Audience of Strangers

It's almost January. Well, it's already January in Oz, but they cheat. Late for solstice, early for New Year's. Drop bears. Drop bears are conspiring with the venomous snakes and goannas to mess with the calendar.



This year I ended up making five (as in 5!) different calendar selections with next to no overlap in which pictures got picked. That's because I could and because people not only expected/requested calendars, some requested _themed_ calendars. So I ended up getting printed: 6 calendars of animals from work (regular pictures), 6 calendars of animals at work with "enrichment" stuff, one calendar of animals in the Asia section, one "Zodiac" calendar, and two My Little Pony fanart calendars.



I made the enrichment pictures calendar because I like to push enrichment and remind people of the oddball things I'd do. Like collecting autumn leaves to give out in the winter, filling empty ostrich egg shells with scents or treats, or leaving a big jug of water for the cats to knock over. All the enrichment-themed calendars, three of the regular critter calendars and the one Asia subset calendar were for people at work.



My mother asked for a Chinese zodiac themed calendar. That took a bit more digging. I had to substitute a mouse for the rat, a muskox for the ox and a Komodo dragon for the dragon. Several of the pictures were ones I'd taken on trips. I doubt the ancient Chinese had African wild hunting dogs, red river hogs and Himalayan tahr in mind when they worked out the signs, but this is a calendar, I have a limited library to draw from and I am an artiste!



I'd had one print made of the Pony calendar, but I showed it to someone at work and she wanted it for her son. So I went back to the photo store and had them print another for me.



Since the printed image comes out much darker than the original digital image, I made them all much brighter before submitting them to the printing process. I think it worked.



Danny dropped by the other week with six fresh bales of hay, enough to feed the llama well into summer. While Danny and I were unloading the bales of hay from his trailer and lugging them to the Llama shelter, I talked his ear off about quitting my job. He said he knew some people, he could try and hook me up with a place keeping birds of prey. Uh, no? I spent 35 years preparing in case I got fired and I finally gave up and quit. I'm not keen to jump back into the frying pan. Meanwhile, most of my pants are getting tighter.



At a somewhat annual supper held by a friend I've known since high school (the food was excellent, it is always excellent), another high school friend suggested that we see ourselves in our children and pets. I do not. Instead I see a continuum of shared traits across all species. I see playfulness and affection in white tail deer. Bumblebees learn through observation. We did not invent those behaviors. Domestication is an evolutionary response that selects for juvenile characteristics, shaped by the stress of living with or near us. We do not domesticate, animals domesticate themselves to survive. We are murder apes with delusions of grandeur. I fully expect all living things to be convinced of their own supreme worthiness. Ergo, every little quirk, every little transgressive social/antisocial act laid bare to the scorn of the righteous, every last thing that people do and keep doing generation after generation, are part of nature and of our nature. Nothing matters beyond evolution and looking good. Nature plays dice and all bets are on the table, all the time. This is the spectacle, the beauty and the glory, the tapestry of life. This is why I live in the country, where the wild things are, even though all the notable Pleistocene animals are extinct, killed and eaten by us, never to return.