. Humans are SO clever, aren’t we?

One thing I have to wonder when I ponder these human-inspired “lower” animal birth control agendas is highlighted by this pair of recent ‘headline’ links:

Trent Franks: 20-Week Abortion Ban Will Make Americans Realize Legal Abortion Is Like Slavery

Anti-Choice Leader Admits Rape Exceptions Are ‘Political,’ Goal Is To Outlaw All Abortion ‘From Conception’

So “fundamentally” it’s OK to control birth rates in (and numbers of) every other species of life on the planet, but it’s NOT permissible to allow the same or similar privilege to fellow humans? Why the difference? Just curious.

Stephen Jay Gould once wrote,

“The fundamentalists, by ‘knowing’ the answers before they start examining evolution, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science —
or of any honest intellectual inquiry.”

I think I agree.

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