Your Very Pagan Easter

If you doubt Easter is a Pagan holiday, remember the timing of this celebration is governed by the phases of the moon.

How pagan is that? 

Easter, of course, is simply a celebration of a turn of seasons.

The cross is the cross of the sun -- the same cross representation of the sun we see in every culture going back before the dawn of time.

The resurrection is simply a nod to the reawakening of earth following the "death" and darkness of winter.

Easter is not a holiday mentioned in the New Testament, and seems to have its origins in Rome where the Cybele cult flourished on the hill where the Vatican is now located.

Is it really an accident that Cybele was a virgin who gave birth to a son, Attis, on December 25th, and that this son was crucified on a tree on Black Friday, and resurrected three days later?

So where did Easter Eggs and Eater Bunnies come from?

According to the Venerable Bede, Easter or Eostre, was the pagan goddess of fertility, spring and the dawn.

Her symbols, we are told, were flowers, rabbits, and eggs, as well as the sun and the moon.

According to an ancient German tale associated with Eostre (a tale that seems to first pop up as a Brother's Grimm's Fairy Tale), a little girl found a bird in the snow that was close to death, and she prayed to Eostre, the Goddess of Spring, to help the bird.

Eostre appeared, crossing a rainbow bridge, with the snow melting before her feet as she walked.

Seeing that the bird was badly wounded and cold, she magically turned it into a rabbit so it could survive the blustery winds. Unfortunately, however the transformation from bird to rabbit was incomplete, and the rabbit retained the ability to lay eggs. Nonetheless, in thanks for savings its life, the rabbit took the eggs that it laid, and decorated them, offering them up as gifts to Eostre at this time of year.

Yes, a pretty crazy story, but actually easy to understand if we understand that eggs are an easy-to-see sign of estrus (ovulation), and  that the fecundity of rabbits has been legend since the beginning.

Mix it all up in a game of "telephone" played over 1,000 years, and you get Easter egg baskets with chocolate bunnies inside.

And no, I do not make this stuff up (someone else does that).

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  ** Happy Festivus

Nesting Bald Eagles, Arlington, Virginia

These nesting Bald Eagles are along the palisades just below my house. The shad are running in the river, so there's no shortage of food for the chicks. I took these pictures after work, on the way home.

The Best of Us

Never cheated on his wife. No associations with porno stars, mobsters, money launderers, or Russians. His kids love him. Eight years in office and he never needed a lawyer, and neither did anyone in his administration.  He saved America's economy and he got brought home scores of thousands of troops. A great American and a great American family.

Monsters Beyond Dogs

It's not just dogs we have created into monsters. This is a Damascus Goat.

Damn Neighbors

Wee Dogs Being Wee

The pups and I went birding and found ourselves in dedicated training area for bird dogs. The pups got to get a little accidental distraction experience hearing shotgun blasts and seeing a semi-out-of-control dog run about. The Wee Ones wondered what the kerfuffle was all about.

Just Resting Officer

The Most American of Songs

This Land

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said 'Private Property.'
But on the backside, it didn't say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Lucy Is Ready to See You Now

Carpet Python: Please Take Off Your Shoes

A Polydactyl Raccoon.

This photo is from a taxidermist who had never seen one before either. Polydactalism is quite common in cats in some sea ports.

Not My Backyard!

Turkey Vulture in Flight

I spooked this fellow off a rest in the grass, and he soared very low over me a few times afterwards.

Turkey vultures are not great fliers, preferring to soar on thermals in order to conserve energy. When it is cold in the early morning, as it was yesterday, there is not much lift and so they tend to roost and only flap upward as far as they need to in order to get out of danger.

A Canadian Sign Misses an American Story

The sign, above, is all about getting kids outside fishing, hunting and trapping.

What Americans might miss is that this sign is from Ontario, Canada where getting a firearm license is a process, not an event.  Canadians would not have it any other way.  Read what you have to do to get a firearms license in Ontario. And note, they even have a section for Americans!

A March For Their Lives

From the conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin:

And so we are left with the stark contrast — the sincerity of the students vs. the canned platitudes of the gun absolutists; the speed and vibrancy of a mass movement vs. the gridlock and sameness of our politics; the dogged determination of teenagers not yet world-weary vs. the sense of futility that pervades our politics. The outcome is not preordained. Yes, democracies are under assault. Xenophobes and nativists certainly have come out from under the rocks. The president has tried to make the abnormal commonplace and the unacceptable inevitable. But if nothing else, the marchers reminded us we have a choice. We can be fatalistic and passive, or determined and active. If teenagers can take the capital by storm, surely the rest of us can do something more than complain and yell at the TV.

Or, as Preet Bharara put it:

Australia's Feral Cats Need Killing

Australia’s native wildlife has been decimated by introduced species, including feral cats which can get HUGE. The Weekend Australian notes that wild cat hunts by the native Pintubi people around Alice Springs are being encouraged

The Pintubi hunters have asked the Barnett government to help them make cat hunting a week-long event every month, over an even wider area of their traditional lands. They have applied for $50,000 for a four-month trial that would cover the monitoring of native species and employ someone to co-ordinate and document cat hunts. The Central Desert Native Title Service is already supporting the push with a $100 bounty per cat, considered a gesture to ­reimburse groups for the petrol used over the course of a day in the desert.

“We realise that traditional tracking is only ever going to be applicable to the management of relatively small-scale conservation sites, such as a 15km radius around a community, but we believe that if cat hunting can be regular, ongoing and strategically focused it can continue to be an important tool in the recovery of threatened species in the western deserts,” said Dr Paltridge.

“We see this approach to threatened species conservation as an important alternative to relying on predator-proof fencing to protect rare wildlife”.

A Red Fox Pokes Onto the New Bamboo Path

I cut a short path through a small bamboo grove in the back yard. The aim is to get decent deer pictures, but a red fox was the first visitor.

Invasive Red Fox Extermination in Australia

Red fox up and out a hollow tree bolts past the waiting lurchers.  This and the following photos are from The Daily Mail.

Theses pictures are from NSW Australia where introduced rabbits feed introduced fox, and both destroy native wildlife.

This is not hunting for control: it’s extermination for eradication.









A Wedge-tail Eagle carries off a young fox.

Humane Society Loses Charity Accreditation

With CEO Wayne Pacelle and Vice President Paul Shapiro gone under the weight of sexual harassment charges, the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) has now lost its accreditation with the Better Business Bureau’s charity-accreditation arm, the Wise Giving Alliance.

Charity Navigator has previously downgraded the Humane Society of the U.S. to just 2 stars out of 4, including just 1 star for financial metrics, an indication that the nonprofit wastes a great deal of money on nonproductive costs (such as direct mail).

Losing accreditation from the Better Business Bureau is remarkable in that the the BBB has very weak standards for charities and is itself funded by fees paid by the the charities it accredits -- a clear conflict of interest.

And did you know that the Humane Society of the U.S. paid millions to settle a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act lawsuit (RICO)? Read all about that here.

Deep Thinking On a Snow Day

The First and Last Snow of 2018?

A bird feeder is a small flash of red in the front yard.  The back yard appears to be in black and white.  

Coffee and Provocation

Training Dogs to Find Ancient Loot
Canines may soon be deployed in the fight against terrorists and criminals who loot precious artifacts from war zones.

They Need a Terrier to Find That Gold
In June 1863, a Union shipment of 52 bars of gold now worth $54 million was said to be lost near Dents Run, Pennsylvania. Now the FBI and state conservation officers are digging for it near the Quehanna Wild Area. Sadly, they are not using all the tools at their disposal. A special breed of dog, the Bactrian Terrier, specializes in finding gold deposits.

Rickshaws Were Invented in New Jersey
General Tso's Chicken was invented in New York and Rickshaws were invented in New Jersey.

Chinese Communists to Write U.S. Laws?
Alibaba, which operates as an arm of the communist Chinese state, has joined the American Legislative Exchange Council, a private right-wing group set up by corporations to ghostwrite legislation sponsored by legislators in state capitols around the country.  If Russia can control the President and the NRA, the Chinese figure they can write state law.

Leeches as Wildlife DNA Bank
Scientists have identified mammals present at sites in Asia by examining the DNA in the blood sucked by leeches.

Japan Invents a Raccoon Trap
Non-native American raccoons in Japan have become a nuisance, and the Japanese have invented a live cage trap that is species-specific.

National Geographic Self-Examines Its Own Racism
National Geographic asked a preeminent historian to investigate the magazine’s coverage of people of color in the U.S. and abroad, and what the historian found was not pretty. "What Mason found in short was that until the 1970s National Geographic all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers. Meanwhile it pictured “natives” elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché. Unlike magazines such as Life, Mason said, National Geographic did little to push its readers beyond the stereotypes ingrained in white American culture."

Why Do Some White Men Stockpile Guns and Ammo?
From Scientific American: "Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University."  What's going on?  Basically these folks are terrified, weak, and insecure individuals beset by racial and economic fear who are undergoing a crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives.

Drones to Count Birds and Other Wildlife 
It turns out that a drone in the sky is better than two PhDs in the bush.

Funding American Wildlife Management

A new survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows that only about 5 percent of Americans, age 16 years and older, hunt, which is about half of the 10 percent of Americans in the same age bracket that hunted 50 years ago.

The actual number of hunters has declined somewhat less thanks to a nearly 60 percent increase in population since 1970.



For wildlife a decline in hunting matters, as wildlife conservation system are heavily dependent on sportsmen for funding. Money generated from license fees and excise taxes on guns, ammunition and angling equipment provide about 60 percent of the funding for state wildlife agencies.

So what's the answer? It's pretty simple: add dedicated Pittman-Robertson taxes to equipment used by Americans that enjoy other wildlife-centered activities such as birdwatching, hiking, camping, mountain biking, and photography.

In the Ground

Dog in the hole, and waiting for the baying to settle down to a location.

The Evolution of Animal Genitalia

Genitals are the fastest-evolving organs in the animal kingdom, and something we have reported on before here and here and here and here and here and here.

Imagine

IMAGINE that the children and grandchildren of bulldog breeders were all born with the human equivalent of what they inflict on dogs -- brachycephalia and achondroplastic dwarfism.

IMAGINE that the children and grandchildren of hairless Chinese Crested breeders were born with ectodermal dysplasia and the dental, skin and eye problems that come with that genetic load.

IMAGINE that the children and grandchildren of German Shepherd breeders were born with twisted and dysplastic hips.

IMAGINE that the male children and grandchildren of the Dalmatian breeders who reject back-cross dogs were born with uric acid stones so severe they have to suffer a urethrostemy, in which their scrotum is removed, and their urinary tract is permanently relocated to the base of their penis so they can urinate like a female.

IMAGINE that if it was deemed good enough for the dog, it would be good enough for their owners and their families.

IMAGINE.

Live Bald Eagle Cam Over DC Police Academy

The pair of Bald Eagles nesting 110 feet over the DC Police Academy are named "Liberty" and "Justice" and their second chick hatched on Sunday, so I suspect "my" Bald Eagles will see pipping soon too.

Liberty and Justice had one hatchling that survived last year -- a bird that was named "Spirit' by the folks on the Interwebs.

Bert Gripton in America

Jack Batzer sent me this picture of Bert Gripton in the U.S. judging a 1985 JRTCA trial in Maryland.  Thanks Jack!

Digging on the Dogs: Two Reds in the Forest

Nice day out today. Bolted two red fox out of a forest den. Moxie weighs just 9 pounds and busted the first one out of a 30-foot pipe running straight under a tree.

Stephanie L’s woolly dog Hunter “saw the elephant” today, spending a couple of hours “staying and baying” a second red fox. He’s pretty tired now. Hunter’s a rescue, and represented well.

This was the shallow dig to Hunter, who sounded like he was in the kettle under the tree (a big space) but he was actually in a small tight pipe under my left leg. The box said he was there, but it was Misto who confirmed it. Hunter had shoved dirt behind himself while digging on, and I think he had boxed himself  in.

Spanning the Big Boy

Spanning my big boy. Complete finger overlap.

Misto is 12 pounds and built like a truck (only 10 inches tall), while Moxie is 9 pounds and 10.5 inches tall, and is built more like a bird.

You don't want to be on the teeth side of Misto when he's biting, while few things are small enough that Moxie cannot reach them.

Saint Patrick Was a Dog Whisperer

Saint Patrick is not a saint, and he did not drive the snakes out of Ireland, because there were no snakes.

But was he a dog man?

Absolutely.  Read all about it over on Cesar Millan's new web site.