Tag Archives: Latin

The Joy Of Birding

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Avocet Chick – Bear River Migratory bird refuge

Birding is one if those things people do to get outside and commune with nature where many of the wild birds live. Their sole purpose is to look at those birds and say “I saw you, now I can go home and have a beer.” They make a list of all the different kinds of birds they’ve seen over the years and write them down in a little book, which is called their ‘Life List’. This is shown to other birders and gets them Street Cred in the “I saw a bird and you didn’t” world of birding.

This is not a sport for the uneducated. You can’t be stone cold dumb and be a birder. Many birders have attended highly prestigious places of edification where they don’t necessarily teach birding per se, but they do teach Latin which is used to name and classify bird species and confuse non Latin speakers. This makes the Latin user appear to be much brighter than the poor unwashed non Latin speaker and maintains the guild system that we Americans seem to love so much. It also keeps the rif-raf where they belong and the superior, well, superior. This system is primarily human based as the birds themselves couldn’t give a flying fig about what people call them. Except for peacocks, they are so vain.

One of the burning questions in the birding world is where to go to see birds. Where do they live? Are they accessible to Americans? Does one have to quarantine before looking at a bird? Can you see a bird if you don’t know its Latin name? What do they eat? Are they carnivorous? Do they favor the various root vegetables such as Rutabaga or Turnips? We know they don’t like Parsnips, nobody likes parsnips. These are just a few of the questions asked by people who don’t know any better but want to know so they can move up in the birding world.

One of the places where you can go and look at a bird is one of the various wildlife refuges. This is land that the government has deemed to be of absolutely no other use and therefore suitable to warehouse our excessive bird inventory. Species like those little brown birds you see pecking at everything everywhere. They’re all over the place. You’ve probably tripped over them. It’s very likely they have a Latin name of some sort but who knows what it is. Even if you heard it you wouldn’t know what it meant so one can safely discount and ignore them and go on to look at more interesting birds.

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge near Brigham City, Utah is one of those holding pens where excess birds are held until they’re needed elsewhere. There you can see huge quantities of birds. They have them stacked all over the place. There are whole fields of those little brown birds spoken of before, which has been learned are actually a house sparrow or the Latin named Passer domesticus. There are great huge lumps of the White Faced Ibis piled willy nilly in unsightly stacks anywhere it’s wet. There you can select an assortment of birds for your own migratory bird refuge, if you have one. Way in the back of the refuge where it’s quieter, is an enormous area filled with lockers where larger birds such as the Tundra Swan are kept until it’s time to cut them loose and send them on up to the Tundra where apparently they are desperately needed at different times of the year.

One of the all time favorites for birders is the American Avocet. The image above is of a young Avocet or chick as they’re more vulgarly known. They look surprisingly like an adult Avocet only smaller. Its bill or beak has yet to grow into the graceful recurve that it uses to sweep through and syphon the water for its favorite food, the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae which is only found here at the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. At least it is believed to be the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae. There were no explanatory signs to indicate what the food is so an assumption was made which is believed to be close to what ever it is that the young Avocet or Chick is eating.

If you are interested in ‘Birding’ or its companion sport ‘Snake-ing’ you can contact any sporting goods store where they’ll sell you everything you might possibly need in the way of birding equipment. They also might tell you where to see birds but I wouldn’t count on that. However you already know where to go as you have just been told right here. It’s the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. So, Happy Birding then, and look down occasionally, that’s where the snakes are.

A Wolf By Any Other Name…

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*The Institute is known for many things. We are a world-wide phenomenon that not only carries out complex, some say irresponsible experiments, but we also look at current and age-old conventions that litter the scientific community like political lawn signs the day after the election. These are mostly losers signs as the winners pick theirs up right away as souvenirs but the losers, already out of cash from shooting their wad trying to win, leave theirs up until someone files a public nuisance charge against them. But that’s neither here nor there right now. We just mention it because nobody likes a loser.

One of the oldest procedures the scientific community has is the naming of stuff. It doesn’t matter if that stuff is already named, they name it again with special scientific nomenclature that nobody but them and a few nerds who took Latin in high school understand. This is why they can get the big bucks when someone asks “What the hell is That?”, with “That” being anything the asker doesn’t know about.

This is how they keep their knowledge from the general run of the mill people who never went to college, or if they did, didn’t study, and how they maintain an almost impenetrable clique of smart guys. So to make it even harder for normal people to join their ranks they developed a way to name things that only they understood, so when they used this new naming language the regular guys just kind of stared at them blankly and had to ask ” uh, what does that mean?’ thereby giving the scientific guys all the power and the ability to laugh at the poor unwashed who appeared to be really dumb. Which of course they wielded unmercifully.

Soon with all these Latin names attached to everything, you didn’t know if you had picked up a spoon or a platypus because you no longer had a name that you recognized. You had to give the scientific community something, like money or chickens, to be able to get the right word for spoon so you could eat whatever gruel you had for supper that night. This has gone on for years.

Take this wolf in the picture above for instance. We had to fight tooth and nail to get the word Wolf back in general usage, ripping it away from the scientific community who wanted you to call it Canis lupus and berated, ostracized and ridiculed anyone who said ‘wolf’ without going through them first. Uncaring of the hardship this placed on the little people who had to say things like “Looks like the Canis lupus ate little Everett last night. Oh woe are us” or the shepherd who upon seeing wolves attacking his sheep had to run to the village screaming “Canis lupus, Canis lupus they are eating the sheep!” Actually it was worse that that as the sheep had been renamed Ovis aries and by the time they had found one of the smart guys and got all that sorted there weren’t any sheep left. Nothing but a few hooves and that small bell one of them wore around his neck. Even that had tooth marks on it.

Well, what the scientific community didn’t know, but is quickly finding out, is that we have some of those smart guys here at The Institute too. We got ’em because they got their nose out of joint at some important scientific meeting where everybody else laughed at their presentation and told them they were dorks and imbeciles for even bringing up such drivel. So we got them. Cheap too. They couldn’t wait to get back at all of those really smart guys who thought they were so much smarter because their presentations actually made sense and weren’t nuts.

We immediately put them to work deciphering all of the arcane hard to understand names that are in use just to keep normal people stupid and ashamed of their ignorance. A lot of these guys we hired pretty much knew Latin, at least enough that we could get a lot of the simple names translated. Ones like, cat which in Latin is  Felis silvestris catus, or Orangutan which is also in Latin and is Borneo or Sumatran Orangutan. To give you just a small example of how the public has been duped, and put at risk, the Orangutan has been classified, in Latin of course, the language of those smarter than you, Ponginae, Gigantopithecus including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. See what we mean? How are you going to get all that out if you’re calling Animal Control because you have one in your backyard. They’re just going to hang up on you and you’ll be left to fend for yourself, Orangutan-wise.

The Institute has decided enough is enough. We are going to give the power back to the people as far as naming stuff goes. If you know something by some name like maybe Lawnmower, which is Mower Ridingicus Searsii in Latin, you just call it lawnmower, forget all that Latin crap, or calling  Names R Us for the proper Latin name and getting charged big on your Visa. Think of the freedom you’ll have from the tyranny of the Scientific World. Think of the money you’ll save from just hollering out “Hey Orang! Get outa my yard!” That’s the kind of work we do here at The Institute. Bringing back Power To The People. And as always, this is free to you our readers, so Remember, We’re The Institute and we’re here to help.

PS If you have have been stuck using some difficult Latin name for something and you want the real actual name people use, send it to us via email and we’ll put some of our smarter guys on it. They’re just kind of sitting around doing nothing since they’ve got a lot of  the simple names translated. We have to feed and take care of these guys so they should be doing some thing useful.

* 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.

Flash Frozen

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What we have here is a very strange and unusual sight. Many of you out there in reader land, not being buffalologists, do not know that there are several type’s of Buffalo in Yellowstone park. The Institute in its quest for knowledge and a new way to twist the facts for our own ends, have discovered a hither to unknown variety of buffalo which we have named bison bison congelata which loosely translated from the Latin means “one frozen ass buffalo”. We apologize for the rude language but the Latin’s were a crude people, not withstanding the fact that they could speak Latin, which now-a-days would make them really smart.

What makes these buffalo different from your run of mill buffalo that brings traffic to a stand still while they lay in the middle of the road chewing their cud like big fat lumps? Well for one, they’re cold-blooded. That’s right, just like a lizard, or a snake, which in certain light and after a quart of Everclear they have been mistaken for. We have had interns screaming “Snake, Snake!” when it’s only been one of these buffalo. But then we have had that same intern screaming “Buffalo, Buffalo!” when it has been a snake so take all that screaming with a grain of salt.

Scorpions are also cold-blooded creatures which will sting you stupid with their poisonous tail but so far our researchers have not ascertained whether this new breed of buffalo can sting with its tail or not. We know for sure that when they’re active they can flat stomp you into the ground then hook you if they see you twitching. But so far no stings.

This particular buffalo has been caught in the classic dilemma facing all cold-blooded creatures. When your blood runs cold natures’ defense is to get you somewhere warm, otherwise your blood congeals to the point of peanut butter and it can no longer flow through your body and keep you active. As the blood cools and congeals cold-blooded creatures begin to get muddled and forgetful, often misplacing things like their car keys or that Post it note telling them to get somewhere warm before it gets cold. Then they become completely immobile, literally freezing in place.

That’s what has happened here. This cold-blooded buffalo had been crossing the Gibbon river to get to the warming shed before the temperature dropped any further when he made the classic bovine mistake. He stopped to eat some of the grass there along the river bank. Stuck his big fat head right into a clump of buffalo grass. There you are, game over, the temp dropped and that was it. Dumb mistake, but remember the muddled part, which probably played a big part in its becoming Flash Frozen.

There’s no fixing it now. These guys weigh in at about 2000 lbs so you’re not going to be dragging it off somewhere. Plus you’d have to get in that water which right now is very cold and if you didn’t bring waders and a come-a-long you’re not going to get much done. However all is not lost here. Being a cold-blooded creature as soon as the sun comes out in the morning he’ll start to warm up, finish chewing that mouthful of grass and be on his way. That is if the wolves don’t find him during the night.

This is a worrisome thought for the buffalo as he is not dead, he is just temporarily frozen, he can hear, probably even see even if he can’t turn his head, so the night is long and filled with terrors if you’re a flash frozen buffalo. We had heard the pack howling earlier but it seemed a long way off. They probably won’t find him.

The Moral of this tale is, “Pay Attention. Keep an eye on the weather. Don’t lose the damn Post it. And don’t believe everything you read.”