Momma giraffe

NewMexiKen visited the Rio Grande Zoo Monday, a cool but not uncomfortable day (the rain and snow came in toward evening). With me were my daughter Emily and her daughter, my 16-month-old granddaughter, Kiley. The Zoo was quiet and nearly empty, seemingly as many caretakers as visitors.

We had already enjoyed the giraffes for a few minutes when a female came from the far side of the enclosure toward us. I commented to Emily that the giraffe was coming to see us.

Sure enough the giraffe came as close as she could, her head no more than five or six feet from our viewpoint. She seemed attracted to the baby, who was hungry about then and crying.

Kiley stopped crying when she saw the giraffe. We took some photos (alas with film and not yet available). The giraffe lost interest and wandered off.

Kiley also lost interest and resumed crying. Slowly, ambling as they do, but without hesitation, the giraffe, which by then had gone around a corner out of sight about 20 yards away, came back, if anything closer.

There was absolutely no doubt in our minds that the female giraffe was interested in the crying baby. I found myself talking to the giraffe, as one would to an intelligent house pet, reassuring her that the baby was fine. It was a conversation with considerable eye-to-eye contact.

The whole incident was extraordinary.

Paige Calls NEA a ‘Terrorist’ Group

From The Washington Post:

Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige yesterday told the nation’s governors that the largest teachers union in the United States is a “terrorist organization” — a remark that prompted a torrent of criticism and an apology by the end of the day.

Paige made the comment about the 2.7 million-member National Education Association in a private meeting at the White House with the National Governors Association, less than a week after he announced the administration was relaxing testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind law. The landmark education law has come under mounting opposition, and the NEA has been among its strongest detractors.

Breath taking bravado foils speed camera

QC received a very amusing although naughty e-mail from a spy at the Department of Transport this week. Our mate informs us that four youths from Canberra recently pulled off a trick of breath taking bravado to gain revenge on a mobile speed-camera van operating in the area.

Three of the group approached the van and distracted the operator’s attention by asking a series of questions about how the equipment worked and how many cars the operator would catch in a day. Meanwhile, the fourth musketeer sneaked to the front of the van and unscrewed its number plate.

“After bidding the van operator goodbye, the friends returned home, fixed the number plate to the car and drove through the camera’s radar at high speed - 17 times,” our transport spy writes.

“As a result, the automated billing system issued 17 speeding tickets to itself. Go Aussies!”

The son must refute father’s hateful rants

Mitch Albom on Hutton Gibson.

Every now and then some nut case says the Holocaust was faked. Usually, you dismiss him as pathetic.

Last week, however, a man named Hutton Gibson told a national radio host that the Holocaust never happened, that there were no concentration camps, only “work camps,” and that Jews basically made the whole thing up.

Hutton Gibson is Mel Gibson’s father.

So this nut case must be addressed.

Ouch!

From Wampum —

The Gerber baby is 77

Novelist, 77, enjoys notoriety of being the Gerber Baby; picture sketched by family friend

From the Associated Press via SFGate.

Plague and pestilence

[J]ust like the hand-wringin’ pseudo-sanctimonious Christian Right predicted. Horrors bled into the streets, presidents lied so as to lead a nation into bloody violent unwinnable war, tens of thousands of Catholic priests groped and molested countless children over a 50-year period without the slightest punishment, the environment teetered on the brink due to government rollbacks as air quality and water quality and food sources were ravaged in the name of corporate profiteering, the economy crumbled…Oh wait. That was all *before* the gay marriage thing.

–Mark Morford, The Morning Fix

Who’s running against this guy?

Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) says Bush’s plan for illegal immigrants goes too far. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Tancredo told the California Republican Convention that he knew a gynecologist who surveyed patients and found it [Bush's plan] “rated right below genital herpes.” Tancredo also said America had taken “rabid, overstated multiculturalism” too far.

Mt. Suribachi

The U.S. Marines raised the American flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on this date in 1945.

Happy Birthday

Kristin Davis of Sex in the City is 39.

Patricia Richardson of Home Improvement is 53.

It’s the birthday of the first blogger

Samuel Pepys was born in London on this date in 1633. Pepys kept a diary from 1659-1669, writing about the major events of the time, but also the day-to-details of his life.

Here’s the entry from Pepys’ Diary for February 22, 1660/1661.

All the morning at the office. At noon with my wife and Pall to my father’s to dinner, where Dr. Thos. Pepys and my coz Snow and Joyce Norton. After dinner came The. Turner, and so I home with her to her mother, good woman, whom I had not seen through my great neglect this half year, but she would not be angry with me. Here I staid all the afternoon talking of the King’s being married, which is now the town talk, but I believe false. In the evening Mrs. The. and Joyce took us all into the coach home, calling in Bishopsgate Street, thinking to have seen a new Harpsicon that she had a making there, but it was not done, and so we did not see it. Then to my home, where I made very much of her, and then she went home. Then my wife to Sir W. Batten’s, and there sat a while; he having yesterday sent my wife half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, and a pair of silk stockings and garters, for her Valentine’s gift. Then home and to bed.