animals

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China deployed an elite gaggle of geese police, and no, it’s not an Onion headline.

In June, one gaggle of police geese reportedly managed to snare a man who had broken into the local police headquarters to take a motorbike, the People’s Daily reported.

After drugging two police dogs and climbing over the wall, the man was about to make his getaway when he came face-to-face with some 20 feathered “gatekeepers.”

“The geese fanned their wings and began shrieking when they saw the stranger. The duty officer woke up and the thief was caught red handed.”

To me, it sounds like a geese overpopulation problem turned into a PR ploy, but I like it just the same.

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Really neat video that David Hyde Costello created with just a camcorder and iMovie. All of the content is created with physical objects, mechanisms and puppetry. My friend Erica shared this after learning about his work at the Simmons Children’s Lit Program. Her favorite part of this video is that she learned that when the mouse pulls the string, it happens finger by finger; each is attached to a string that David pulls one by one to make the fingers curl around the string and then pull. Pretty amazing!

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

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This Asian elephant foetus after 12 months in the womb is catching some shut eye before she takes her first heavy steps in the world in just under a year’s time. The gestation period for an elephant is 22 months. This and other animals in the womb were captured on camera by scientists for a National Geographic documentary. I think it’s really neat to see how similarly all mammals start, and an elephant that is ‘floating’ is simply mesmerizing. Check out more photos and details here.

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Three rodents with defective visual perception
Three rodents with defective visual perception
Visualize how they perambulate
Visualize how they perambulate
They all perambulated after the agricultural spouse
Who severed their appendages with a kitchen utensil
Have you ever visualized such a spectacle in your existence
As three rodents with defective visual perception?

Flesch Score = 0. This is why Three Blind Mice was written as it was and NOT like this!

by Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation, as shared in Clarity for Charities by Big Duck. Great article.

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One of my favorite things about my Prospect Heights neighborhood is how much it feels like a lived-in community. People enjoy interacting with each other, and its quirky character is unparalleled.

This garden on Carlton Ave. between Prospect Pl. and Park never fails to make me smile. Everyone who walks by pauses to look, often smiling or snapping a picture. It changes in appearance sometimes (animals get rearranged, accessories are added…) but the shared delight in the space remains the same.

There’s a beautiful history too of how the menagerie of animals started and grew outside of Laura Keith’s home. Right now, this tree bed is a leader in the Beautiful Tree Bed Contest, and I urge you to vote! This is what being a good neighbor is all about.

Job Hunting, Children’s Book Style!

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You Can Do It, Bunny! is a fun and encouraging tale about staying positive while job-hunting, starring cute and endearing animals.

Bunny is a recent graduate from Animal School. She’s smart, capable, and determined. However, she is not totally sure what the right job for her is. On top of that, the economy is very bad in Animal World, making each job she applies for very competitive.

With persistence, determination, and the support of her awesome friends and family, Bunny will find a creative solution to her problem of finding the right job despite the poor economy … though it might take a little bit more time and trial and error than she was expecting.

This adorable book written and illustrated by fellow Tufts Jumbo Tina Mercado is relevant, fun, and encouraging for a recent grad or friend who’s just not scoring their dream position. I like how this book takes the seriously stressful situations of unemployment and rejection and simplifies them to something manageable. There’s even a happy ending, though I won’t say any more than that!
To get an autographed copy or two of the book, support Bunny’s kickstarter fundraising campaign (just over 20 days left!). It’s such a great gift! As a teaser, check out part of the cute plot and enjoyable illustrations:

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https://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/jenbokoff/18016163452/tumblr_lzq6rjESN11qbz3cj?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio

I was on a Canadian radio show because of a neat segment on bedbug reproduction that I did with Matt Long-Middleton. The sex positive show, Audio Smut, airs on CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal once a month. The audio clip here is just my science-informed, comedy-enhanced segment, but if you have time, listen to the full episode because it’s super interesting and it gives context!

[Editor’s note: The faint of heart and mind should be aware of potential danger in this clip.]