Quarantine entry #84 - June 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and that is why the media is doing their best to create their own… one that is even worse. No, I am not talking about ‘Artemis Fowl-2020’ – we’ve already talked about it; I wouldn’t say that it is ‘Cats-2019’-level bad, but it is still a disaster, and one that Disney & Disney+ were glad to get over with – it could’ve been the launch of a new franchise, but instead, it’s just a dumpster fire and it is over now. What next?

While Disney+ epically failed with ‘Artemis Fowl’, (it made even the ‘John Carter’ movie look good, in my opinion), the other mass media outlets do something else – release a metaphorical torrent of news about cops acting badly. Sigh. Their actions may look convincing, but I cannot help but to feel that this is not quite what the real situation in the U.S. is, period. What next?

Let us talk about wild donkeys instead, or wild asses, though I am not certain if that term is PC enough. As they were mentioned before, these animals are close relatives of zebras, very distant – of rhinos and tapirs, and middling to horses, hence why donkey-horse hybrids, (mules, etc.) are sterile. Zebra-donkey hybrids are less known, but they occur in captivity, because in the wild, wild asses and zebras do not really interbreed. Why?

Well, firstly, what are the wild asses/donkeys? There is the African wild ass, Equus africanus, (two subspecies). It – well, its’ Nubian subspecies – is the most likely ancestor of the domestic animal. The wild Nubian ass is considered to be extinct, by the way, while its’ cousin the Somali wild ass is critically endangered, and it lives on the African Red Sea coast, where few, if any, zebras are found instead.

The other two wild donkey species are Asian animals instead. They are the kiang, (or the Tibetan wild ass, Equus kiang, 3 subspecies), and the onager or the Asian wild ass proper, (Equus hemionus, 5 subspecies). There are no species of zebras in Asia, so they are clear from hybridization. Pause. What next?

While the rhinoceros species of the world are all doing badly, with the wild asses, the situation is more heterogeneous. The African wild ass is critically endangered, as it was said before, but the onager is ‘only’ near threatened and the kiang is actually ‘least concern’, as far as IUCN and the like are concerned. Go donkeys! In the world, where people are going stupidly insane, the donkey, which used to be a near synonym for being stubborn and/or stupid, seems to be fairly well, on some level at least. There are even some specialized pet breeds of domestic donkey in the modern world, so this version of the African wild ass seems to be doing well.

…Of course, it all might have to do with good karma or the like – in particular, in the New Testament portion of the Bible, the donkey is considered to be one of the ‘good’ or ‘sacred’ animals, so, who knows? Maybe there is some substance behind the style?

…Then again, the same could be said about the 2020 ‘Artemis Fowl’ movie – while its’ plot seems to be really thin, the movie’s style almost becomes substance on a certain level, giving AF at least some positive aspects. …And also JG’s performance and looks – he appears to be almost a variant Hagrid, I reckon. No offense to dame Judy Dench, but this is not her best appearance slash performance; it is not ‘Cats-2019’, but neither is it anything good.

What is good are ‘Barkskins’ on NatGeo, but people are largely ignoring them for whatever reasons, and that’s just weird. Ah well, it is also real life. It sucks.

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #66 - May 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though it is weird sometimes – for example, there is a granny of a singer, who is both over 90, and owns over a dozen of mature and fully-grown lions and tigers, (though not bears, apparently – somehow, she had missed them). The good singer is actually half-boasting about that – I am guessing she is waiting for the mammals to eat the granny and then be acquitted, because they are, well, animals, and are not really subjected to the American law…and if they are euthanized or whatever when the granny gets eaten, it’s no skin off the singer’s nose either – win-win. What next?

The province of Ontario – during the long weekend – broke all of the rules of social distancing, yet they still want the borders with U.S. closed. Imbeciles. This is why I hate other people too, and not just myself. Ergo, let us talk about the other animals instead – and how about the walrus?

…Yes, we’ve talked about the walrus a long time ago, when we’ve discussed the AFO episode ‘Polar bear vs. Walrus’ – remember it?.. but first, here is a shout-out to NatGeo’s latest mini TV-series, ‘Barkskins’, which we’ve mentioned earlier as well. This is a fairly decent and enjoyable drama, and a pleasant change from ‘The Wrong Missy’ and ‘The Lovebirds’ that we’ve discussed earlier.

As for the walrus itself…where to start? The walrus is the biggest pinniped of the Northern Hemisphere – males can reach up to 4 m in length and weigh up to 2 metric tons. Despite its physical similarity with the eared seals, (aka fur seals & sea lions) rather than the true seals, the walrus is in its own group, not exactly too close to either of the seal groups, and it is a single species, with two or three subspecies, (scientists are not sure about the number).

The walruses prefer to live in the shallows of the northern seas, where they feed on bottom-dwelling sea animals – molluscs, worms, crustaceans, etc. There are stories about walrus orphans that became full carnivores, but that evidence is anecdotal, and in the last few decades there wasn’t any new ones, so that is probably a salty sea tale or whatever.

Once, the walruses lived all over the Arctic waters, living in herds of hundreds, if not thousands of animals. Now, however, their numbers have fallen – even with the conservation efforts, the global warming is affecting them as well as the polar bears, and the walrus females are not that much more fertile than their polar bear counterparts are – they become sexually mature only at four to five years of age, and give birth to new pups only every three to four years. The pups in question grow slowly – for the first two years they feed only on milk, but during that time, they grow up to 2 m in length and over 300 kg in weight.

…The walruses supposedly grow until they reach about 20 years of age, and they live for a very long time, if they survived their initial childhood. Humans aside, the only animals that mess with fully grown walruses are killer whales and polar bears – and it’s a mixed bag with polar bears, (they prefer to go after walrus pups and females, not the mature males, and if they can afford it, they go for seals instead), and as for killer whales… I have not seen much evidence of killer whale on walrus attacks, so I am guessing that they would rather eat anything else than a walrus first, especially a mature male one.

Finally, here is a piece of the original fiction about it instead:

A walrus is a big and heavy beast. It looks like a bag of blubber, but got plenty of brawn too.

A walrus has two ivory tusks jutting from beneath the bristly moustache. It got flippers instead of feet, too. A walrus is an aquatic beast.

A walrus will dive deep and graze on the sea floor like a cow on a meadow. It eats seaweed and mollusks, and once it is done, the walrus will emerge, grab an ice floe or the shoreline with its tusks and get out of the water completely. It will lie down and sleep.

… Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!