The Denver Zoo staff brought out Chilean flamingo chicks for a walk around the zoo. Zookeepers let them out of their enclosures for physical therapy and exercise. pic.twitter.com/vsRruTXtOL
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 30, 2020
If I recall correctly, from my childhood (the Bronx Zoo was inordinately proud of its flamingo breeding program, back in the 1960s), flamingos sound like these guys, only magnified a thousand times:
Wildlife taking over public spaces, lab-style. Turn up the incredible sound. #cranes #Florida @scrippsresearch @FAUJupiter pic.twitter.com/DXfPiH2zXd
— Stacey Singer DeLoye (@StaceySinger) April 30, 2020
Or then again…
NotMax
Better fit in a respite thread than downstairs, so repeating.
Looking for something not taxing and amiable with which to pass some time? Unpretentious and engaging is a documentary available on Prime about nonagenarian Broadway producer Leonard Soloway, a gentleman radiating likability, possessed of natural good humor and seemingly unwavering equanimity.
japa21
Love the sound of Sand Hill cranes.
Betty Cracker
Sandhill cranes are super-common where I live, and lately I’ve seen pairs out with their adorable, long-legged, fuzzy chicks. So cute! They are very loud. When they fly overhead in family units, they sound off constantly, I guess to keep track of where everyone is?
It’s also quite an experience to see their courtship dances: they make even LOUDER noises and jump up and down (as one does). Delightful birds all around, though they’ll tear up a golf course green in two seconds in search of food! (I certainly don’t hold it against them!)
TaMara (HFG)
Every spring at the Denver Zoo, they have the flamingo walk, when they take them from their winter enclosure to their summer open-air water enclosure. It’s a big event and they walk right through the crowds (well, the people are back a ways).
We get news reports frequently about how lonely the animals are at the zoo. The giraffes especially and they are forever bugging the keepers and horticulture staff for attention.
WaterGirl
Even the cranes are social distancing!
TaMara (HFG)
@Betty Cracker: OMG, we may need photos of those babies.
Betty Cracker
@TaMara (HFG): I’ve been trying to get one! Have only gotten crappy, blurry phone shots so far because I never seem to have the Nikon handy when I see them and don’t want to get too close and disturb them with a phone…
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
So much like people.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: It’s my understanding that they have this in common with humans, who also tend do to make LOUDER noises than usual during their courtship dances, which noises may indeed be accompanied by a rhythmic motion, though perhaps not actually jumping up and down.
Crashman06
This is just a vent into the void but boy, am I feeling hopeless about nearly everything today; not a good feeling for a Friday! Not just the situation with the virus and our national leadership, but daily life. I had thought that after a while, we’d fall into a new “normal” routine, but instead, every week is just getting harder: two adults trying to piece together full-time jobs every day, a bored eighteen-month old, and a first grader who hates and is frustrated by all distance learning and just desperately wants to go back to real school. Don’t get me wrong; we’re tremendously privileged to be in this position, and lots of others are in much worse places. But, this is just hard. Really hard.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Humans have beer goggles. Do flamingos have shrimp goggles?
:)
NotMax
@Crashman06
Too brief a diversion but sounds as if a make your own sundae night with the young’un might be in order.
TaMara (HFG)
A little bit of National Geographic going on in my backyard. Gabe had a squirrel trapped on the split-rail fence. Squirrel running back and forth, Gabe tracking. What caught my attention was the ducks, standing in a row, watching with rapt attention like they were at a sporting event.
I finally let the dogs out to distract Gabe and give the squirrel a chance to bolt.
Crashman06
@NotMax: This is a really great idea; thank you! I can see some big smiles all around. I’m adding everything I’ll need to the list for my grocery run tomorrow.
kindness
I loved The Bronx Zoo. The Central Park Zoo is good for toddlers and little children. The Bronx Zoo was a real zoo. We used to go on class field trips at least once a year.
CaseyL
What great videos! Sandhill cranes are BIG.
Yesterday I caught Oscar on the porch eating a bird. The worst part was another bird in a nearby tree, screaming. I don’t know if it was just warning everyone else a predator was there, or the luckless finch’s mate. Either way, my heart just plummeted. Oscar is 12, and I thought he was getting too old (and fat!) for successful hunting.
So no more “outies.” He can go onto the (quite large) main balcony, but not out into the great wide world. Let’s see how long that lasts.
trollhattan
Cranes winter in regional wildlife refuges and you can hear that distinctive croaking at night, while flocks migrate many thousands of feet overhead. Wonderfully eerie, and quite different than the geese.
Last fall a buddy and I were camping in the high Sierra and in the evening a whooshing sound approached, passed overhead and departed towards the west. We’re looking at one another in one of those Did I just imagine that? moments so no, not a hallucination. Figure it was either a flock of mute migrating birds or some bizarre military hardware from a base in the region. “Twilight Zone” theme was that night’s earworm.
narya
@Crashman06: It IS hard. If I could I’d make dinner for all of you–though it sounds like you have dessert covered. :-) I don’t have any wise words; just acknowledging/witnessing here.
JPL
@Crashman06: My son and his wife both work at home but only have a fourteen month old. I can’t imagine what they would do with two. I am impressed that you haven’t felt overwhelmed sooner.
KjsBrooklyn
@Crashman06: It is. Good to have a place to come and vent
germy
Crashman06
@narya:
@JPL:
Thanks for the acknowledgement. It does help. I don’t have much of an outlet for the frustration. Both our families are hundreds of miles away at the least, and even though they wouldn’t be able to visit us if they were close, the distance is an additional emotional weight. We’re starting to wonder when we’ll be able to see them in person again.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@TaMara (HFG): Every once in a while I have those National Geographic moments around here, and I realize that the quiet little human suburb may be a tougher neighborhood for some of the wildlife.
The other day I saw something that caused me to google “Are squirrels carniverous?” And the answer was apparently yes, sometimes.
Barbara
@Crashman06: I don’t have a toddler I have a teenager and I am also finding it harder and harder. This week was definitely worse than last week. The first grader — wow — that must be super difficult. My only advice is to try to come up with a schedule and stick to it, including not scheduling conference calls when it’s your turn for the child minding. That’s what my co-workers with young children are trying to do.
Fair Economist
Here’s one of those flamingo dancing videos. They also are rather like humans in that they get together in large groups to show off their moves, which they use to pair up although the process is quite opaque to outsiders.
Crashman06
@Barbara: It’s amazing how much harder it’s getting; sorry that you’re experiencing that too. A coworker, who has a college student and a high school student, told me the same thing this week. It’s harder for everyone.
oldster
Did you know that flamingos are only pink because of a special kind of shrimp that the eat?
The shrimp, in turn, are only pink because they eat flamingos.
Ah, the cycles of nature!
TomatoQueen
Animal Planet’s The Zoo series has episodes about The Bronx Zoo, including one about their flamingo flock. One of the flock pops an ACL (not while playing soccer) and we get to follow her progress as she is treated and recovers. Flamingoes are tough and the Bronx Zoo staff are a bunch of cupcakes.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
Because Twitter occasionally has moments of actual wit and creativity, someone has this comment on the flamingos encountering the penguins:
twitter.com/pinkrocktopus/status/1255281809140658179?s=21
zhena gogolia
@Crashman06:
I think this week was when everyone started to kind of lose it. Without BJ I’d be a screaming wreck (I still am at times). And yes, I realize I’m in a hugely privileged position and try to remind myself of that every day.
zhena gogolia
@a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio:
Great nym!
Ohio Mom
Crashman06: It’s hard to be happy when your kid is not.
I’d be content enough with just puttering around the house but my 22 year old autistic son is at such loose ends. All his regular activities — his classes, his job, his recreation program, his Saturday outings with his grandmother — are on hold and he hasn’t the internal resources to find new ways of occupying himself. He also doesn’t have the sense of time to be confident that this is only an interlude. So I think I get what you are feeling.
NotMax’s idea of a mini ice social sounds delightful. May I suggest you start a photo diary of your son’s days, with simple captions — you two can write it together, day by day: “I can’t go to school so I work on the computer. It’s not as much fun as being with my teacher and friends but I am still learning new things.” “Saturday we had ice cream!” You get the idea.
It will give a shape to his days, remind him that even in the drugery of staying in place, there were moments of joy. He will be dealing with his memories of the quaratine for a long time, maybe the book will be a keepsake help him process them in a productive way.
Hang in there!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Not losing it, but the motivation had taken a nosedive this week.
Ohio Mom
The Bronx Zoo! Until I was eight, we lived a ten minute drive away. We were there a LOT.
My happiest memories are when my exhausted parents would spring for the trolley ride. Either they had great endurance or were very budget conscious, because that didn’t happen too often.
Yes, I remember the flamingos, though the elephants were my favorite. And the special plastic key (looked like it belonged to a teething set) that with a simple turn in a speaker box in front of an exhibit, played a very scratchy, muffled recording of facts about the animal.
Crashman06
@Ohio Mom: That sounds so hard; I’m sorry that things are so disrupted for him.
Your photobook idea is a great one. I think I may try to do that!
Barbara
@Ohio Mom: That’s a great idea! Allowing him to “write” a journal focusing on “what I learned/did” today would be great too. Sending it to relatives would make it special.
My sister works with people who have disabilities similar to your son’s, though perhaps more profound because their families are no longer able to care for them in their own home. My impression is that this is excruciatingly difficult for them, because of the limitations on outings and family visitors. But many have serious health conditions as well.
yellowdog
@TaMara (HFG): Giraffes are insincere.
Brachiator
The Bowery Boys podcast and web site has a fun episode about May 1 Moving Day, a New York custom from the days of the Dutch through World War Two
Moving Day
ETA. Trying to add link from my smartphone. Hope it works okay.
raven
@zhena gogolia: Today is the last day of school here.
Mousebumples
Our lives in quarantine are “easier” than some , even with an 8 mo old in the house. Our nanny is still coming (she lives alone and is also social distancing).
One thing I’ve been trying to do, every day (since I’m no longer “commuting” – just need to go to my office setup), is send a short video (minute or two long) to family members who are also isolating. It’s a Google Photos link, but it’s a good way to stay connected to those we can’t see. And the list of recipients has grown by request over the past 6 weeks .
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: How are you feeling? Toes back to normal?
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I had my worst day yesterday since all this started (for me) in mid-March. Nothing awful, just a low-grade feeling of angst and lack of focus. And it wasn’t anything specific, just the accretion of everything. I think the (haphazard) state reopenings are not going to work, but I think there will be no chance for a second closing. So I don’t see this situation as being “over” anytime soon. And when I was out going to the store I felt like there was more traffic, like people are cracking under the strain of staying quarantined.
narya
@Crashman06: I hear that. My parents (85 and 89) live a thousand miles away from me. I told my mom that neither of them can kick the bucket because there’s no safe way for me to get there. Increasingly glad I went to visit in December!
Ruckus
@Crashman06:
I don’t think it’s the life we have to adjust to, it’s the possibility of getting the disease that spreads like a wildfire. We had one of those wildfires at our house in the early 90s, not long after the disastrous Oakland fire in 91. LAFD did a masterful job and were there in overwhelming numbers. But the thought of working your ass off and losing everything to something you have about zero control of is scary and life altering. And when you know that humans are fucking it up worse by being complete dumbshits about it, it becomes a bit much. And the humans that are supposed to be in charge are anything but, not complete dipshits.
What I’m saying is that most of us are having the same reaction, I know I am. It helps to recognize it and realize that modern life tells us we are in charge, but the reality is that we really aren’t fully in charge of doodly squat. Animals understand that and go about their business, eating, crapping, mating, living, we attempt to act like we control everything. And when that fails we don’t know what to do. We’ve gotten smarter, by learning how the world works – somewhat, and making it better, more survivable. We put on fireproof roofs instead of wood shingles, or before that thatched roofs. We build vaccines so that we don’t die/suffer from many diseases. Well except for those who want everyone else to die so they can be top dogs. But it’s more difficult to exist in a world that requires education and thought about actually living for everyone, than just everyone else should die because they want to be the know nothings, with magic leaders who they can follow into the abyss.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@yellowdog:
Orangutans are skeptical of changes in their cages.
JPL
@raven: Look at Loeffler’s poll numbers
Trump 49/49
Kemp 43/52
Collins 32/22
Loeffler 20/47 (!!)
different-church-lady
I’m hoping someone does this for me sometime soon.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Crashman06:
It’s wearing more on me too, and I have only Mr DAW to deal with. :-)
Little pleasures like the sundae idea might help. I think we have to kind of live in the moment. And that’s hard because we’re use to thinking and acting ahead, pushing on to a goal.
JPL
@different-church-lady: lol
Kelly
We have a family of Stellar’s Jays just within sight of a second floor window. You can see a parent’s back and a a bit of grey chick’s head.
photos.app.goo.gl/3hMypH9SvBasFNkU9
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia:
I’ve never been more glad to be fortunate enough to have a small yard. I have no idea how apartment dwellers are dealing with this.
Roger Moore
@Crashman06:
One of the things I like to say is that first world problems are still problems. Don’t feel like you have to bite your tongue just because somebody else might be in an even worse position. “Someone else has it worse” is a classic conservative answer intended to shut up complainers rather than address their problems.
different-church-lady
@Crashman06: Hang in there. Part of the “new normal” is understanding and accepting there will be long moments of despair. (I’ve had quite a few of them in the past month.) But unlike our old lives, there’s really really good reasons for them, so let it happen, get it out of your system and recharge for tomorrow.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: It’s all about keeping it in perspective, right? “This little first-world hassle” is still a hassle, but it’s not the same as “daily struggle for basic survival”. Let the lament be properly scaled to the circumstance.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
I think that some states will need to find some way of opening up to some degree, even though there are risks. In Southern California, for example, summer is coming and people want to go to the beach. This is more important than going back to work.
But this cannot mean simply returning to normal. We cannot pretend that the pandemic has been fully contained. However, you cannot maintain a long term lockdown. Social distance rules should continue, and we need to develop new tools.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Huh? This can also encourage empathy and looking at things in a larger context.
CaseyL
@Ruckus:
I think of that as “the threshold for competence” in everyday life, and it’s amazing how that has changed! Not in degree, mind you, but in kind.
The things a person has to be minimally competent at, say, 100 years ago, just in order to live a normal life, are vastly different from now. Precisely because the things we think of as normal simply didn’t exist back then or were quite limited: effective disease medicine and physical therapy, regulation of foodstuffs (regulation of anything, really), central heat/running water/electricity.
Even city dwellers had to know at least a little something about horses. Home remedies for ailments, or when to leave town to avoid pestilence. When (and whether) to go to the doctor. How to tell if the food the local butcher or grocer offered was spoiled, watered down, or otherwise tainted. How to run a coal range or fireplace; how to heat the rest of the house. How to get rid of household trash and garbage! How to build an outhouse and how to maintain it. When the icebox needed more ice, and timing that with the iceman’s rounds.
I don’t think we need to think “more” these days; we need to think about different things. There were always people who couldn’t hack it. 100 years ago it was easier to pack up, leave town and start a whole new life elsewhere – but if you were a boneheaded fool, you’d be a boneheaded fool no matter where you went.
Ann Marie
Thanks for these videos! I was having a crappy day (one in a series, sigh) and these brightened it up — especially the Carnival of Animals, which made me laugh.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Apt dwellers put on a mask and go outside, walk around the block(s). The exercise is good for you, you get to avoid other shut ins who can’t stand it any longer either, and if you walk far enough it passes a bit of time. I haven’t been that person who can just sit and watch a video screen or read for large swatches of time since I was sick a lot as a child. And TV back then was a 9 inch B&W out of focus screen with ghosts and other indescribable nothings. I’ve been working at physical jobs for 59 yrs now and slowing down is desired but difficult. Hiding inside is deflating, debilitating, undesirable, and necessary.
different-church-lady
@CaseyL:
I just invented a new psychological life hack: any time something goes wrong I’m going to say to myself, “Well, at least I don’t have to go outside to take a shit.”
opiejeanne
@different-church-lady: The justification of the existence of chamber pots.
Aka: gazunder. (It gazunder the bed so you don’t have to trek out to the outhouse in the middle of the night.)
different-church-lady
@opiejeanne: OK, I’m just going to bow out of this topic now…
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I understand where you are coming from, but human beings have always been excellent at hiding inside. It’s one of the reasons we have survived as a species.
But you also nail it when you say it is both tough to do and necessary.
I can be a hell of a home body, but I looked forward to going to the beach via the Expo Line after tax season. But I have some health issues that put me in the high risk group, so unless they come up with an effective vaccine, I will have to make huge changes to the way I live. I suppose a lot of people are in this boat, but it is tough to wrap your head around it.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
Well we do have to have a “higher” education if we want to do things like work in a lab, or successfully be a machinist, or even a welder. A welder (depending of course how long you go back) just turned it on and applied it. Today there are a lot more variables, there’s not just steel, but far more distinct grades of steel, each of which requires different concepts to work successfully. We have nuclear medicine, we can operate without cutting you open, we have artificial joints, we have organ transplants, medications out the wazoo, some of them for the wazoo. Every aspect of life is like this, it’s more complicated and at the same time it is better by far. But there will always be people who can’t/won’t cope with change, with growth, with education, loss of entire industries, like coal mining. The world around us has always been changing, but it used to take almost a lifetime to see most of it. Now it takes a decade or two to see far more change. And some people can not deal with that. They don’t have the concept that the world changes. Some bury their heads in 2000 yr old texts so that they don’t have to change, some do nothing, some fight change, it has always been so. But the change comes anyway, it rolls over those that get in the way because life is not necessarily easy. Actually I’ve been amazed over my lifetime that as many, if not more people actively look for change, anticipate it, revel in it, even as those who fight change have their momentary successes. trump is a momentary success of the fighters, but that success will be what does him and them in for a while, because that new life is better. Better health, better food, better communications, better education, etc, rather than all of that worse. The world moves on, and it rolls over those who think they can stop it.
The force of change is stronger than the voice of terror at change. And I know which I’m listening to.
Crashman06
There have been some great, comforting thoughts from everyone on this thread. Thanks to all for commiserating. It has lifted my spirits a bit.
Kelly
We have a family of Stellar’s Jays just barely within sight of a second floor window. It a secretive and snug spot we think they’ll do well.
photos.app.goo.gl/3hMypH9SvBasFNkU9
mrmoshpotato
What? You’re the one making this weird.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Many of us are in that high risk group. I am for sure. Just by being older we suffer from the effects of decades of life. We are not necessarily worn out but we are worn, that’s what living does to all of us. Things break, they go askew, they just don’t work like we are 20 and invincible. (I did say like they are invincible!) Hell we are in a high risk group without this disease. I’ve lost more friends in the last 4 yrs than in most of my lifetime. All of them were younger than me except for one, who was a year older. All of them succumbed to life, aging, stupidity, or having run out of a desire to exist. And yes, I’ve had family pass away one by one for over 60 yrs. They were ages 6 months to 94 yrs old.
One of my friends in those last 4 yrs was born with club feet and has had operation after operation but the body wants what the body wants and it seems that people with club feet find that in their late 20s, no matter how great their attitude and gusto for life, those bones start to revert again. It’s constant pain, constant not being the person, the body they want and need. He shot himself. A wonderful person who couldn’t take life any longer. One was a daughter of a couple I’ve known for over 40 yrs, she was despondent over life not being everything or anything she thought it was going to be, she OD the night she got out of jail, leaving her 2 wonderful kids with their grandparents, in their 70s, raising kids again. The rest? Life just caught up with them, as it does for all of us at some point.
My point is that we need to live life, live it the best we can, we only get one shot at it. We don’t know what tomorrow brings, because tomorrow doesn’t know either. Be the better person, it’s more fun and you feel better about yourself. You have a problem, get help, it’s out there, it’s no shame to need it, we all do at some point or another. I have, and it’s made a huge difference. And yet, at the same time, as we age we see that life isn’t all sweetness and light, boy is it not. It never has been, I can’t imagine that it ever will be. But there is no reason not to live it to the fullest and enjoy those moments that we can, because they are there to find, often with the most cursory of glances.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
But it’s the end of the world!!!!!!!!
That is a wonderful way of thinking/looking at life.
Jackie
@Roger Moore: My Dad was as liberal as could be and used that expression many times – as when we insisted on putting in a handicap ramp to help him get in and out of his house with his walker. “Someone else needed it more.” He was 97.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
My grandparents picked up their 1 yr old son, got in a horse drawn wagon and moved from Kansas City to Los Angles. The year of the Spanish flu epidemic. 1918. My other great grandparents moved from Sicily with their less than one yr old daughter in the 1890s, at the request of great granddad’s employers, because as a Mafia hit man, he was too good at his job. That’s the family story and I see no reason not to go with it, just because it’s likely bullshit.
People have been looking for a better life for ever. I’ve moved across this country, twice myself, for work or a better life.
But I do see both different and more. When I started school we could cover most of what was needed by the 8th grade, if we applied ourselves, high school if not so much. Now many occupations need much higher levels of math, science, engineering just to be competent, let alone great at something. And that changed in less than the first 30 yrs of my life. When I was born, very few had a concept of what a computer might be, let alone that they were even being thought about. Less than 30 yrs later I wrote a very simple accounting program in Fortran and ran it on punchcards. Today I type on a computer that is far, far more than what was used to fly into space. In 1991 I purchased a machine that used electricity to machine any conductive material, no matter how soft or hard, to 50 millionths of an inch tolerances. Today machines that are a quantum level farther are available.
What we as humans know/need to know is both different and more, and at the same time is really just adjusting to the world around us.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
No, it is not just that living wears us all down. It is that we know very specifically that not just increasing age, but specific health issues greatly increases the risk of death from the virus for some people. And this is why Los Angeles county health officials have specifically recommended that people most at risk continue to try to reduce the time that they go outside their homes.
The risk is highly skewed for some people. This is an additional burden that some folks have to deal with.
I track the course of the pandemic in Southern California. One startling statistic is that there have been more deaths in Pasadena than in all of Orange County. Most of these deaths have occurred among the residents and staff of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. This greatly skews the impact overall, however it also emphasizes the importance of expanding testing, so that we can all better understand how we might react to the pandemic.
This is not really true, but I understand your philosophical point.
Absolutely agree. However, the pandemic requires that we must make new, additional adjustments. Otherwise, we would be like the idiots who defy the lock down and social distance requirements and not only increase the risk to themselves, but also unnecessarily put their friends and family at risk.
One of my great great grandparents lived to be 108. I’m greedy. I would like to beat his record by a couple of decades. If I don’t, that’s life. But I will give it my best shot.
LuciaMia
I thought someone else might have mentioned it- But the flamingos. Are those few gray ones juveniles or females? They all have quite the regal walk.
LuciaMia
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Damn, now all this talk about ice cream…
J R in WV
@different-church-lady:
We had a (now departed) very elderly farm wife next door, who had a privy with a concrete pit made by the WPA a very long time ago. When neighbors offered to install a toilet for her, she told them ” Oh NO! I don’t know why anyone would want to do that INDOORS!”
A whole different perspective on the world. She was probably about 90 at the time… probably at least 15 years ago now.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@LuciaMia:
The gray ones are the chicks.
I’ve never been able to quite grasp how those filament-thin legs can possibly function