Kosher Imaginary Animals

Evil Monkey’s Guide to Kosher Imaginary Animals

Baku (dream-devouring tapir) - A: “That’s considered a swine. It doesn’t chew its cud.” EM: “What if it was a dream-devouring cow? Would the dream-devouring disqualify it?” A: “No. As long as you don’t consider that scavenging.”

Cornish Owl-Man, Headless Mule (fire-spewing, headless, spectral mule), Mongolian Death Worm, Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, etc.

Full article

Thanks to Making Light.

White stag spotted in the Highlands

A rare white stag has been observed on the west coast of the Highlands.

The animal has been seen with other red deer by a member of the John Muir Trust, which has kept its location a secret to protect it from poachers.

Full article, with link to short video footage Thanks to The Daily Grail

Where the White Stag Runs: Boundary and Transformation in Deer Myths,Legends, and Songs
by Ari Berk

The White Stag by Mary Jones From Jones' Celtic Encyclopedia


In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the four Pevensie children, who have been kings and queens in Narnia for many years, hear from Tumnus the faun that the White Stag has been sighted, the one who will grant your wishes of you catch him. While out hunting for the stag, the Pevensies find themselves returning to their old lives in England.

"Gitcher peanuts, popcorn, Heimskringla..."

If a scholar of Norse mythology had been in the stands of Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, he or she probably would have advised Yankees fans to not make too much out of the 5-3 victory against the Red Sox.

The result, after all, still left the Yankees trailing Boston by an imposing seven games in the American League East. But more significant, perhaps, was the pesky and distracting squirrel that scampered up and down the right-field foul pole during the game and that, according to Norse mythology, just might have foretold that the Yankees will not prevail over the Red Sox this season.

Believe it or not, the squirrel’s actions closely resembled those of Ratatosk, or “gnawing tooth,” a squirrel in Norse mythology that climbed up and down a tree that represented the world. Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic scholar and poet, recorded the story in his 13th-century work “Prose Edda.”

As the story goes, Ratatosk carried insults as it traveled to opposite ends of the tree, fueling a rivalry between the evil dragon residing at the bottom of the tree and the eagle perched at the top.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” said Roberta Frank, a professor of Old Norse and Old English at Yale University, when told of the squirrel’s antics at the stadium.

Frank was born in the Bronx and is a Yankees fan. She said in a telephone interview yesterday that in the Bronx version of this myth, the Yankees would probably represent the eagle and the rival Red Sox would represent the dragon. The Yankees, after all, are the home team this week, more or less making them the good guys. And if there were a sports team identified with an eagle, it has to be the Yankees, who have begun any number of postseason games with a visit from Challenger, the bald eagle who swoops in from center field.


By Teddy Kider The New York Times

FULL ARTICLE

Thanks to Cryptomundo

Wikipedia has a selection of modern manifestations of Ratatosk. Image of horned squirrel above is from a 17th century Icelandic manuscript. Will we see Xeni Jardin using it as a "unicorn chaser" on Boing Boing one of these days?

A new mode of nature writing?

Madeleine Bunting writes in The Guardian on what she sees as a new way of writing about nature. She sees this as a visionary movement, where learning to pay attention to particulars has a redemptive quality that benefits both humans and the natural world (though I'm not sure that was a quality absent from previous modes of nature writing).

Bunting argues that books such as Mark Cocker's Crow Country, Kathleen Jamie's Findings, and Roger Deakin's Wildwood are "a new genre of writing. It doesn't quite fit to call it "nature writing", because what makes these books so compelling - and important - is that they put centre stage the interconnections between nature and human beings."

"The floods in Yorkshire last month were a sharp reminder of what happens when we don't understand the land on which we live. The sight of thousands of flooded homes made us realise what many previous generations would never have forgotten about the way in which water has to move through land. Renewing our relationship with the natural world, on which our wellbeing depends, is at the heart of this genre of writing - but it presses its case not with statistics and fear of apocalyptic scenarios of global warming, but with seduction, urging on readers an aesthetic case for the spectacular beauty that lies beyond their windscreen if they can be bothered to stop the car and get out.

It's the British equivalent in the 21st century to John Muir, the legendary writer who founded the US Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park, and who in 1901 wrote that "thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilised people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home". We may have hills rather than mountains, but that's what summer holidays should be about - going home."

Sounds like a good group of books to add to your reading pile. Bunting mentions that all of the writers she discussses have pebbles to hand, or lined up on their desks. What pebbles do you have lined up on your desk? I'm tending currently toward smooth, water-rounded stones nearest my desk; the fossils are six feet further away.

Oscar the Cat Predicts Patients' Deaths

By Ray Allen

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. [snip]

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

FULL ARTICLE

The quote by the animal behaviorist Dodman calling the cat a "furry grim reaper" was a bit much. Though I guess it's better than "silken-furred psychopomp" would have been.