Animeme
I’ve been tagged with a new meme by Mr. Hotty McNature Pants himself, and since he also happens to be my control in the Illuminati cell that runs this part of the tubes, I have no choice but to comply.
An interesting animal I had
I could go with the “most exotic pet” thing here, but in truth, when I think of an interesting animal I think of my late dog Katie. She was not only the most interesting animal I’ve ever known, but she was significantly more interesting than a lot of humans I’ve known. Smarter, too.
An interesting animal I ate
I’m not big on eating animals, but an interesting animal I almost ate was a soft-shelled crab.
My friend and I were in a tiny fishing village one day, and the only place to eat was a little crab shack down by the water.
“Whaddya got?” we asked the attendant.
“Soft-shelled crab sandwich.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope, just soft-shelled crab sandwich.”
“Okay, then, guess we’ll have the soft-shelled crab sandwich.”
The soft-shelled crab sandwich turned out to be two slices of Wonder bread, some Miracle Whip, and a big spider-looking thing.
“It’s a spider sandwich,” my friend and I whispered to each other at almost the same moment.
We ate the bread.
An interesting thing I did with or to an animal
Toured the country with the aforementioned Katie. We agreed that Mount Rushmore was an absurd monument to honky hubris, but we loved the Badlands. Other thrills included almost running out of gas on Pine Ridge reservation, almost dropping our car keys into the Grand Canyon, and herding the waves at Carmel beach.
An interesting animal in the Museum
The prairie dogs at the Prairie Homestead outside Badlands National Park. The original 1909 sodhouse is mesmerizing, but so are the prairie dogs popping in and out of their little hills. Oddly enough, Katie wasn’t even remotely interested in them.
An interesting animal in its natural habitat
The mountain goats on the upper slopes of Mount Evans in Colorado. They had the raggediest coats I’ve ever seen, plus space-alien eyes and a weird fixed stare. Though maybe that was the altitude sickness getting to me.
(Note: Turns out Mount Evans isn’t really their natural habitat.)
*****
I’m supposed to tag nine more people with this thing — nine! Oh man, at this rate we’ll have taken over the entire internet in four days. It’ll be like the Andromeda Strain.
Okay, consider yourselves tagged:
Ann Bartow
Burrow/Lost Clown
Echidne
Foilwoman
Professor Zero
Richard (aka Simply Wondered when he’s not pretending to be Dave Cameron)
The Lovely and Talented Timothy Shortell
Twisty (who typically eschews memes, but maybe this one will jolt her out of her writer’s block. I’m offering you a lifeline here, woman.)
Victoria Marinelli (when she gets back from doing important stuff)
And to all my readers who feel like chiming in — chime away. Use the comments to tell us about your animal encounters.
14 Responses to “Animeme”
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Timothy Shortell says:
Tagged? Oh my god! I’m already on the Watch List. I could lose my job.
September 28th, 2007 at 12:47 pm EST -
The Ghost of Violet says:
I thought it would be nice for you to take a break from corrupting the youth of America. Though knowing you, you’ll probably use this opportunity to talk about atheist animals you’ve known.
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Timothy Shortell says:
I’ve already started working on my response. Take that David Horowitz!
By the way, all the animals I have known were atheist.
While we’re on the subject, I still don’t think you are dead. Are you sure this isn’t just a lucid dream?
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The Ghost of Violet says:
Lucid?
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Ann Bartow says:
My inability to be “interesting” consigns me to your comments, rather than attempting an independent blog post, because most of my time with animals is spent petting them, feeding them, walking them, or scrubbing cat pee out of a dog bed (that would be today’s project, not coincidentally).
1. I had a pet goat named Frisky when I was a kid. Frisky was fairly doglike, except for the goaty smell and copious berry sized poop. She liked to race around the yard with me and she liked to be brushed, and scratched around the horns. She tolerated walking on a leash. She also liked to climb all over (and leave cloven footprints on) the family station wagon.
2. I’ve been a vegetarian for 21 years and before that I was a pretty picky eater when it came to meat. Venison, unless chocolate covered ants count.
3. I took Frisky to a Pet Parade and she got into a headbutting thing with another goat named Clover The many dogs there gave both of them a wide berth. So did a lot of people, come to think of it.
4. Wooly Mammoths, without question.
5. There many beautiful lizards at Congaree National Swamp: http://www.nps.gov/cosw/
Note to those who live nearby: Swampfest 2007 is coming up soon!
Swampfest -
The Ghost of Violet says:
Ann, there are snakes in that swamp. Are you aware of that?
Frisky sounds cool.
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The Ghost of Violet says:
I have trackbacks turned off (it’s a self-help thing to curb my addiction to Cialis and internet poker), so here’s Professor Shortell’s post:
And as a special bonus, the pictures accompanying the post offer us a glimpse of Prof. Shortell’s fab faux leopard-print interior decor!
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Timothy Shortell says:
I also have zebra-print sheets!
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Flash says:
Was caught copying the meme on my own blog. Being a ghost gives Violet the advantage of being able to sneak up on you.
So…
An interesting animal I had
An enormous white rabbit, whose name I forget. She had the freedom of our garden in the daytime and chased away any of the neighbours’ cats that were foolish enough to come through the gate. Our own dogs and cats treated her with respect. When not terrorising other animals, she helped to top up our protein levels and my cash by providing litters of babies who were dispatched at an early age, when still tender. We ate pies and stews, and the surplus were sold to the butcher in Oxford covered market. My father, who declared that he didn’t like eating rabbits, was fed rabbit pie in the belief that it wasn’t, and said “that chicken was lovely!” We didn’t eat the brood rabbit when she died - she’d have been too tough.
An interesting animal I ate
See above; not her, but her children. I became expert at killing and skinning them fast - so fast, that one was still twitching when I put it in the fridge. It was dead.
An interesting thing I did with or to an animal
In my late teens, I worked for a pittance on a dairy farm in North Wales, where one of the bulls was sometimes tethered in a field down the lane. While cleaning up the dairy one morning, the postman drove into the yard to tell me that a telephone engineer was desperate to come down his pole but was frightened of the bull at the bottom. He couldn’t see the line he was tethered to and assumed he was free. I went and led the bull back up the lane, holding what looked like a piece of string but was a strong nylon cord. The engineer sped down and drove off, after thanking me profusely. He thought I was very brave to handle such a dangerous animal. I didn’t let on that the bull was a big softie. Our other bull, if he’d been out, would have chased him.
An interesting animal in the Museum
As an art student in the ’60s, I was taught anatomy by a retired surgeon who wore a green operating gown to lectures. He brought along pickled specimens of human organs but the highlight of his course was a visit to the Hunter Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, where the exhibits included a two-headed calf and lots of other deformed creatures.
I think this must have influenced me more than I realised. I went through a phase of pickling fish and small mammals in formaldehyde in large confectionery jars, though I didn’t actually draw them much. I just kept them sitting there, in my room, so that squeamish visitors would go “Eeuw!”An interesting animal in its natural habitat
While walking in Dorset years ago, I discovered a litter of foxes playing in a valley. I was between them and the sun and too far away to disturb them. I sat and watched them playing for about an hour. There was a lot of pouncing and chasing - all preparation for hunting when they were older. You see similar behaviour in a litter of puppies, who never have to hunt anything.
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Professor Zero says:
Ay, it’ll take some thought to work it up into an interesting post which will also be anonymous enough, but:
1. Had: my deceased cat, Elizabeth Artemis or Isabel la Indigena. She was a Xicana.
2. Ate: a guinea pig. Several, actually, on various festive occasions in the Andes. Roasted.3. Did with and to Elizabeth: flew her across the country three times and drove her around Louisiana in a car. She was a trooper.
4. Museum: pigs racing for oatmeal cookies at the Parish Fair last summer.
5. Natural habitat: I came face to face with a mountain goat on a trail at Glacier National Park.
It was beautiful and very nice. -
simply wondered says:
you tagged me ye bugger!(don’t worry, it’s a geordie term of endearment). if you weren’t dead i wold have done something non-violent to you. and i have no interesting animal experiences - this from a person with perhaps moe pointless and slightly off-beat anecdotes than anyone i can think of. i shall go away and fictionalise something. it will be a good excuse to get back to my unattended blog. actually infidel and daisy have probably assumed squatters rights by now (must check ann bartow for legal position).
and if you need cialis (which i had never even heard of before googlemail) i have several hundred sources a day. are they animals? i might buy a baby ciali so that i have at least one thing to put in this meme.(is that an us?) -
Infidel says:
“actually infidel and daisy have probably assumed squatters rights by now (must check ann bartow for legal position).”
Just as soon as you sign it over, there are a few stipulations however, and I’m not talking spell checks either. Daisy and I would like one of those open houses where all your “bluds”(blogging buddies) chime in like they are (they’re) there at “A Place For Us” at least once a month(I realize that is difficult with only one post every three months, but we can still negotiate.
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foilwoman says:
Okay, I’m late to the party. But I posted my animal information. Now I’ll tag some totally innocent bloggers who don’t deserve it.
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The Ghost of Violet says:
I love this thread. All these vegetarians, and…Flash. With the baby bunnies.
Professor Shortell, your zebra sheets make my head spin. How do you walk through your apartment without falling down from vertigo?
Okay, here are a couple more manual trackback links:
Flash’s entry: Procrastinating with an animeme
Foilwoman’s entry: Animal Meme Mayhem
