Tag Archives: legless

Legless George and The Birthday Bear

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Legless George wasn’t always legless. In fact at one time he had two perfectly good legs, one on either side of his body, and had full command of how they worked. He did not always exercise the best decision-making protocol as to when, or when not to use them as we shall see momentarily. But first let me back up a little so you can understand George or Legless, as we came to call him, a little more fully.

George Clemency Baxter was an intern here at *The Institute during what we liked to call our Yellowstone days. He was a cheerful chap full of enthusiasm and a burning desire to observe and get close to our friends the grizzly bears who resided in the park. He was always the first in line to volunteer to help position the bears into the proper poses we needed for our photographs and had developed a close relationship with several of them including Crystal Hamstringer our lovely young female subject pictured above. Normally George and Crystal had a close working relationship, some would say too close, and that perhaps there were some unspoken feelings spoken by George at the wrong time, in the wrong place and that may have led up to what occurred next.

As near as we can put together from George’s mumbling then screaming then mumbling again, it was Crystal’s birthday and he may have made some off-color reference to her age or her disposition and then the rest gets a little fuzzy. According to George who was understandably upset and was having difficulty remembering the exact sequence of events what with all the growling, screaming, chewing and swallowing noises, not to mention the rending and tearing that was going on. And due to the fact that he was having all two of his legs tore off by a petulant grizzly it was hard to hear just what exactly he had said that caused this reaction in a normally well-mannered bear like Crystal. It ‘s been said that women or we should say females in general, don’t need much of an excuse to tear a fellows legs off even when they’re not having a birthday so it could have been anything.

 Of course by then the damage such as it was, was done. George was legless, Crystal was upset and the situation had deteriorated to its lowest point. We were all pretty bummed. It was then that another intern, I forget who, said “Hey! Lets call him Legless.” and the hilarity ensued. Fortunately we had some 4×4 gauze pads and ace bandages in the trunk of the Bokeh Maru our lead expedition vehicle, and we got George bandaged up enough to get him to the Ranger station even though we were laughing so hard we lost those little metal things that hold the ace bandages in place and had to tie a Bowline knot to keep them there. Their medico’s got him ready for transport to the legless ward in Boise fairly quickly.  Of course telling us that, the going to the legless ward part, got the whole legless thing going again and there were people staggering all over the place saying “Legless, legless” and snorting through their noses and just generally trying not to wet themselves and we all got tossed out of the Ranger station but it was all in good fun. Legless was off to get fixed up, see there we go again, we just can’t stop saying Legless. We went back to tell Crystal how George was doing and to recover our camera which George had left there.

It was then that we noticed how blurry the image was and how difficult it is to see George’s left leg but look close and you can see it dangling from her mouth, or it might have been the right one it’s really hard to tell which one Crystal was holding, and as Crystal was still in a snit we didn’t opt for any more shots right then. Legless was pretty P.O’d at us for not retrieving his legs as he had some misguided idea that they could be reattached but Crystal had made fairly quick work of that prospect.

We guess the moral of this story if there is one, is don’t make any but the blandest comments to a birthday bound female if you want to keep your legs. We recommend something like “Life is short. Smile while you still have teeth.” or  “I’m not making any age related jokes because I generally feel bad about how old you are.” or our personal favorite ” Your birthday reminds me of the old Chinese scholar, Yung No Mo.” All of these are preferable to whatever it was that Legless George said. We think.

* 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.

Interesting Bird Facts For You And Me

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2016-07-03Legless Stilt-6

Well, it’s time for another segment in our ongoing series, Interesting Bird Facts For You And Me. *The Institute has a large Ornithology department made up of highly trained bird men and women who have various degrees of knowledge about birds. We send them out periodically to look at birds to see if they’re ( the birds not the investigators) are doing anything different inside of their bird lives. Usually they aren’t so it’s a waste of time as we know most things about birds already. After all we’re looking for the unusual, the breakthrough information about birds that hasn’t been reported on yet. The exclusives of the bird world. Think of us as the National Inquirer of bird lore.

Much of the time we get back reports on bird “A” which says it flies around a lot and eats bugs. We already know that. Or they sit in trees endlessly singing bird songs usually the same one over and over, or whistle endlessly. We know that already too. So we fire those guys that send us that stuff. This does two things. It inspires the rest to find new and interesting facts and saves us money by cutting out the humdrum individuals in the expedition.

After a firing or two we start getting in some real facts. Some with real meat on them. Stuff we can publish and get paid for. Handsomely I might add. Such as this newly discovered bird called the “One-legged Wall hugger”. Formerly this bird was thought to be a freak of Nature as it appeared to have only one leg. Well, was everybody wrong about that. This is not your common run of the mill one-legged bird that you see hanging around on corners with cardboard signs saying “Anything Helps”. No, un uhh, this is something else entirely. This is new bird behavior that has never been reported before.

 What appears to be a physical defect is actually a biological trick the bird plays on Ornithologists and the Public at large and most importantly female One-legged Wall-huggers that actually have two legs all the time. This difference in physiology was confusing at first but everyone soon got over it. This new behavior is actually a mating ploy to get the female of the species to take pity on them and mate with them to make the apparently injured male feel better. This works pretty good for the male and hence it has developed into a genetic trait that is passed down from one generation to another.

Here’s how it works. Of course this bird has two legs. But what wasn’t known before was the fact that the male of the species absorbs one of his legs and appears to be left with only one leg. Our trained observers have labeled this behavior as being “Legless”, not to be confused with staying at the bar way too long, drinking until you become legless. This gives the bird the time to appear dejected and pathetic, thereby getting lucky in the meantime. Meanwhile the absorbed leg is regenerated in a pocket under the birds feathers until it is fully reformed. At that point the new leg is extended down to the ground and the other leg promptly falls off, again giving the appearance of being one-legged. To make the leg changing process even more seamless the bird has ejected both his middle toe and back toe to make entry and egress into the special leg pocket easier for the newly regenerated leg and to give a more pleasing appearance to the foot.

There you have it. Brand new facts about a little known bird and why it does what it does. Watch for this story and more unusual facts to appear on your favorite wildlife channel and supermarket tabloids everywhere. It won’t probably be there but it will give you something interesting to do while you wait to check out. For further information or questions about the wildlife you see and love, write us or call us on our new 900 number. Please have your credit card ready when making this call. Stay tuned for new and even more preposterous facts from the only place that has them The Institute.

* 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.

Drunk and Disorderly

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2015-09-23-09-23Drunk5348

There has been a lot of talk in the press lately about the disappearance of bees. The main point of their argument is that once we were up to our asses keesters in bees, and now you have to put an ad on Craigslist to meet one. They’re just gone. No note, no warning, no packing up their honey and leaving, They’re just gone. Well, people whose lives depend on honey and the necessary bees to manufacture it, are understandably upset and rightly so. How are they going to make a living if they can’t exploit the genetic obsession of bees to create honey.

This bee loss thing causes lots of problems. One of which is, if bees are gone what are we, as concerned parents, going to use for that all important Sex Talk? The birds and The Horses? The birds and the Ferrari F12 berlinetta with its direct-injection 6262 cc 65° V12 engine? Although the Ferrari holds some promise as a suitable replacement for the bees, it still doesn’t have the cache of the birds and the bees. So you can see there is a real problem facing us if we lose our bees.

As to the question, Where are all our bees going, I believe our special team of world-renown, Institute-trained Apiologists, or people who do nothing else in their small, pitiful lives but study bees, talk about bees, photograph bees, look at bees, count bees, worry about bees and countless other bee related activities, have come up with a possible theory. They postulate that the primary reason for bee loss is they get hammered from drinking the nectar of flowers and fall out of the bloom onto the ground where they are promptly eaten by things that eat bees, hence a gone bee. A bee that does not return. A bee that is now for all practical purposes dead.

This is an interesting theory. Nectar has an alcohol content, because of the fermented sugar it contains, that is slightly higher than Everclear or roughly about 800% by volume, and you know that if you have ever been trashed on Everclear you lose many of your primary motor skills and fall down striking your face on the curb chipping both of your front teeth. This also leads to an infraction of California’s Penal code 390D (Drunk, Unconscious) and if you’re really unlucky a 314 (Indecent Exposure) or a 288 (Lewd Conduct) Both of these are bad. Since it can be assumed that you weigh approximately way more than you should and the alcohol effects you in that manner, what does it do to a bee that only weighs like a minus .004% of a gram. They become legless, or in this case wingless, and then the inevitable happens. It’s a major trip down to the waiting open maw of the local bee eating critter. [Who by the way sometimes gets a major buzz going from eating too many bees, but that’s a problem for another time.] And that means one less bee. And that means we are well on our way to becoming bee-less.

When put to the question our nerdful Apiologists stutter and stammer and produce very little in the way of a possible solution. Some of their suggestions suggest that they had been sipping nectar before attending this briefing.  Suggestions like, taping the flowers shut at the peak of the nectar producing season, finding alternate forms of employment for the bees to keep them from doing what Nature intended them to do, forming and requiring attendance at a 12 step program, requiring the bees to buy carbon credits to offset the loss of honey, but as no one in America understands how carbon credits work this is beyond a stupid idea, and finally, locking them in their hives. It is our own personal opinion that we have a long way to go before we can bring closure to this problem.

Right now all we can do is watch and wait. Oh, you can pick up the occasional drunken bee and put it back on the flower but that only compounds the problem. You know what it’s going to do as soon as it regains consciousness. It’s going to hit that nectar again and then you have a 911 problem on your hand. What we do here at The Institute is gather up the ripped little buggers and take then to the bee ward in our dispensary. There they are placed into little bee-sized beds, and  sometimes held down with little restraints to keep their little wings safe. Then they are given fluids and massive dosages of vitamin B-12 and if they recover they’re sent on their way, hopefully with a new understanding of the risks involved in consuming too much nectar. It’s expensive, time-consuming and delicate work but we feel that in doing so we’ve helped Mother Nature and gained like huge karma points. Also we get our pick of the new honey crop. So if you see an unconscious bee or one that is spinning around uncontrollably pick it up and fix it. You’ll be a better person for it.