Animals – Page 19 – Robot Claw

It Felt Like A Sheep

December 31, 2013

Both our hotels had fantastic breakfast buffets the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Hawaii. Apparently that’s a thing here. I should stay in more Australian hotels!

On the way back from the Blue Mountains we stopped at this place:

A ‘wildlife park’ is a small zoo, and in Australia they frequently prioritize Australian animals including birds. We were surprised to find Featherdale right in the middle of suburbia, but this didn’t affect the quality of this 40-year old park.

They’ve got about a billion birds, half a billion koalas and a wide selection of other Australian fauna including kangaroos, echidna, various reptiles, bats, wombats (active ones even!) and quokkas, like the baby shown above.

The animals are displayed nicely in large and well landscaped enclosures. The big draw of the park though is how close you can get to certain favorites:

In order, those are a wallaby, a bear, and a kangaroo. The bear was dense and immovable, and his fur felt almost exactly like a sheep. He’s also extremely old for his race, being almost 15.

Bernard was in bird-photo-heaven at the park, taking many snaps of everything with feathers. If he doesn’t do a blog soon showcasing some of the great photos he has taken, I’m going to destroy his birthday gifts 🙂

As I mentioned above, Featherdale has an enormous Koala population. I suspect one reason is they accept orphaned Australian animals and have a constant influx of Koalas. As a result you can pat one any time the park is open, which is very popular with the foreign tourists!

Here’s another shot of an Australian animal eating at the park:

And an interesting example of the difference in appearance between two animals of the same species:

After Featherdale we continued back to Randwick, and a lazy evening of eating, movie-watching (Pacific Rim and Kick-Ass 2) and falling asleep before the New Year’s Eve fireworks!

Electric Eye (aka. Wildlife Camera Once Again!)

November 17, 2013

It’s time once again for a roundup of the latest animals snaps from our wildlife camera. I left it next to our front porch for a week or so, and then on the back patio looking at the house until the SD card filled up. Of the 753 photos it snapped, about 40 had animals on them. In these highlight photos, the time will be wrong but the temperature should be correct.

It’s a bit blurry, and therefore I can’t say with absolute certainty, but I think the above is a skunk.

That’s a chipmunk! If you can’t see it, look closely just to the right of where the electrical cord reaches the ground. Chipmunks are absolute buggers to catch on this camera, since they run at the speed of light. But we believe we have a chipmunk megalopolis under our house, and it was only a matter of time before I got a shot of one. Wish it was clearer though…

Now that is a mystery. Obviously mammal, with soft cuddle fur, cute short ears and a curious demeanor? My vote is either a lion or bear cub. Sadly no other snaps of this elusive beast were to be seen, so for now I’m filing it in the ‘crypto’ category.

That’s a hare. Or maybe a jackrabbit. Or perhaps just a rabbit. Either way, it’s cute and has short ears and I’m a bit surprised it’s still up and about in the freezing nights. Rabbits are very common in our backyard, and this year we were treated to a baby that we watched grow up over a period of months. I think they have a rabbit hole under the ferns that grow at the back of our yard.

The once-elusive possum is hidden no longer! There were dozens of snaps of this guy, over a period of about two weeks (always at night). I guess he likes prowling our back patio.

No matter where or when you put the camera, there will always be more squirrel photos than of anything else! This one was my favourite, showing as it does the squirrel critiquing the angle at which I have placed the camera. Or possibly trying to establish the field of view so he could set himself up best for a shot? Look how warm and thick his fur coat looks! I love our squirrels 🙂

And then there was one other photo, showing a most unusual beast…

I wonder Emi was looking at?

Return Of The Comic Ads!

November 7, 2013

Once again my friends, I obtained a pile of comics at NYCC the other week. The pickings in the 25-cent bin were slim, and I’d be lying if I said any of the books I purchased were actually good. But the ads my friends, the ads! As I will show you here, some shining examples of playing to the dreams and fears of children were to be found in those musty books…

I’ll start with something relatively tame. The above ad (from a 1966 comic) answers the question in every child’s mind: “What can I do to be more interesting?” Of course it has particular relevance to readers of comics, who no doubt were unsatisfied with their amateur sketches of superheroes. Props to the copywriter who came up with the criminally obvious lie wonderful tagline: No Talent! No Lessons!

The above advert (from a 1980s comic) is fundamentally the same: selling a product that promises to make life more interesting. But oh my god, what the hell is this ad talking about? ‘The Badge of the Future’??! Learn what at home in spare time? How to sleep under pines or catch breakfast from icy streams? I can only imagine the disappointment that resulted from ambitious youngsters sending away for the above and quickly learning that their future was not actually Grizzly Adams.

Most comics of those days include ‘get-rich-quick’ ads designed to separate children from their pocket money via what must be only a technicality away from a pyramid scheme. And then we have ads like this one (from a 1980 Star Trek comic) that deliver a more enticing promise: be a salesman! In particular, this product must be a sure thing, appealing as it no doubt does to millions of prospects every year! I wonder how many children believed that, and how many fewer actually made any money selling these things. My guess is very, very few.

Here’s an advert from 1980 for an upcoming blockbuster film:

What’s that you say? You don’t remember the shameless Jaws ripoff beloved and heart-rending film Orca? To quote an amazon reviewer: “It’s hard to say which aspect of this film is the stupidest”…

…the art in the ad is amazing though isn’t it! 😉

Anyway, moving on to the other type of advert very common in comics – ads selling stuff to kids. Here’s a few notable examples:

Even today, I only have to read the ‘Can be heard 5 miles‘ headline to know that as a kid I would have sold body parts to obtain one of these. This is also from the 1966 comic, and one wonders exactly what these products were and specifically what they fired. If the claim was even half true, it seems unlikely that these would have been legal!

Jump forward to 1981 and this amusingly bad ad for licensed Star Wars caps. The sketches look like they took someone at least one second! And if you’re going to sell Star Wars merchandise, why caps?! How many kids bought these and wore them to school and got beaten senseless as a result?

Speaking of being beaten senseless because of something you are wearing, check out this from a 1983 Conan comic…

…was that really a successful ad?

As usual, I try and leave the best for last, and I believe I have two absolutely epic advertisements this time. Let’s start with one from a 1981 Star Trek comic:

Ok let’s analyze this point-by-point:

1) This product lets you dominate the minds of others…
2) Including complete strangers…
3) To do anything you want…
4) ‘Willingly and cheerfully’…
5) Without even knowing you are doing it!

I’ll be honest and admit I never knew this product existed, and frankly now that I do I am unsettled. Every moment of every day I may be being controlled by an unknown mind-puppeteer who, 32 years ago, purchased this product after reading a terrible Star Trek comic. The thought gives me chills.

On the other hand, now I know this is possible I need to obtain this product myself! The mind boggles at what I will achieve when I can dominate everyone secretly, and at the very least we’ll probably see more stuff like this in the world:

That said, I think the powers bestowed by witchcraft were more expansive 😉

Could there even possibly be an ad that makes you double-take more than the above? Yes my friends, sadly there is:

I thought the live seahorses was bad, but sending live monkeys in the mail?! Even though it was less than 50 years ago, this really makes me reflect on how different the US was back in the 1960s (which is when this ad was ran). Did anyone take advantage of this offer? How many monkeys were mailed? How many survived, or were released into the wild? And how many were dressed in cute costumes and forced to put on shows? Incredible.