Category Archives: Animal Portraits

Christmas Gift Selection #10 Genuine Emperor Scorpion

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Emperor Scorpion Sierra Leone Africa

Note: This is a repost of one of our Top Ten Gifts for the discerning buyer originally published in December of 2013, a year that will live in infamy. In what has become a half-assed tradition here at The Institute we have been irregularly reposting these now famous gift selections when we remember to do so in a lame attempt to create a Holiday Tradition and mostly because we suddenly realize it’s Christmas time and we don’t have squat done. It’s fun and we don’t have to spend the time making new stuff up. Enjoy

The First item in our Top Ten Countdown of Incredible Christmas gifts

Genuine Emperor Scorpion

*The Institute does more than just solve the world’s problems. We help in many other ways too. Every year our staff puts together a gift list that we offer to our loyal readers to help them with their Christmas shopping. We know that many of you have loved ones that are incredibly difficult to shop for. That’s why we go to the ends of the earth to bring you those items you just can’t find at Wal-Mart. So cheer up help is at hand, watch for the selections we’ve chosen as they appear throughout the rest of the holiday season.

Our first item is the cute but lovable Emperor Scorpion, a sassy native of Africa, it is sure to put a smile on the face of that hard to please relative that just won’t shut up. We’re sure they will be speechless when they open this gift. Our Aunt Pheeb got one of these for Uncle Skid last year and to complete the surprise she didn’t tell him it was coming. She just left it in the bottom of his favorite six-pack for him to find. Boy did that liven up half-time. That Aunt Pheeb she’s a kidder alright.

Order now: Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Emperor Scorpion item # 1999567783332-1

Availability: in Stock

Description: Color, shiny black with iridescent highlights. Creates delightful scrabbling sound as it hides amongst your personal effects. length 8″. wgt. 1 oz. but can get up to 4lbs. if overfed or left alone among your other pets. We recommend feeding your Emperor Scorpion only guaranteed, high volume, low calorie Scorpion chow. Available through our catalog. An Institute exclusive.

Choose country of origin: Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, sorry due to internal strife in Ivory Coast and Ghana, animal is only available from Senegal or Sierra Leone. Note: Senegalese item not suitable for children under 3

Accessories: scorpion chow, leash, rub on tattoos ( personalize your pet with unique designs).

Scorpion den, has individual quarters for up to 10 individuals, shipped unassembled.

Training manuals.

Mirror, official fighting mirror authorized by the OFSS** of America, scorpions go gonzo nuts when they see another scorpion, use to amuse your friends by having them hold the mirror, great at parties.

Anti-venom. Please select Pint, Quart or Half-gallon. Larger sizes may be  special ordered. Extra shipping charges apply. Sent from 3rd party shipper allow 4-6 weeks for arrival.

Scorpion sized booties and tail covers. Highly-recommended if animal is shipped to Co., WI., N. D., S. D., Upper MI., ME., MT., ID.,  All those little states below ME. and CA.

Price: $ 9500.00 please add tax if you live in Colorado.

Delivery time: guaranteed to arrive before Christmas if ordered before 12-01-13.

Watch for other great Gift ideas! Operators standing by to take your orders. Call now!

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

** Official Fighting Scorpions Society of America. The Ultimate in Arachnid Cage Fighting™, headquarters Killem, Al. 36001

Misplaced His Hat

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American Bullfighting

What we have here is an example of an age old conflict between a bull that cannot abide seeing a cowboy standing and wearing a hat, and a cowboy standing and wearing a hat that is not about to take that attitude from any bull.

When the two come together, usually in an arena where there is the possibility of a confrontation, such as an event that features American Bullfighting, and say, the bull says something off color about the cowboys hat, and the cowboy says “Oh yeah, why you don’t you do something about it then, hamburger walking”, the situation can get explosive.

In the image above we see the aftermath of this provocative exchange. The bull is happy to provide a direct physical response to the cowboys’ taunt and the cowboy is making absolutely certain to note where his hat has landed so he can retrieve it when he hits the ground. It is very likely that this situation will repeat itself over and over again due to the inability of the opposing sides to come to any type of agreement.

It could be that this situation can be seen as a metaphor for life in general where there are two opposing points of view and no good way for one side or the other to work it out in a less violent manner. Remember when everything is said and done the bull does most often wind up as hamburger, and the cowboy loses his ability to wear his coveted hat due to the knots on his head from his many hard landings, so it’s a non-win for both points of view. It begs that age old question “Why can’t we all just be friends.” I guess the answer for me is “I don’t know, really. I like hamburger and I like wearing my hat. That’s a tough one to answer.”

The Hitchhiker

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Early Spring in Yellowstone

It’s early spring in Yellowstone, actually it’s nearly the end of the month and where the rest of the country is looking at early flowers and sunshine, up here it’s cold, the snow keeps falling and food is hard to find.

This grizzly and her cub are up early and looking for supper. Problem is there isn’t much in the way of food right now. Snow covers everything and the ground is still frozen so digging for ground squirrels isn’t on the menu yet. Hopefully there’ll be some winter kill around. A nice frozen buffalo that didn’t make it through the winter would be welcome. Anything dead at all in fact would be welcome, she’s hungry and the cub needs its milk so she’s got to get something going in the way of sustenance.

The cub doesn’t know quite what to make of all this white stuff or the cold for that matter. It’s been snuggling with mom for so long that it’s a real shock to discover cold paws. Luckily mom has been through this all before and doesn’t mind the cub’s climbing aboard to get out of the cold wet snow.

As this is the very end of May, tomorrow will likely bring bright sunshine, rapidly melting snow and food. There’s edible grass under the snow, and on the southern side of the hillsides the ground is warm enough that she can dig out some unlucky ground squirrels, and the cub will be off her back and scrambling around discovering it’s new life out of the den. No need to hitchhike anymore.

Old No. 6

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Old No. 6 – Bull Elk – Yellowstone National Park
Memories of an old friend

I was wandering thru my wildlife portfolio when I happened across an old friend. Old No. 6 as he was known by one and all was a huge bull elk that frequented the area around the Mammoth Hotel in Yellowstone National Park. If you have ever visited Yellowstone in the Fall and seen all of the elk that wander freely about near the hotel and headquarters area you would have seen Old No. 6 majestically parading around the edges of the herd, striding through the collected cows with his incredible span of antlers held high as if he owned them, which he did by the way. At least until the Rut, the mating season, was over

He was magnificent in every way. Over 700 lbs. of pure ornery not to be interred with prime Yellowstone bull, he brooked no interference by man or beast at the best of times. At the worst of times everyone was advised to run away. Quickly and Far. Many times if he simply saw you, standing around daring to make eye contact, you were considered interference and he would try to convince you of the errors of your ways. Several eager but soon to be regretful tourists suffered a series of perforations at the ends of those needle sharp antler points and had to be treated for those wounds quickly lest they expire. As far as can be determined there were no fatalities due to confronting Old No. 6. but then they haven’t searched everywhere.

One of Old No. 6’s idiosyncrasies was to charge and attempt to fatally wound any vehicle that he deemed to be too close to his cows and calves. There were a certain number of body shops around the U.S. that owed a portion of their revenue to Old No. 6 for the holes in the body panels of the vehicles brought to them for repairs after a run in with cantankerous old No. 6. After a while he got famous enough for his bad behavior and intolerance of fools that the prestigious BBC and others came to immortalize him on film. Sadly he received no remuneration for his stardom which may have added to his curmudgeonly behavior.

Several times his behavior became so intemperate that the Park Rangers had to tranquilize him and saw off his antlers to prevent further mayhem. This event didn’t injure him in any way other than to make him even more furious but in an impotent way. It’s difficult to maintain your rep as the baddest bull out there when you have no antlers. This did little to change his attitude but it did slow down the ambulance rides and body work necessary after one of his tirades. But beyond that troublesome little fact of his anti-social demonstrations he was loved by the millions that saw him. Whenever he decided to take a break he would be immediately surrounded by the local Elkeratzzi who would take his picture. One of which was yours truly who is solely responsible for the image above. Now that he’s gone I’m glad that I took it. If he had seen it I think he would be pleased to be presented as a quiet, kindly soul, just taking a break from living life on his terms.

He’s So Mean He’d Bite His Own Self

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Rattlesnakes. That’s all you’ve got to say to give many people the Heebie Jeebies. And rightfully so. My old man, who I loving referred to as Dad, or Father if I’d done something really bad like wreck the family car or torn out the centerfold in his Playboy magazine, used to say about somebody he didn’t like much that “He’s so mean he’d bite his own self.” to make a point about the person’s character. Now biting one’s own self conjures up a picture of somebody that just couldn’t hold that meanness in no matter what and if there weren’t no one around to be mean to they’d just go ahead and bite their own selves just to feel good about being so mean.

Rattlesnakes are low down. That’s in the western, cowboy sense of not being tall, or in another way, not being of good moral fiber as in “He’s a no-good low-down snake in the grass.” meaning, well, he’s a low-down no-good snake in the grass. Stay away from it and don’t have no truck with it at all. Don’t do anything fun with it like go camping or maybe out to dinner, or even just have a friendly conversation on a hot muggy day. Because they’ll bite ya. Even if you don’t need getting bit. They’ll do it just to see that look on your face.

A really good friend of mine, a lady of good reputation from North Carolina, was one time jumping over one when it reared up and bit her in the foot. There wasn’t no need for it  to do that. She was just trying to get out of her garage and saw it laying there so rather than step on it, she’d been well brought up by a loving southern family and taught not to go stomping around on snakes, so she took a mighty leap in the air to avoid it, but that didn’t mean anything to that no-good low-down snake. It just up and bit her good while she was in mid-air.  She survived after using up most of the anti-snake venom in the western speaking world and to this day doesn’t think very highly of rattlesnakes. See that just illustrates my point. For a good southern woman who likes everything and is good her own self to everybody and everything to be made to feel that way is just not right. Rattlesnakes are just mean.

 “Why do they have to be so damned bitey all the time?” is a question asked by many snake bit or unsnake bit folks who happened to be minding their own business when coming close to one, who then experienced their meanness in one shape or another. “We wasn’t doing nothing to it and it tried to bite us. That’s low down.” See that’s the problem with the world today. There’s this feeling that everything in the natural world has got to be your friend. Well that flat is untrue. Wrong. There’s plenty of stuff in the world that doesn’t give a flat flying fig about you at all. Snakes, particularly Rattlesnakes don’t care about you. Politicians, and I almost have to apologize to snakes when I lump them together, don’t care about you. And I almost forgot, Badgers. Badgers are almost worse than snakes when it comes to not caring. For proof of that just type in badgers in the search box at the top of this page and you’ll see lots of stories about how mean and uncaring badgers is. The Thing About Badgers is just one story that proves my point. Great White Sharks is another. When is that last time you heard about a Great White Shark gently nudging a drowning baby back to the boat to be rescued. Nope you haven’t. Know why? They don’t like you. They is just mean.

The snake in the picture above is a case in point. It is currently doing life in a New Mexico, correctional facility for biting a god-fearing, but upstanding citizen who wasn’t doing nothing but trying to hit it with a stick. Unfortunately for the citizen that stick was too short and well, it ended badly. Now the snake is doing hard time for just being true to itself. Which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. They should lock them all up and it wouldn’t bother me at all. This one is participating in a new type of therapeutic rehabilitation where it is exposed to people by being placed on display in a glass cage where people can come up and bang on the glass to annoy it. The idea being that this will change the snakes attitude about people and it might, maybe could be, released back into society. It seems to be working as the snake has become pretty indifferent to people in general. But every once in a while a cute little kid will come up to the cage and raise their delicate little kid hand to smack the glass a good one when the snake will suddenly lunge at it, rapping its fangs a good one on the glass just millimeters away from burying those long teeth it that pudgy little hand. So I guess it needs a little more time in the box, so to speak.

I guess if there’s a moral to this story it’s not everything wild in this world likes you. So leave it alone. Don’t mess with it. And try to have good luck when all else fails. Because there are things out there that are so mean they’ll bite their own self just for the hell of it. Rattlesnakes is one of them. Or if you can’t do that make sure your stick is long enough.

A Moose By Any Other Name…

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A moose by any other name, would it smell as sweet? That’s the musical question that’s been asked around the dinner table for eons. Bill Shakespeare asked it once about some flower. I myself just asked it the other evening when there was a lull in the conversation, remarking “Hey! Would a moose by any other name smell as sweet?” No one in the shocked silence that ensued ventured an opinion. It is a complex issue. I even overheard it asked at one of the sanctioned Cage Fighting events I attended. Eugene the Face Masher asked it of his arch rival Constance the Nose Ripper Johnson as they entered the cage to begin their bout. It made for an interesting match as they discussed the pros and cons of the matter until one finally collapsed in the sheer exhaustion of trying to come to some agreement. That and getting a Flying Backbend Screaming Roundhouse Kick to his melon.

Having heard rumors that he was less than sweet-smelling, as many of his peers would attest by running gagging into the woods upon his approach, and I need to tell you it takes a lot to gag a moose. Plus foliage as far as a quarter of a mile downstream was wilting and gasping, turning their little petals to the sky before dropping into the stream and sailing slowly face down towards the Pacific ocean, he removed himself to the nearest stream where he could complete his ablutions and perchance be allowed to return to polite society.

 It is Spring after all and normally a young bull moose’s thoughts would turn to love but not this guy. He’s too young, he’s just got little paddles, all his thoughts turn to is stuffing his big fat face. And like many a young man he can handle that problem very well. So far he has carpet grazed this stream bed, the meadow on either side out to a half mile, and left a trail of arboreal destruction through the woods to get here of everything even remotely resembling food and is on his way to the next movable feast a mile or so downstream.

If you would like to meet this fellow simply take the backroads through the high mountains to Vail, Colorado and watch along the creek as it heads down the mountain. He’ll be there if he hasn’t completed his scorched earth policy of grazing everything to the bare rock and gone somewhere else.

When Wolves come Calling

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click to enlarge

For those of you who have not met one, wolves are very polite. Polite as in having very good manners. Being rude is one of the worst traits a wolf could have and they are taught from a very young age that it simply won’t be tolerated.

 This wolf has stopped by for tea and as custom has it, is waiting patiently at the front door to be welcomed. Unlike his portrayal in the media he is not there to eat the occupant but instead to spend part of the afternoon in quiet discourse, discussing the various topics of interest of the day. Most wolves are well versed in current events and can speak quite eloquently about social problems, various events occurring in the political arena, the classics, pop culture and about the current Bachelorette featured this season.

This particular wolf has come to visit making the rounds to kick off the new social season where wolf society presents it’s best paw forward and introduces new young wolves entering into the social fray for the first time. As a highly educated, well spoken young wolf he hopes to make a good impression and be a credit to his pack. No ear tags or lip tattoos for this young wolf, only a polite demeanor and understated confidence that reveals his true character. It’s always a pleasure when wolves come calling.