Hello again Jonathan;
It's been a while since I wrote. I am still working on my theme of moments from Brazil, with an general theme of animals. But out of necessity, I have started including pet animals as well.
I have two recent blog postings that might be of interest to your biologists.
The first is a blog posting (with an accompanying video) about a pet crab named Johnny. Johnny is unusual in that it responds with affection to human touch, and will actually 'sleep' when its owner pats its back. And Johnny is by no means a tiny crab - very much the contrary!
The second is a blog posting (with two accompanying videos) that might have a wider appeal than just your biologists who are interested in animal behaviour, and in fact might interest sports fans, in particular, football fans.
Everyone loves watching Brazilian football players because of the way they juggle the ball in the game and so make it entertaining.
It appears that enjoying watching Brazilian football players is not a preserve of human beings, but even pet animals!
One of the videos is about Fred, a chicken that plays football. Fred started playing football by chasing the ball when it went out of bounds when its owner was having a game with his friends. The second video is about a border collie that not only enjoys playing football, it knows how to header footballs.
The general theme of this second blog posting is that it will never ever be easy to select the National Football Team in Brazil when even pets want to play. It might provide some form of humour to your readers who follow the decisions coaches make in selecting their National teams, especially with the World Cup approaching this June, and national coaches have to decide whether to include animals on the team.
The links to the blogs are:
http://momentsfrombrazil.blogspot.com/2010/04/johnny-pet-crab.html
(Johnny The Pet Crab)
http://momentsfrombrazil.blogspot.com/2010/04/selecting-brazilian-national-football.html
(Selecting the Brazilian National Football team will never be easy when even pets want to play.)
Cheers!
Showing posts with label chicken. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chicken. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Thursday, June 11, 2009
LIZZY CLANCY: Laying for England!
It is always nice to be able to introduce you all to a new guest blogger. Possibly the nicest thing about the CFZ bloggo is that it is a living, breathing community, and new people arrive on a regular basis. I can't tell you anything about Liz, apart from the fact that she bought some books from us at Uncon, briefly spoke to Richard, and had a charmingly old-fashioned habit of referring to me as `Mr Downes`, when everyone else calls me `Jon` or `Hey You` (or sometimes something more scatological), until I told her not to. She is also the author of a charming and very elegantl;y written fortean novella called The Second Level which I strongly urge you all to buy at this link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/095601156X/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new
She is obviously one to watch, and she tells me in her latest e:mail that she is getting "addicted" to writing for the CFZ bloggo.
Back in 1941 when Patriotism was still okay and our men were off fighting world war two, support back home abounded, often from surprising corners.
According to the Rochdale Observer, in August of that year, Mr J. Herbert of the Spotland area (who, incidentally, had previously been a Rochdale Association footballer) was tending to his chickens and came across the remarkable egg shown in the photo.
The V for Victory Campaign had begun earlier that year in January when Belgian refugee Victor Delavelaye suggested on BBC radio that the 22nd letter of the alphabet become the emblem of the allies against Nazism. The idea was, according to Mr Delavelaye, that "by seeing this sign, always the same, infinitely repeated, [the German] will understand that he is surrounded, encircled by an immense crowd of citizens eagerly awaiting his first moment of weakness, watching for his first failure."
I do hope Mr Herbert’s patriotic hen was commended for her brave effort in support of the allied movement, or at least given an extra portion of feed. Sadly such gallinaceous gallantry in the Spotland area is unlikely ever to recur since the only chicken within a one-mile radius is minced and waiting to be fried in one of the many kebab shops we have to choose from.
Friday, February 20, 2009
THE GIANT UNDERWATER CHICKEN OF DORSET
In August 1995, Martin Ball was walking along Chesil Beach at Portland when he saw what he described as a strange creature “some twelve feet high, half fish and half giant seahorse”. After some research he equated the creature that he had sighted with an ancient sea creature known as Veasta. As he wrote in an article for Dorset Life magazine:
“Veasta is a rather nice name for a monster. The root of the word stems from old Dorsetshire dialect, meaning a feast - the olden-day beach gathering that was held on warm summer evenings on the neatly shelved banks of Portland's Chesil Beach. This area once had well-established trade links with Spain. Depending upon the pronunciation, Veasta sometimes sounded like 'vista', that is the Spanish for 'sighting'. And so Veasta has been sighted, several times now, off the Isle of Portland on summer nights - sighted in all her splendour, bathing off the hidden shores of this mystical coastline.”
Martin Ball continues:
“The Age of Enlightenment may be considered to have begun in the year 1700. Veasta was sighted in June 1757 by no less than the Reverend John Hutchins, famous historian of Dorset. Not only was the monster seen but the corpse was washed ashore at Burton Bradstock. What happened to it? “
It is a good question. However, this isn’t the first mystery marine beast which has been reported from Chesil Bank or the island of Portland. According to Ralph Holingshead (1577) a monstrous marine cockerel which was seen by the entire population of Portland in November 1457. It was seen, rising up out of the water, with the mass of four or five men and standing on the waves. It was then described as crowing to each of the cardinal points of the compass before disappearing back into the waves.
I have always wondered whether Holinshed`s description of the chicken of the western world should be taken literally. Not, I hasten to add, because I believe in the literal existence of a giant cockerel four or five times the size of a man, but because of the possibility that what Holinshed – in his the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, - described as the entire population of `Ile of Portland', had been suffering from a mass hallucination, possibly caused by the ingestion of bread made from grain tainted with ergot.
Ergot poisoning, sometimes known as ergotism is one of the most common form of fungal poisoning and its cause has been known since the end of the 18th century although, its effects have been noted and feared for centuries before that. It is caused by the consumption of the sclerotium - the food storage structure that can be found in some fungi - of the fungus Claviceps purpurea, which is a member of the Ascomycota. Family.
The alkaloid present in the ergot fungus has been synthesised and used as the basis for several recreational hallucinogenic drugs. However we must return to Martin Ball who has proposed another, and less exciting interpretation:
“The earliest sighting of Veasta was misunderstood, because in the 15th-century, imagery of the cockerel and the pheasant was used to describe the unknown in terms of the known to a rural audience. It is easy to ridicule this 'hallucination' as pre-Age of Enlightenment delusion. Yet it is clear from Holinshed's Chronicles that 15th-century man could distinguish between whales, dolphins and sea-cows. However, Holinshed also tells us that a creature was seen in 1457 'in the isle of Portland'.
Should we agree with Martin Ball that the appearance of the giant underwater chicken was actually an early report of the giant seahorse-like beast that he saw four hundred years later? Shall we suppose that it was merely the result of a mass hallucination by a small population laid low with the effects of a psychedelic fungus? Could it have actually been all just a joke by Ralph Hollingshead? Or should we take note of the fact that a few years ago, the excellent Children’s ITV Series “Roger and the Rottentrolls” featured a storyline with a giant underwater chicken?
“Veasta is a rather nice name for a monster. The root of the word stems from old Dorsetshire dialect, meaning a feast - the olden-day beach gathering that was held on warm summer evenings on the neatly shelved banks of Portland's Chesil Beach. This area once had well-established trade links with Spain. Depending upon the pronunciation, Veasta sometimes sounded like 'vista', that is the Spanish for 'sighting'. And so Veasta has been sighted, several times now, off the Isle of Portland on summer nights - sighted in all her splendour, bathing off the hidden shores of this mystical coastline.”
Martin Ball continues:
“The Age of Enlightenment may be considered to have begun in the year 1700. Veasta was sighted in June 1757 by no less than the Reverend John Hutchins, famous historian of Dorset. Not only was the monster seen but the corpse was washed ashore at Burton Bradstock. What happened to it? “
It is a good question. However, this isn’t the first mystery marine beast which has been reported from Chesil Bank or the island of Portland. According to Ralph Holingshead (1577) a monstrous marine cockerel which was seen by the entire population of Portland in November 1457. It was seen, rising up out of the water, with the mass of four or five men and standing on the waves. It was then described as crowing to each of the cardinal points of the compass before disappearing back into the waves.
I have always wondered whether Holinshed`s description of the chicken of the western world should be taken literally. Not, I hasten to add, because I believe in the literal existence of a giant cockerel four or five times the size of a man, but because of the possibility that what Holinshed – in his the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, - described as the entire population of `Ile of Portland', had been suffering from a mass hallucination, possibly caused by the ingestion of bread made from grain tainted with ergot.
Ergot poisoning, sometimes known as ergotism is one of the most common form of fungal poisoning and its cause has been known since the end of the 18th century although, its effects have been noted and feared for centuries before that. It is caused by the consumption of the sclerotium - the food storage structure that can be found in some fungi - of the fungus Claviceps purpurea, which is a member of the Ascomycota. Family.
The alkaloid present in the ergot fungus has been synthesised and used as the basis for several recreational hallucinogenic drugs. However we must return to Martin Ball who has proposed another, and less exciting interpretation:
“The earliest sighting of Veasta was misunderstood, because in the 15th-century, imagery of the cockerel and the pheasant was used to describe the unknown in terms of the known to a rural audience. It is easy to ridicule this 'hallucination' as pre-Age of Enlightenment delusion. Yet it is clear from Holinshed's Chronicles that 15th-century man could distinguish between whales, dolphins and sea-cows. However, Holinshed also tells us that a creature was seen in 1457 'in the isle of Portland'.
Should we agree with Martin Ball that the appearance of the giant underwater chicken was actually an early report of the giant seahorse-like beast that he saw four hundred years later? Shall we suppose that it was merely the result of a mass hallucination by a small population laid low with the effects of a psychedelic fungus? Could it have actually been all just a joke by Ralph Hollingshead? Or should we take note of the fact that a few years ago, the excellent Children’s ITV Series “Roger and the Rottentrolls” featured a storyline with a giant underwater chicken?
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