Peg, the One-Footed Cockatoo

Wild, one-footed cocky that comes to visit several times a week, on a chair on the veranda. You can see the little stump of her left leg there. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

Intrauterine Cannibalism

‎"Intrauterine Cannibalism" is the name given to a practice found in some shark species wherein the strongest shark pup of a litter eats all its brothers and sisters - while they're still in the womb - providing it with the physical and psychological nourishment it needs to ensure it is born fat, fit, and savage as a meth-addled mongoose.

 My twin sister is so lucky we don't get to read in the womb.

Kevin Spacey and I

Just marking the day when I got my name in an Aussie paper, in this case the Manly Daily, for the first time. (Down in the left hand corner under "Acoustic." Click to enlarge.)

Vanity post now over.

Tasmanian Tiger Hunted to Extinction For No Good Reason

Add another layer of depressing to the story of the Tassie Tiger:

The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), better known as the Tasmanian tiger, has long been the poster child for human-caused extinction. Hunted out of existence by Australian farmers who feared that the striped, canine-like marsupials would kill their sheep, the last thylacine died in captivity in Hobart Zoo 75 years ago next week, on September 7, 1936 (although the species was not officially declared extinct until about 25 years ago).

Now, just a few days before the annual observance of National Thylacine Day in Australia, a new study reveals that the predator was probably not a threat to sheep after all. Its notably long jaw (one of the animal’s most distinctive features) could open to an amazing 120 degrees but was too weak to kill sheep, according to a study published September 1 in the Journal of Zoology.

Great. (The 120° claim is a commonly repeated myth, I've read, just to note. They could open their mouths very wide, maybe to near 80°.)

Look at this beautiful animal, a marsupial dog:

Folksingers

I picture a prehistoric human, ostracized by his tribe and left to wander the old world alone.

After some years he comes across a river, and sees a huge fish in the water. He throws himself in and catches it, and carries it to the shore. He sets the fish on a rock and sits beside it.

"You will be my friend," he says, beaming. He sings the fish songs he has made up, songs about birds, about stars, about the family he misses so much. The fish dies.

The lonely wanderer knows nothing about fish.

Playing "The Shack" on Saturday, September 3

The Shack is a very cool Northern Beaches venue. You're even encouraged to bring your own snacks and a bottle or two:

The bio:

Little Thom sings wickedly funny songs about medical procedures, bikinis, an obscene dog, whiskey, and whether or not life is really all it's cracked up to be. And some other stuff. He has written hundreds of songs in his three-decade-long career, and has released three recordings, the latest of which, Bottomfeeders, contains no hits whatsoever, including the tender, "I Can't Wait (To Do a Tracheotomy)."

American With Terminal Bone Cancer Has Yard Sale Shut Down

A yard sale she was having to help pay her medical bills:

A woman fighting a terminal form of bone cancer is trying to raise money to help pay bills with a few weekend garage sales, but the city of Salem says she’s breaking the law and is shutting her down.

Jan Cline had no idea, but the city of Salem has a clear law that states a person can only have three yard sales a year.

[...]

“We make such an effort of making it back here (backyard) so that it’s not goobering up the neighborhood, so it’s not like a garage sale all laid out day after day after day,” she says.

Terminal bone cancer. She can't work. And she has to have yard sales to pay her medical bills. Ai yai yai.

The video is a bit tough to watch at the end:

Email From a Fan in Thailand

Just noticed an email in ye olde email receptacle. I thought it was spam, naturally, but turns out it wasn't:

Dear Little Thom,

Hi. This is Kiattisak from Thailand. I found one of your songs 'Inside Joke' from a podcast of The Word Nerds, and liked it very much. I bought the song from iTunes Store last year, so it's been a while but I can sing along only roughly. May I ask you for its lyrics, please?

Best Wishes,
Kiattisak

Kiattisak is in Thailand, singing along, if unintelligibly at the moment, with one of my songs, possibly right now. Take that, Bob Dylan!

Oh, wait...

Thank you Kiattisak. (And yes, I sent him the lyrics.)

One-Legged Cockatoo

Here's a video of the one cockatoo we still feed. Her name is Peg:




And seconds after I stopped that video, Peg flew off with the dish. Cheeky bugger:





And this poor bugger looks like something out of a horrror movie:

We believe this bird to be suffering from Psittacine beak and feather disease. It is no fun:

Psittacine beak and feather disease is a viral disease affecting all Old World and New World Parrots (Psittacini, Hookbills). The virus belongs to the family Circoviridae. The virus attacks the feather follicles and the beak and claws-growing cells of the bird, causing progressive feather malformation and necrosis. In later stages of the disease, the feathers develop constrictions in feather shafts, cease development early until eventually all feather growth stops.

We saw something in the paper saying that you should actually try to capture these birds and take them to the local WIRES, as the disease is communicable. We'll look into that some more before actually throwing a blanket over one. Poor fella.

Aussie on Marriage Equality

Just one graf:

This kind of silent segregation harks back to pre-civil rights movement America, as aptly put by Ellen DeGeneres, the gay American talk show host: ''Telling us we can't get married but can settle for a civil union is like a bus driver saying to a black schoolkid, 'I'll get you there if you insist, but you can sit at the back of the bus.' ''

The writer is 16 years old.

Boxcutters

I'm putting together some research for a possible book, titled, for now, "Boxcutters, Icepicks, and a Gram of Polonium: the story behind history's most infamous murder weapons." I honestly can't tell you fully why. I just find it fascinating that, for starters, in the case of the boxcutter, such a simple weapon could be used to pull off what remains one of the biggest crime in history. And the story of that Russian killed by polonium poisoning - fascinating, horrifying, compelling. Is there something to learn from such things? I don't know. Maybe it's just unhealthy fascination with the macabre.