A Break from Labor

This Labor Day I hope you can learn from the examples of the following animals who know how to enjoy some time to themselves.

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Mr. Gizzard: A Paean

A year or two ago, my parents somehow (I’m still not entirely clear on how this came up) got into a conversation about owl pellets. My mother, who knows quite a bit about animal life, explained that owls grind up food in their gizzards, and that the digestible parts go on to their stomachs while the bones, fur, feathers, and other general ickiness get lumped into pellets that are then regurgitated.

As she explained the various steps in owls’ eating, my father observed, “So, they have a basic mammalian digestive system, then.”

“Um…no.” After my mother had explained a little more (including the distinctions between birds and mammals), she teased, “Haven’t you noticed how, as we and our friends are all getting older and more and more things are ailing us, no one ever complains about their gizzard?”

Not missing a beat, my father said, “That’s because the gizzard is always the last to go.”

I mention this story not to make fun of my father’s confusion over avian vs. mammalian digestion but to illustrate some of the many things I admire about him.

First, he’s never afraid to admit his ignorance of something, even though he’s one of the least ignorant people I know (and for those inclined to mock the gizzard incident, how many of you know that snails make their own shells, huh?). [Oooh, and as a side note, it just occurred to me that Gizzard Incident would make a great band name.]

Second, he’s one of the funniest people I know. He helped me come up with a number of my pun-ny departmental-talk titles back when I was in grad school—and the ones he didn’t help with he still inspired. (“Sex and the Single Crab,” “Home Is Where the Hurt Is,” “Scents and Sensibility”—the list goes on.) He’s also the best joke teller I’ve ever encountered.

Finally, one of the things I like best about my father is also illustrated in his responses to the natural world. My father is not an outdoors-y person (why eat outside amongst insects when you can be bug-free—and near a DVD player—in your own home?), and he’s always avoided nature documentaries, claiming that animals have no plot. My mother got a birding scope for her birthday; my father got gift certificates to the movie theater.

At the same time, though, whenever something in the natural world amazes, baffles, or delights him, he never hesitates to express his fascination or astonishment. Nor has he ever felt it to be somehow weak or beneath him to notice when an adorable animal is cute.

[is this cute or what?]

And why should he pretend otherwise? Unlike so many people, he’s got nothing to prove, and he’s open-minded enough to acknowledge when something is interesting, even if—as with a midnight trip to the beach to watch for horseshoe-crab mating—it’s not something he would seek out on his own.

It’s that complete lack of posturing, that profound sincerity, that I admire so much, and it’s a sincerity that pervades his actions and relationships generally—including those with his daughters.

I may not know if he knows that barnacles are crustaceans or that chicks have egg-teeth—but I’ve never had to wonder or worry about how he feels about me.

Thanks, Dad.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Lions and Tigers and Bears

But mainly bears. It was painfully hot this past long weekend, so my intended brisk afternoon walk through the zoo became a painful stumbling crawl through the areas nearest to the entrance, which means I saw some alpacas busily browsing, the monkeys and spoonbills munching on snacks, and the spectacled bear cubs, who are pretty huge by now but are still pretty darn cute—at least to me.


And that got me thinking. The lion cubs were cute, too, and even now that they’re so big and adult-looking, they have a certain charm. But even when the lion cubs were very little, it was clear they were lions—big scary predators full of snarls and hunger and teeth.

The bears, on the other hand… They just seem so much cuddlier than the lions. It’s not that I don’t think they could crush my head or anything—and, in fact, one of the cubs was gnawing on a bone when I arrived at their enclosure—but still, it was gnawing in a cute way!


This isn’t my reaction to all bears, mind you—polar bears and grizzlies scare the hell out of me. So what is it about these guys that seems so—if not harmless—then unthreatening?

I think it has to be the absence of what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call predatory intensity. Maybe it’s because these bears are omnivores rather than carnivores that they’ve lost that hunter’s focus: the tight grip on the bone, the sharp, electric gaze that follows whatever can be perceived as prey.


These guys were missing that the whole time I watched them, whether they were gnawing on bones or trundling over to sniff the handfuls of fruit and veggies that a keeper tossed them from on high like favors thrown from a Mardi Gras float (but with less panache).


There’s a nonchalance about these bears that’s nothing like the piercing intensity of lions’ attention or the chilling, slightly psychotic glare of tigers.

Instead, they go after a piece of pear, or climb into a mulberry tree to satisfy their sweet tooth, or get distracted by whatever’s around them.

I’m not saying I’d jump in the exhibit and try to pet them, but, let's face it: no creature that stops and smells the daisies is going to win the Intimidating Animal Award. The Endearing Animal Award, on the other hand...

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UnBearably Cute

I was taking a brisk walk along Rock Creek yesterday morning, just skirting the zoo, when I spotted the Andean bear cubs playing around in their exhibit. My brisk walk through the woods because a brisk walk into the zoo and a long time standing, enchanted, in front of their enclosure.

Early on a chilly Sunday morning, I was their only admirer. A kind zookeeper passing by called one of the cubs to approach the front of the exhibit: “Come and pose!” she said, and, by golly, the cub did!


I exclaimed about the cub’s cuteness, and she told me that he’s in fact “a terror” and a spoiled brat.


“But he’s so cute, I’m sure he gets away with it,” I said, taking pictures like mad.

“Yeah. That’s true across species, isn’t it?” she said, smiling wryly, and walked on.


(P.S. - Expect a post or two involving the winners of the Charismatic Macrofauna battle, the small-clawed otters, in the next couple of days.)

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

The Only Other Mulberry Eaters in DC

When I was in grad school back in Somerville, MA, I used to keep a close eye on the campus mulberry trees, hoping to be able to gather the fruit as it ripened and before the birds gobbled it all up. If the harvest was good and I was feeling generous, I would offer my crop to the members of the biology department. There, people would eye the berries suspiciously and ask me, “You can eat these?”, as if they feared they’d be the victims of a clever poisoning scheme (“Here, committee members, have some yew berries—they’re awfully tasty…And I’ve brought you some hemlock for dessert!”). Only the grad students from China and India recognized the berries as, you know, food—and accepted them with pleasure.

So it’s nice to see someone else enjoying the mulberries here, even if that someone isn’t a human but rather a spectacled-bear cub, one of two born just this year at the National Zoo:

(Unfortunately, the lens’ focus is on the mulberries—but then, that’s where the bear cub’s focus was, too.)