Beagles love carrots

Of course they do. Anything with big ears loves carrots: rabbits (infamously), elephants, other… stuff with big ears.

Here’s a video of a beagle pup “mesmerized by flying carrots”:

That “mesmerized by flying carrots” quote comes from this Mashable page which features the video, and also gives us this fantastic line:

Carrots dangling from the sky (or, in this case, the ceiling fan) is more than most of us can even dream of.

Personally, I’m capable of dreaming of far more than dangling carrots, but if that’s absolutely as far as your imagination can run, Tricia Gilbride, then I’m sure Freud would have some fairly concise explanation for you.

That said, at around 24 seconds in, it does appear that for Maymo the beagle (for it is he), all his Christmases have come both early and simultaneously. LOOK AT THAT JOY! JUST LOOK AT IT!

This is just one of the plethora of beagle-related videos, cartoons and photographs which I have been sent since I mentioned that we were getting a beagle. I’m so grateful for every single one. Really, I am. Thank you. In fact, yesterday’s “nice” seal video was actually another – along with the description:

This seal looks a bit like a sea beagle. Hang on – that’s, like, the best contraction ever!
SEA beagLe = SEAL!
LOL.

LOL indeed. Copiously.

Beware the Beagle Eagle

A [collective noun] of eagles in Durban’s western suburbs are thought to be to blame for the death of a Maltese poodle and the disappearance of several kittens in the area. This is obviously very sad for the owner of Buttercup (for it was she what was killed), but is great news for birds everywhere. Not only because it proves that the Crowned Eagles (Stephanoaetus coronatus) is successfully adapting its diet despite human intrusion into its territory, but also because it is adapting its diet (in that area) away from the Hadeda Ibis. And that’s obviously good news for Hadedas.

Those of you who are aware of the size of a Hadeda (they stand up to 85cm tall) will now understand that the Crowned Eagle is a bit of a monster.

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It’s not South Africa’s biggest eagle, either. Both the Martial Eagle and the Verreaux’s (Black) Eagle (seen here) are bigger, but anything that has Hadedas as its first diet item of choice is to be applauded. Feared. Is to be feared. Yes.

There are no Crowned Eagles in Malta, which is probably why the Maltese poodle is so very prolific there.  Incidentally, I guess that there are loads of Hadedas as well. I don’t know. I’ve never been, but I suppose that they must be everywhere. Malta is basically a hot lump of rock populated by nasty, yappy, hair-shedding little shits and annoying, honking, drably-plumaged birds. I’m so glad I don’t live there.

Fortunately, there are no Crowned Eagles in Cape Town either, and that means that our beagle is safe in our back garden. From eagles, at least. The hadedas remain an ongoing issue.

Happycow

Because a Happy Cow is well… a… Happy Cow.

 

And yes, it’s a real thing, setting you back $2,700 plus P&P:

“Cows really like the powered rotating motion of the brush,” says Lonnie Boltjes, distributor of the new “Happy Cow” brush which starts and stops automatically.
Made in Germany, the “Happy Cow” is a coarse-bristle nylon brush in the shape of two cones mounted point to point on a shaft powered by an electric motor. The brush starts up automatically when a cow bumps up against it. The motor runs for about 60 seconds and shuts off unless the cow bumps it again. If the cow’s neck chain or strap accidentally gets caught and starts to wrap, the brush automatically stops and reverses itself.
The brush is made in short sections, with the longest bristles toward the outside. As the brush wears down, you can pull off the inner sections and move worn outer sections toward the center, putting new full-size brushes on the outer ends.
“We visited a 59-cow dairy herd in Germany where the machine was being tested,” says Boltjes. “They put a timer on the unit to see how much it was being used. Within a 24-hour period the machine ran for a total of 16 hours.”

Totes getting (a smaller) one of these for the beagle.

* and yes, I am very aware that the happy cow in the video above is not actually a cow at all. thanks.

Lucky Escape

Hannover 96 had to rely on a penalty shootout to get them past 1.FC Köln in the German Pokal first round earlier this evening.
Hannover were cruising to a 1-0 win when their influential playmaker… er… me… was distracted by a playful beagle flinging both itself and a nauseatingly damp half of its owl chew toy at me, allowing Köln to sneak a last minute equaliser.

’96 have huge concerns of a similar incident as they head away to cup specialists Bayer Leverkusen in the next round, but they needn’t worry, as I’ve now shut the dog in the kitchen for remainder of the tournament.

Lego Beagle coming soon?

More beagle news? Sort of – but this is actually Beagle news, with a capital B. And that’s because it relates to the ship that Charles Darwin did his stuff on. Proper nouns FTW.

It’s now been 180 years since Darwin’s voyage to South America and those infamous Galapagos finches, and as history shows, he went there on the HMS Beagle, a ship so named because it chewed everything it got hold of and continually ran off with people’s socks. Darwin wasn’t actually meant to be looking at birds and animals: he was the ship’s geologist. The naturalist on board was, of course…?
Exactly, you have no idea because he didn’t come up with anything particularly spectacular in the field evolutionary theory. 1-0 to the Darwin bloke.
(For completeness, the ship’s naturalist was Robert McCormick, and he never ended up on the back of a ten quid note.)

Anyway, one of the ports of call on the voyage of the Beagle was Santiago in Chile (another was Cape Town, but that’s not important right now). And it’s there that Luis Peña, a Professor of Opthalmology, has created a 2,024 piece Lego replica of the HMS Beagle and he’s hoping that with enough support, Lego will actually produce and market an official Beagle kit. It’s simple and free to support his quest to get the most famous ship in the history of scientific exploration in the form of small, interlocking plastic blocks: you just click here.

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Luis’ project has already attracted 4800 “signatures”. If it gets to 10000, Lego will officially review it and consider making the kit. I think that’s quite cool.

You can read more about Luis Peña and his interest in Darwin and the Beagle here.