Category Archives: Pictures

In Touch with the Inner Wildcat

Are you one of the many cat owners who has a “chitterer”? My current cat just gazes in helpless abandon at birds outside, but most of the cats I’ve had made a clicking chittering call. There’s disagreement about what this means, from the side effect of an anticipatory jaw movement to a deliberate “bird call” to sheer frustration.

In margays, though, it’s an explicit imitation of prey. It probably helps that tamarins have some calls that overlap with cat sounds. As Laelaps explains, because vocalizations can be used to mark territory, “a monkey or other prey animal that thinks it is coming over to tell a competitor to buzz off may instead come face-to-face with a margay.”

Sherwin-Williams: Cover the Earth

Ah what a difference a visual makes. They developed it toward the end of the 19th Century, and Sherwin-Williams still uses this horrific logo:

SWP Logo

It actually leaves me breathless, it’s so horrible. On the same building where the above sign appears is this mural (or at least was – I haven’t been back there for a while):

What Are They Thinking?

Seriously. What the hell? This time it’s personal!

Well, someone is at least making an effort to be true to SWP’s horrific tagline—”Cover the Earth” (I almost wish I had made that up)—and still make something aesthetically pleasing and that, you know, doesn’t invoke the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster.

See an animated ad on this theme – worth going just for the cardinal depiction. The frog is also awesome. Dear SWP, notice how, in the animation, your logo only appears at a distance where it—and its apocalyptic tagline—cannot be readily discerned. Smart!

Animal-a-Day Month

My commitment to take a picture of an animal every day during the month of April was a huge success. So much so that yesterday, when I posted this:

Steller Jay

I tagged it “animaladay” automatically even though it wasn’t April anymore. Part of me wants to stop using the tag, because the original commitment is complete, but I will probably keep using something — dailyanimal, maybe. Because what I learned in April was that those minutes, sometimes hours, spent wandering around, making eye contact with animals, and watching them go about their day made every day noticeably better.

Animal-a-Day Month Is ON

Eyes on the Prize

Meet Winston. Life was good with his couple. Hip, young, socially conscious, and so attentive that he almost never had to eat contraband to get an obstruction so he could get attention. And then The Baby Happened. That was 8 months ago. We went outside and spent some very focused W time, during which numerous treats were tossed and caught. Winston and other animal-a-day subjects are appearing in my Flickr photostream.