Sunday in Portalrubio

Yesterday we drove from Zaragoza to the village (Portalrubio, in this case: Spaniards say "the village" the way Minnesotans say "the lake" or "the cabin").

image from Spanish Wikipedia: "Detalle de la localización de Portalrubio en el mapa del Reino de Aragón de Juan Bautista Labaña (1619)"

The weather was unexpectedly warm, warm enough to pull a table outside and eat in the winter sun. Black and green olives, cheese, bread, morcilla, fuet, omelettes (one with tuna and one with perejil from the garden). We strolled around the village admiring the various reconstruction projects. There was plenty of water at la fuente, the miracle of water bubbling up from an aquifer in spite of the lack of snow and rain over the last few decades; Rosemary's grandfather talks about how there used to be abundant snow every year and now it hardly snows at all, the knife edge of climate change.

On the way back home, we meandered along a back round through neighboring villages: Pancrudo, Cervera del Rincón,

We saw buitres leonados (Griffon vultures, or gyps fulvus), riding the thermal currents in a gorge where we were walking. There were maybe 15 or so, sailing, circling. Their wingspan (envergadura) can reach 2 meters. This endangered species is making a modest comeback.

We also say two groups of cabras montañesas or (capra pyrenaica, also called cabra montés, cabra hispánica or íbice ibérico) from the road. It was so unexpected to see them because they are almost invisible against the landscape, their coloring so like the rocky mountainside.
We didn't get as close as in this video, but we really enjoyed how they stared back at us before moving on:

Look at their little tummies!

Snow Leopard cubs via ZooBorns

Brown bear, brown bear

These are a couple of clips I took at the Minnesota Zoo, watching two of the three Brown bears (also called grizzly bears) playing in the water.  Earlier, we had seen the three of them napping.


All three were rescued as orphaned cubs in 2006. The two males are named Haines and Kenai, and the female is called Sadie. They all just turned five years old this year. They will reach their full growth in another year,  perhaps. Haines, the largest, will probably reach a weight of 1200 lbs and stand 9 feet tall when upright. Because of human encroachment on their habitat, the impact of global warming, and other threats, conservation efforts in zoos are important for increasing knowledge about endangered animals as well as reproduction programs. These bears at the MN Zoo are given lots of new things to react to in their habitat. To see them just hanging out from so close is incredible. Having seen the Herzog documentary film Grizzly Man, based on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, I don't see the bears as just "cute," but they are fascinatingly attractive.




They have lots more great videos at MN Zoo YouTube Channel. I have lots of questions about what will happen when the bears are old enough to mate (very soon). Will they have to separate them? Will the males compete for Sadie? Of course, they will have a plan for this, but I'd love to learn more.

In a video on the zoo's website, the Zoo's Director and keepers explain some of the "enrichment and training" activities that they use to keep the animals from getting bored, help them engage in their natural behaviors, and also provide opportunities for research. There's a great segment on the bears.

More baby animals from ZooBorns

My Tiger on the Road came home from China after a splendid time, but now she is away again, in Switzerland with her dads, while Blas is at a conference. I wish I could be there with them! Since I can't, I'm watching videos of mother animals with their young. The tigers here are at the Zurich Zoo.


I am absolutely enamored of the site ZooBorns which brings news of new babies in zoos around the world. Inevitably, the joy of their arrival is tinged with the sadness that they should be in zoos because their species are threatened in their natural habitat. It takes a lot for one of these babies to survive:

The gestation period for Indian rhino pregnancies is approximately 16 months. When born, calves normally weigh in the range of 75-100 pounds and will nurse throughout their first two years. They are normally able to stand just hours after being born. 

Baby hippo at play in the water

Baby hippo at the San Diego Zoo, playing with his mom (via ZooBorns)

Useful animal companion

I've been trying to get Leo to be more useful around the house, but his best trick is pushing small items off my bedside table.

Our little buddy is sick

This week we have been adapting to the news that our beloved Mr. Kitty, Leo, has diabetes. We have been really worried and heartsick because we love our good friend, and don't want him to suffer.

I first noticed a change in his litter box, but I thought it was the litter formula that had been changed. Then he started to pee in the bathtub. I just thought he didn't like the litter, or that I needed to clean the box more often. I changed the type of litter. He started to poop in the bathroom. This annoyed me, but I again thought he was rejecting something about the litter box. Was it the hated vacuum cleaner that I had left next to it? Finally, I saw that he had lost some weight and was starting to feel bonier. Belatedly, it hit me that he was having a health problem, not a behavior issues. I felt terrible that I had not made the connection earlier.

On Monday, I took him to our vet. Tuesday, we got confirmation that his blood and urine showed elevated sugar levels. It took a few days of missed phone calls and scheduling to finally get him in on Friday for an insulin lesson. Our new routine is to give him insulin injections twice a day, change his food to a special diabetic formula, and watch him closely for three weeks. Then we get his blood tested again to see if the dose needs to be changed. I have already given another diabetic cat insulin injections, so I know that it is not difficult at all, and the cat hardly notices the very thin needle; the injections are under the skin, not into the muscles. The main thing is to have a solid routine so that the injections are 12 hours apart.

With luck, it will be easy to regulate his blood sugar level. He's ten years old: a "mature" cat, but not yet "geriatric," and he could still live comfortably and happily for many more years.

Baby elephants cavorting in a pool

The news is so horrific these days that I have contemplated cutting myself off completely from all of it, cold turkey, no internet, no twitter, nothing. But that wouldn't stop bad things from happening, and I also wouldn't get to see this:

Squeee! *head explodes*
Baylor and Tupelo are two African elephant babies at the Houston Zoo, each born last year.

Cats with thumbs!

I know it's an ad, but think about it.

Mallorca's wild life

My daughter has now been to Mallorca two times. That is two times more than I have. *Sigh* She is there with her dads, and I hope they are able to get out of Palma to see something of the natural part of the island. Since I am stuck here in snowy Minneapolis, I must travel via YouTube! This BBC program on Mallorca is quite lovely. "El buitre negro" (the black vulture) has been an the brink of extinction, but people have been trying to keep their population going.

Wild China BBC series

We've been watching the BBC series Wild China on Netflix. The quality of the photography is incredible, and the music is wonderful. This clip, from the first episode, cuts out the narration and just gives some of the images and the music, The rice terraces that are thousands of years old, the limestone karst gorges and caves, the sandstone columns: these landscapes seem so familiar from paintings and yet seem unreal at the same time. What you don't see here are the long sequences on the amazing wildlife of the region, and some of the wonderful scenes of daily life.

Here's a clip with narration and some of the animals:

The story of Loren the cat.

Although this cat looks a LOT like my cat Leo, it's not Leo, it's a cat in Spain whose name is Loren.
I only know him from his story and these pictures. Behind the apartment in Zaragoza is a school whose grounds shelter a number of feral cats. Staff and neighbors feed them so they survive, although they are very scruffy, and not all of them make it. It's distressing, but at least they get some attention.

Apparently, some people have taken to dumping or abandoning cats there because they know there will be a minimum of care for them. One day, Loren was looking out the window, and saw a young man with a backpack approach the fence, take out a cat, hug it, and then leave. He was clearly unhappy to be doing it, but he had left his cat there to fend for itself. This made us very sad!

Loren told our neighbor Marta, a lovely and tender-hearted soul who rescues animals, what he'd seen and she and others who keep an eye on the animals there saw that this cat was not adapting to its new life. It was a house cat that was not going to make it because it couldn't compete with the feral cats for food. It became skinny, matted and was clearly struggling to survive.

Our neighbor managed to get the cat to come with her (it seemed happy to be rescued) and put an announcement up. A family adopted it, had a vet look at it, and shaved off its matted fur. They named him Loren after the person who helped start the rescue, but although he's a kitty that loves people, he didn't get along with their other animals, and they had to put him up for adoption again. Luckily, now that his hair had grown back, you can see how these pictures helped find him a new home.

We're happy the story turned out well, but we wish there were some way we could let his original owner know that he is OK. I wonder if his new family has given him a new name?

While I'm away....

Leo is in very good hands.

His decorative belly fur doesn't fit in the window ledge.

Baby alligator!

I just spent a long weekend in Lafayette Louisiana. I don't have time to write about the experience, but here is a picture from the swamp tour of the Atchafalaya Basin: our guide caught a baby 'gator (5 months old) and we got to hold it!
More later

The awesomeness of grizzly bears

The Minnesota Zoo has a YouTube Channel, and they posted a great video of 3 grizzly bears destroying a 500 lb pumpkin. They are an amazing sight as they emerge from their cave, so big, so plushy, such long claws and strength!


But the silence of the zoo-cam video is a little disappointing. I love this video of the same event shot by a zoo visitor, and what a great soundtrack! And the extra footage of the bear playing with a piece of the pumpkin in the water is wonderful.
The zoo also uses the bears for education: "Bear Awareness Week" shows what it looks like if you don't bear-proof your campsite!

This one is for Loren

How could we have missed this? The 4H Llama costume show at the MN State Fair is now 2 years old. What do you think?

Cat yodeling, or autotune your cat

Ha! If I tried this with my 20-lb cat, I would get shredded. My cat yodels every night between 3-5AM, so I have no need to apply any of these techniques.

I have kept company with more than one engineer, so this makes me laugh.

What are the pigs telling us?

(via entrenomadas). The Spanish writer Manuel Vilas wrote this blog post about the outbreak of swine flu, or "gripe porcina" as it is called in Spanish.
Marta quote his post in its entirety, as will I. She is a vegetarian; I am not, but I no longer buy any meat, poultry or fish that is produced by industrial animal husbandry, both because it is cruel and also because it is unsanitary and unhealthy.

"La masificación de los cerdos es la causa del virus porcino. Hay 25 millones de cerdos en España. Tocamos a más de medio cerdo por español. Hay 60 mil millones de cerdos en el mundo. Políticamente, el mundo-cerdo está sin estructurar, pero biológicamente el mundo-cerdo ha empezado a emitir señales de defensa: el virus. Lo mismo ocurre con los pollos.

El virus porcino significa que los cerdos están reaccionando a su producción industrial ilimitada. Biológicamente tienen derecho a hacerlo, por eso lo hacen.
Indudablemente, estamos ante un proceso: aves, cerdos y vacas. El fenómeno de las vacas locas sigue las mismas claves. Pienso que la siguiente especie serán los peces de piscifactoría: truchas, doradas, lubinas, etc, pues en algún momento tendrá que producirse una correspondencia proporcional entre el mundo terrestre y el mundo acuático.
Parece que el reino animal inicia una tenue emisión de mensajes. Están emitiendo. Están diciendo algo. Oigámoslos. Los cerdos, por fin, han empezado a hablar. Ya era hora de que emitieran algún mensaje.
La creación de un virus es una forma del logos.
Nadie soporta perder la identidad, ni siquiera los cerdos. El virus porcino nace de la perdida de identidad a escala industrial. Los cerdos antiguos no producían virus porque tenían identidad. Los cerdos actuales han iniciado la operación ESPARTACO."

MANUEL VILAS

My freehand translation:

"The mass production of pigs is the cause of the swine flu virus. There are 25 million pigs in Spain. We're up to a bit more than half a pig per Spaniard. There are 60 billion pigs in the world. Politically, the pig-world has no structure, but biologically the pig-world has begun to emit signs of defense: the virus. The same is happening with chickens.

The swine flu virus means that pigs are reacting to their unlimited industrial production. Biologically they have the right to do so, which is why they are doing it. Without a doubt, we are faced with a process: poultry, swine, cattle. The phenomenon of Mad Cow disease follows the same logic. I think the next species will be fish in the fish farms: trout, doradas, lubina, etc, because at some moment there has to be a proportional equivalence between the terrestrial and the aquatic worlds.
It seems as if the animal world is beginning to send out a tenuous set of messages. They're broadcasting. They're saying something. Let's listen to it. Pigs have finally begun to speak. It was about time they tried to send a message.
the creation of the virus is a kind of logos (word).
Nobody can bear to lose their identity, not even pigs. The swine flu virus is born because of the loss of identity at the industrial scale. Pigs from the old days didn't produce the virus because they had an identity. Today's pigs have begun OPERATION SPARTACUS."

If you choose to quote any part of this, please attribute the text to its author, Manuel Vilas. We already know about the relationship between diseases and industrial farming, and this most recent case should ring alarms about the inhumane and unhealthy animal farming operations, , such as CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) aka "factory farms" which have become the prevalent way of breeding pigs for market.

UPDATE: via Snarkmarket, this fascinating post about epidemiology and urban space by Geoff Managh"This Diseased Utopia: 10 Thoughts on Swine Flu and the City" from his blog BLDGBLOG.

Cat vs Printer

Her name is Molly.

cute animals using mobile technology=WIN

the viral power of cute!