These are the first cats I've posted who's species I can't remember. Again, two individuals, one in their den, and another sprawled out against the cage. If I weren't so lazy, I'd go over to the Big Cat Rescue website and flip around until I found their name...
OK, I looked. I think they are caracals.
Here's a little bobcat action for you. I think a bobcat is the only big cat I've ever seen in the wild, and then it was only for a second as it crossed the road in front of me years ago. These guys were much easier to spot, and they weren't running away. I think these are two different cats, one above in the den, and the guy below in a tree. The story goes that bobcats don't spend time in trees, but this fellow does because it gives him a great view of the path taken by the cart that brings lunch every day.
You might recall the press about the SARS virus a few years ago, and how it was going to take over the world and kill us all. Well, the virus was supposedly being spread by people in China eating civets that were infected with something that jumped to humans and became SARS. Well, these are civets. Cute enough, they hardly seem like the threat they were made out to be. I learned at Big Cat Rescue that they aren't really cats, but I don't know exactly what they are, I'm afraid.
I learned from an episode of The Flintstones that everyone in the world has a look-a-like somewhere. And I think it was The Simpsons that established the evil twin deal. Well, guess what? There's an anti-matter version of the blog out there! Who knew? Go check it out. It's run by a guy named Bert, and it's called Not Ernie. Go figure...
The white tiger was playing games with the volunteers, stalking them as they carried food or water back and forth. Not that she did such a good job of it, mind you. It's hard for a white tiger to hide behind bushes. And there was no snow to be had anywhere around.
Here's the white tiger that I mentioned a second ago. She lives in the same cage as the male lion, having been brought up together as cubs. The tour guide explained that all white tigers are descended from a single male discovered many years ago. And since all of them are related, many of them have genetic disorders related to the inbreeding forced upon them in an effort to breed more. This lady has a cleft pallette that was sometimes visible when she looked straight at you. She also has stripes that are not quite black, so she's got that going against her, too. But she's still beautiful. And she was quite active, putting on a great show for us. There were four people in our group of 8 that had big cameras, including myself. Sometimes the tour guide would just quit talking for a bit because the cameras were making too many clicks and he knew no one was listening.
Now that's a mane! This is the only male lion at Big Cat Rescue, and oddly enough, he lives in the same enclosure as a white tiger. They evidently grew up together, so they're being allowed to live out their lives together. This guy would let out a roar every once in a while, but never when anyone was looking. You could hear it easily everywhere in the sanctuary. He's pretty impressive, don't you think? I can see why he's called the king of beasts. (Well, after Godzilla, of course...)
Here's another cat that wasn't at all interested in putting on a show for the tourists. At least he opened his eyes once and looked around, though not at the assembled mob. I've got about twenty pictures of him. Forty five are like the one above, and five involve him opening his eyes, looking from left to right, then back again. I guess he was done for the day after that. The big ears give this guy away as a serval.
Some cats didn't care if they were being watched or not, they just slept right through the whole tour. I think this is a cougar...
Here's the second big cat from my visit to Big Cat Rescue on Saturday. I believe this is an ocelot, known for their striking eye makeup. Oh, and the rest of their body looks pretty cool, too. She didn't move around enough for me to get any unobscured pictures, I'm afraid. All of the animals are free to do as they please during the tours. If they want to curl up and hide in their dens, then that's what they do. If they want to pace back and forth at the edge of the cage and get a good sniff of all the passersby, then that's what you get. You'll be able to tell from the pictures I share which cat did what. And there were plenty of cats that we saw neither hide nor tail of during the tour. They just didn't feel like being on display.
See the white spots on the back of the ears? More on those later.
Now that the weather is finally starting to cool off, I've got to start taking pictures again. While this doesn't bode well for getting a lot of Christmas records recorded for the upcoming holiday season, it does mean you get to look at neat pictures instead of boring doodles. My destination Saturday was a great place called Big Cat Rescue. They take in endangered cats from private owners, zoos, what-have-you, and provide these large kitties with a place to live out their lives in peace. I try to make it up there once a year to take the tour and take some pictures. I shot about 600 pictures during the hour and a half tour, so I hope to share quite a few over the next week or so. These first four shots are the first cat I saw, which I'm pretty sure is a leopard. I always forget to take pictures of the names on the cages, and wind up not being able to tell the ocelots from the servals. You're going to see a lot more cage in some of these pictures than I would like, but it's hard to get the shots without getting the cages in there, too. The pictures that don't show the cage just happen to be taken under the right set of circumstances, either the distance between the cage and the animal is great enough that I can shoot between the wires, or the wire is close enough to the camera that it blurs away. Anyhow, I'd rather the cage be there than be in the open with these hungry predators, no matter how playful they may look at times.
OK, so I wasn't really drunk, but I did spot a pink elephant. This guy has stood on the side of the road in Brandon, FL, for years, and I guess he's now a sort of local landmark. He used to be a decoration at a plant nursery, but that place closed years ago, so now he just sits on an empty lot, awaiting his fate. I caught him right at sunset, which sort of made his pink turn a little orange, but believe me, he's PINK!
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Friday afternoon I caught this osprey back at his post atop the cell tower near work. This is the guy that was run off by the bald eagle earlier in the week.
I knew I had another one of these "Music For A..." records somewhere. But it wasn't Japanese like I thought, it was Chinese. These doodles come from the back of Music For A Chinese Dinner At Home by Bob Lin Wu And His Orchestra (RCA Victor LSP-1936, 1959). I've brought you two other records in the series, both of which also featured the tag Dinner Music, as shown below. These doodles aren't signed that I can see, but I'm pretty sure they are by the same artist as the others in the series, Dillon.
Not thirty seconds after leaving the scene of the bald eagle below, I came across this pair of red-shouldered hawks on the side of the road. The first time I drove past, they were both sitting on the same wire, and I thought I could get them both into the same shot. But by the time I got turned around and parked, one of them had moved to a post on the other side of the road. But I still managed to get a few nice shots before I had to head on home.
Guess who's back in town after migrating away all summer? I walked out of the shop after work today, and I heard a lot of bird noises, all of them chattering away on top of each other. I didn't think much of it until I heard hawk noises, so then I started looking. I spotted an osprey flying around in tight circles near the cell tower across the street, but he soon headed away from there. Then I spotted something sitting on the cell tower. At first I though it had to be the mate of the osprey, but I looked closer and decided the head was just too white. Sure enough, it was a bald eagle. I watched him for about 15 minutes, catching him in mid-flight with a bite of dinner at one point. This is the first time I've gotten a shot of an eagle on the wing, and it's not too bad.
This is the extra-special doodle of the week. Why? Because that's my Dad up there. Well, not really, but close enough. Looks just like him, except I don't think he has a globe in his radio shack. He does have more than one map on the wall though. He's got all the HAM radio equipment, the rolling chair, the clock that tells you what time it is everywhere all at once, the filing cabinets, I tell you this could be Dad. Except for the fact that this record came out when my Dad was only 8... This record is Elektra Code Course (Elektra CC-1, 1956), and was just the thing for the budding radio operator who needed to learn Morse code. (Dad tells me that they recently dropped the requirement for HAM radio operators to learn Morse code, though.) For the record, this is THE Elektra Records, which I believe is still around today, noted in their early years for folk music releases. There's a credit on the back for Jac Holzman, head honcho of the label, and it even lists his call letters, K2VEH. (Dad's call sign is KG4YNI if you want to say howdy sometime.) The doodle above is on the flip side of the LP, while the one below adorns the front. There's even a name on the one below, W. S. Harvey. The two don't look enough alike for me to attribute them both to the same artist, but perhaps.
This snazzy looking banjo player comes from the reverse of Bob "Banjo" Boyd-Ring-A-Ding-Ding-Banjo (Coronet CXS 178), a budget label collection of tunes featuring the instrument. Other than the vaguely Spanish dress of the gentleman in the doodle, there's nothing else on the album cover to indicate the type of banjo music you might hear inside. But none of the song titles sound Spanish, so I'm guessing the doodle is a little misleading. This is not the first doodle I've posted featuring a banjo. There have been at least two others, here and here.
A doodle a day keeps the doctor away. That's what I'm hoping for anyway. I'll let you know how it works out. The doodle of the day is a grand piano inside a treasure chest. No pirates to be seen though. This comes to us from the flipside of Frankie Carle, His Piano And Orchestra-The Golden Touch (RCA Victor LSP-2139, 1960). There's a tag on the front of this one, too, but I shared it with you a long time ago. Not sure why I didn't go ahead and get the doodle at the same time, but I didn't. I'll throw it in below just for kicks. Piano Pearls, it says. You've also seen a doodle from Frankie Carle before.
Did you catch the sunset tonight? I did. I happened to be driving near the Gandy Bridge in Tampa, so I stopped and shot for 10 minutes. Not too shabby of a sunset...
