The otter juggles.

(Via Metafilter.)

"There is something deeply beautiful about how Mule is living."

"Just read through his Facebook page to see how much people admire his deliberate wanderings and his simple, poetic insights. Many of the things he says about development, the 'Megatropolis,' and balance sound almost prophetic. It's especially captivating to hear him talk about his way of life as a place in and of itself. 'These mules and the way that we are living is a place. It's got its own magic, there's no doubt about it. We are protected and guided. I'm out there on the side of the road, with cars coming at us, and there is something protecting and guiding us. This place has got its rules. You only take what you need, and you give your hope and your faith to this place. It's a great place to be.'"

From an article in The Atlantic called "There Is a Man Wandering Around California With 3 Mules."

How can he be offering himself as an example of how to live? How many people wandering around with mules would it take before it would no longer be true that — as the article states — "It’s rare to find places where mules are explicitly prohibited by law"?

"If a possum takes up residence in your shed, grab a barbecue brush to coax him out. If he doesn't leave..."

"... brush him for twenty minutes and let him stay. Let a dog (or two or three) share your bed. Say the rosary while you walk them. Go to church with a chicken sandwich in your purse. Cry at the consecration, every time. Give the chicken sandwich to your homeless friend after mass.... Put picky-eating children in the box at the bottom of the laundry chute, tell them they are hungry lions in a cage, and feed them veggies through the slats. Correspond with the imprisoned and have lunch with the cognitively challenged. Do the Jumble every morning."

Tips from Pink — of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin — made public via obituary by her 6 children and 17 grandchildren.

She was 85, so the Richard Dawkins approach to thinking about child abuse applies (if you've got any inclination to condemn that "hungry lions" method of getting kids to eat vegetables).

Could you assemble a similarly charming list of tips from the quirkiest things your mother did? Consider the potential for matching the love these children and grandchildren showed and the alternative: Indict mom for child abuse.

The other day, when Meade and I were traipsing around in that Wisconsin landscape (the photo of which sat at the top of this blog for 18 hours), we were talking about stories people tell about the hardships they endured as children and, in mockery, we started listing the worst things that were done to us, some of which would, I think, be regarded as criminal child abuse today. For example: In the summer, I was taken to Ocean City, New Jersey for a thorough, painful sunburning. (And, no, it did not "turn into a tan," as some people used to say — and Meade still says — about the way their skin functions.)

Why don't those who advocate locavore cooking and native plants in gardening...

... also oppose traveling to foreign places?

Once you make it a matter of principle that we should eat and garden within our local environment of plants and animals, shouldn't you recognize yourself as an animal, belonging properly to your area, and refrain from sojourns to exotic places? Perhaps you ought to restrict yourself to a walkable radius?

This post has 2 points:

1. To notice the incompleteness of the ideology of ideologues.

2. To explore the philosophy of travel.

ADDED: What would be the word for moving about only locally, the word to correspond to "locavore"? Shouldn't it be locomotive? According to the OED, "locomotive" is composed of the Latin locō (the ablative of locus, which means "place") and motivus (which means "motive" or that which causes motion). 

"Locavore" is not in the OED, but I wonder what the "a" is doing in that word. Wikitionary shows the etymology as "From loca- by analogy with local, location, locomotive, locus, and so on, and -vore by analogy with carnivore, herbivore, and so on. Coined by Jen Maiser, Jessica Prentice, Sage Van Wing, and DeDe Sampson, co-founders of the 'Locavores' Web site." Was it ignorance of Latin roots or fear of being taken to be loco (i.e., crazy)?

"Due to budget constraints, the Berkeley Animal Shelter did not make the 1.5% of its eligible budget available for Public Art."

"Many Berkeley residents had expressed to staff and to the Civic Arts Commissioners their disappointment that there would be no public art in the new facility."

Here's my favorite comment over there: "We can live without more über-banal 'artistic flare' [sic] in this risible artistic backwater. I am sure there are plenty of other indefensible things they can waste our money on."

"Fossil Reveals Long-Lived Mammal Group's Secret."

And the secret is...

Highly rotatable ankles!

"Last Thursday, a woman in Charlestown, Indiana and her boyfriend stayed up all night, armed with a rifle, to hunt down whatever it was that had been attacking small animals in her neighborhood."

"After spotting and shooting a creature prowling in the shadows by the woman's pool, they were shocked to find that they'd just killed a leopard, an animal that's not native to North America, much less Indiana."

"The 35 Most Spectacular Wildlife Photos From The National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest."

#30 made me laugh. #5 is my favorite.

But don't take my word for it. I've been up since 4 a.m., woken by birds, the usual pre-dawn twittering racket having been made unusually wacky by an intermittent bass line contributed by an owl.

"12 Animals We Wish We Could De-Extinct."

"The science is complicated... and so are the ethics involved. But who can resist dreaming up a de-extinction 'wish list'? With more species nearing the extinction danger zone every day​, there's no shortage of candidates, but some are more scientifically suited for resurrection than others. And even if we could bring a species back, should we? We looked to scientists to explain who they'd like to bring back, and which are best left in the past."

"Man tries to take photo of beaver; it kills him."

Take a lesson, men.

Target apologizes for calling the color of a plus-size dress "manatee gray"...

... where the same dress in smaller sizes was called "dark heather."

What are the chances that some devious Target color-namer intentionally insulted large women?

Well, the place is called — speaking of names — Target. Maybe they sit around thinking: Who can we target today?

This is a new pastime for the paranoid: Look for insults planted in product names. The shopkeepers actually hate you. They're saying it constantly, injuring you repeatedly, just below the level where you notice?. Wake up! Everybody is laughing at you!

"We talk about how bendy her neck is."

"What We Talk About When We Talk About This Tiny Baby Giraffe."

Purchase of the day.

From the March 31, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Victor 0631 Out O'Sight Mole Trap

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only your hairdresser knows for sure.

The Althouse Amazon portal: where everything is alright, uptight, and clean Out O'Sight.

"Animals March Madness: Semifinal Lightning Round."

Wombats vs. Elephants & Red Pandas vs. Otters.

"Her head was twice the size of a grizzly bear's – it was huge. She took my whole head and camera in her mouth..."

"... and did these threat displays. And then the most incredible thing happened – she went off and got me a penguin and came back and tried to feed it to me."

Quokka.

Another sign people are tired of having to think about politics.

"Instantly Improve Your Day With This Magical Baby Tapir."

I instantly knew this Buzzfeed piece could only have been written by Summer Anne Burton.

Just remember that tapirs are real, actual creatures that live on the same earth as me and you.

They look like... miracularious little sepia watermelons.

"More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats... than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons..."

"... collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes." 

Domestic cats — pet and feral — "kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year" in the United States — "most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat."

Blood donor dogs and cats.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital:

To do that, the hospital has its own Animal Blood Bank with a dedicated core [sic] of 12 dogs and 11 cats who serve as regular donors, many of them the animal companions of students or staff members at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “We actually have a waiting list of pets to become new donors,” notes Bach.

The typical canine blood donor is a healthy, larger dog — more than 50 pounds — that has been screened for blood borne parasites and diseases that affect the qualities of blood. Importantly, the dog donor possesses a good nature.

“We don’t sedate the dogs,” explains Bach, who says a typical blood draw from a dog takes about 7 to 10 minutes. “Cats are certainly different than dogs. Cats are a little more reclusive and sometimes have a little higher stress level in the hospital. They are sedated.”

Cats also need a more compatible blood-type cross match when they are getting transfusion.

They also do horse and cow transfusions.

Their most recent resident donor horse, Drive Thru, retired this fall after seven years of donating blood and serving as a calming presence and companion for any skittish equine patients at the hospital. In the hospital’s large animal practice, Drive Thru was a star, getting presents and mail from the children of clients and visitors and occasionally popping his head into the waiting room for peppermint candy, his favorite.

The resident cow donors are Maxine and Natalie, "beautiful and pampered Holsteins." How much blood goes into a cow getting a transfusion? 6 to 12 liters.

"It was one of my early goals to be a millionaire."

"In the beginning, I wanted to have a gold Rolex, a Rolls-Royce, a cheetah — just stupid things that you think of when you're a kid. Then time goes by. The Rolls-Royce thing went out the window, because when you get to the level where you can afford one, all of a sudden you say, 'It's a little bit over the top.' A cheetah? I think in California they got rid of the law that says you can have wild animals. Having a cheetah is a stupid idea."