And then there’s this
Suffolk has a giant devil dog named Black Shuck who made his first appearance in Blythburgh in 1577, when it broke down the door of Holy Trinity Church, killed a couple of people, burned claw marks in the floor and scampered off. He has reappeared on the usual occasions ever since.
Seven miles away at the site of Leiston Abbey, a dig in 2014 unearthed this big boy. And by big, I mean a vet estimated it would have stood seven feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. A very big boy indeed.
Here’s an article putting the two together. I mean, honestly – if you can’t trust a site called ufoholic.com, who can you trust? And here is a less breathless account in a local paper.
The dog was buried under the site of the monastery kitchens, which would have been demolished some time after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1537. Which would draw a delightful straight line from a very big dog to, decades later, a legend of a very big dog.
But the second article says indications are the dog may have been alive in the 18th C. and was buried with some ceremony. In which case, I’m surprised there isn’t a record of him in some local estate’s accounts. Further (expensive) analysis is probably way down on the county archaeologist’s priority list, which is a shame.
I think we can assume he was a very good boy.
Bonus: my first thought was a turnspit dog. But it turns out, that was an actual breed of little dog with a long body and short crooked legs. Which makes perfect sense for a dog that climbed inside a big hamster wheel and ran for a few hours a day.
The dogs were also taken to church to serve as foot warmers. One story says that during service at a church in Bath, the Bishop of Gloucester gave a sermon and uttered the line “It was then that Ezekiel saw the wheel…”. At the mention of the word “wheel” several turnspit dogs, who had been brought to church as foot warmers, ran for the door.
Queen Victoria kept a few retired turnspit dogs as pets, which wasn’t enough to rehabilitate their reputation. Poor things were considered so ugly and common they were allowed to go extinct.
February 24, 2021 — 7:32 pm
Comments: 5
And speaking of calico…
Been meaning to look up why calico cats are always female. Here’s the skinny: calicos are usually white, orange and black (or tabby or gray or…whatevs). About 70% white on average – that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I thought it was interesting.
The X chromosome carries the gene for either ginger or black (or a variety of non-white colors). One color per X chromosome. So only XX (that is, female) beasts can have both ginger and black.
Except those poor little bastards with Klinefelter syndrome. They have XXY, XXXY or even XXXXY chromosomes. I don’t think it creates much of a problem in cats, but it can produce the occasional a male calico.
The gene for white isn’t on a sex chromosome, but elsewhere in the genome, so any old cat can carry it.
“But wait, Stoaty, you magnificent beast!” I hear you say, “most gingers are male. How that be?”
Male gingers carry the ginger gene on their one X chromosome. Female gingers have to have the ginger gene on both X chromosomes. That makes the ratio is about 3 to 1 male to female, and I believe ginger girls must have ginger daddies.
I think ginger and black without the white is how you get a tortie, but I’ve about come to the end of my genetic education.
If you ever yearn to feel stupid and slow, try looking into the genetics of chicken colors. Here’s a look at the basics.
January 27, 2021 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 10
Be-catted
Sorry for inattentive today (yes, we have a Dead Pool winner – congratulations Mrs Carl). I have been under a cat. Specifically, this one – Ol’ Kneewrecker.
Also, I’ve been on Twitter. It’s as awful as you can imagine at the moment. I’m going back to chickens, books and vidya games for a while. But I did want to mention two things I learned from this election.
There are more of us than there are of them. Like, a lot more. Like, so many more that we broke their ballot-cheating mechanisms and they had to get clumsy and stupid and obvious about the steal. Will see if that has repercussions.
It’s possible to do things differently. Trump made huge inroads into Middle East peace – for example – by ignoring the old wisdom about fixing perpetually dysfunctional Palestine first. He successfully brokered multiple individual deals between nations. He deserves a lot of credit for that, which he will never get. That, and bringing soldiers home from various permanently smoldering trash fires.
I guess, for me, that’s the definition of the “Trumpism” everyone’s talking about – approaching old problems in new ways.
Someone said on Twitter that people need to go back and start running for dog catcher and ward captain, with an eye to higher and higher office. But that’s like sending your nice kid away to college and getting back a blue-haired gender studies graduate with a nose ring. The years-long process of grinding through lower office changes people, makes them into politicians. We need to find other avenues.
Trump is a strange and, in many ways, unlikeable character, but he changed me from “anyone’s better than Hillary” to an enthusiastic supporter. I’m afraid he was lightning in a bottle: a well-known celebrity with go-to-hell money of his own. If we see the same combination in play again, it’ll probably be somebody like Cher.
I’m hoping he opens a giant media company, which zooms to #1 in no time (thanks to the collapse of Fox). Then he can be in their faces 24/7.
January 8, 2021 — 8:49 pm
Comments: 22
When all else fails…
…go with a cat picture.
I feel like such a spectator at the moment. I can’t tell you how many times I half-compose a tweet and then X out of it, because I wasn’t about to say anything meaningful or insightful. I’m communicating entirely in likes.
And yes, he’s adorable. But when he wakes up, he tries to chew great lumps out of the basket. My laundry basket. Little bastard.
December 9, 2020 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 12
She did it again
Only this time, she was so high in the tree I couldn’t get her down. I had to leave her up there. It was the coldest night of the Winter so far, so I kept tiptoeing out to check on her. Then I got up at first light to check on her again.
When I got home from work in the afternoon, she was STILL up there. So I got on a ladder, used the extended loppers to clear a path, poked her in the chest with a garden hoe until she climbed aboard, and gave her a gentle elevator ride to the ground.
I feel like I’ve been beaten up. All that exertion with my arms over my head, you see.
Well, she’ll get her comeuppance. We’re entering a complete poultry lockdown in a week. Bird flu. Yes, it includes tiny backyard flocks.
It’s to minimize contact between livestock and wild birds, who spread it across nations. We’ve done a full lockdown once before while I’ve kept chickens.
It was miserable. They bitched all day long.
December 7, 2020 — 6:31 pm
Comments: 12
The stoat whisperer
Robert E. Fuller is a British wildlife photographer and painter who has built a stoat wonderland on his property. Weaseltown. Boobytrapped with cameras, naturally.
Yay, he has a YouTube channel. Here’s his Stoat Camera Playlist. Not on the playlist, I recommend the longer How I Became a Stoat Whisperer.
Also not on the list, the ones I found first: Raising a Tiny Stoat Kit, This Adorable Stoat Kit is Now so Playful, When Two Adorable Stoats Meet for the First Time and These Stoat Kits Are Ready To Go Outdoors. It looks like they all belong in a playlist called Weasel Wildlife Rehabilitation that he hasn’t made yet. Perhaps he will after he releases these two into the wild.
Eh, his bird stuff is pretty good, too.
September 2, 2020 — 8:12 pm
Comments: 3
Uncle B had a good Friday
Good Friday is when people traditionally planted their potatoes in this country. It’s about the right time of year, and it’s one day the poor bastards had off work.
So Uncle B planted our potatoes today, in one of the raised beds at the end of the garden. The Eastern boundary of our place is a stream (it’s actually a drainage ditch, but that’s a lousy name for a thing that has swans living in it). He was rocking out to Bach’s Goldberg Variation on the headphones, he looked up, and not a dozen feet away these two (and their mum) were cavorting about on the far bank in the sun.
At that moment, he declared it the Easteriest Easter EVAR.
Happy Good Friday, everyone, and stay safe this weekend!
April 10, 2020 — 9:19 pm
Comments: 21
The Stoats of Science!
Stoats as a Unit of Measurement. Get your poster here. No, not my work.
A reminder:
American British
Weasel Stoat
Least Weasel Weasel
First lambs today! I could hear them yesterday, but not see them, so I went in search of laa bam at dusk today. I couldn’t get close enough for photography, though — the mamas didn’t like the look of me at all.
The lockdown continues apace. It’s as quiet as Christmas morning out there. We’re doing fine, though we’ll run out of fresh milk soon. My spies tell me the shop in town has plenty of everything. May go for a field trip soon.
Welcome to Week Two of the Plague!
March 30, 2020 — 7:42 pm
Comments: 11
The Return of Spoon
I hauled myself out at six this morning, no Spoon. I had plenty to do in the garden (it’s a mess after six months of daily rain) so I hung out and pottered around and about 8:30, a blackberry bramble in the drive began to softly “bok?…bok? Bok?…bok?”
You’ll have to take my word for the question marks. She sounded puzzled. And, honestly, who among us has NOT woken up in a hedge mid-morning with no idea how she got there?
She was about six feet up a bramble, in a kind of hole. I had to get my gloves to lift her out or I would have been torn to bits.
She was safe enough up there. The polands generally go way high and are protected for the night. The danger is next morning, when they flap down to ground level. If there isn’t a human around to stink up the place and keep the foxes at bay, there’s a real risk.
Tonight, all my chickens are right where they should be. Perhaps I can get a decent night’s sleep and a bit of a late morning, for once. Have a good weekend, everyone! (As if weekends held any meaning).
March 27, 2020 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 13
Nothing happens to me now that doesn’t involve chickens
I had a brilliant idea to take Mo, my most violent cockerel, and shut him up with his girlfriend in the fruit cage, so he could get some free ranging time without being within murdering distance of the other boys.
Bad plan. He managed to escape in about ten seconds flat and corner the two poland roosters way deep in the hedge where I couldn’t get to him. I’m crawling on my elbows through brambles trying to grab his scrawny neck when the kitten wonders, academically, whether it would be fun to chase the hen around the fruit cage, violently.
I got everything sorted in the end and sat down, scratched and muddied, to an ice cold cup of coffee.
Say a prayer for my girl Spoon, pictured, who didn’t come home at roll call. I think the two cats energetically playfighting in the garden occasionally spooks a chicken out of her usual territory. I’m not out with them all the time. I walked around and called to her until it was too dark to see anything.
Cross your fingers that she turns up in the morning. She’s my favorite chicken.
March 26, 2020 — 8:33 pm
Comments: 10