Hounding After Hours

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slcboston

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Hey, my Keurig, who shall henceforth be called Reginald, has just made me a 'to die for' chai latte. It is shaping up to be my favorite toy I've ever bought.

I'm glad you like it, Abs. But I tolerate only one uni-tasker in the kitchen, and that's the fire extinguisher. And making tea and coffee is not enough to rescue it from the category of "needless toy" in my book.

:)
 

BriMaresh

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Bos, a lesser-known fact about the Tsavo lions is that they were both maneless. They were also brothers, litter-mates from the same pride. Due to the lack of manes, they were likely outcasts from their prides and unable to obtain mates and firm prides if their own. Their behavior indicates that were essentially psychotic, even for rogue males. It's my understanding that certain aspects of their behavior, dwelling areas, anatomies, and activities were highly unusual for male lions and that not all of these details were considered necessary in the recounting of their lives and massacre.

Also that a third one was killled, early on, and that it was much smaller, and was basically just discarded. I saw them not very long ago at the Field, and it's really a bit strange to look at them. I guess when they got the hides, at the Field, they'd not been particularly well cared for before that. It doesn't stop me from being quite fond of them, anyway, but isn't it interesting? Their whole sleek, maneless look is just... strange. I love the theories that their being basically fed bodies of workers dumped in the river made them think that humans can be easily obtained food.

I guess there was a bear here that killed but did not eat two humans who had been sleeping. When they went to take care of the bear because it was violently out of control, it attacked the chopper. Just a completely psychotic animal.

Also Gustave, the croc that has been killing, just for fun, for decades.
 

slcboston

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Also Gustave, the croc that has been killing, just for fun, for decades.

And, more likely, because it's too big to hunt the usual croc prey, as increased size makes it slower. People make easy prey, by contrast.

Contrary to Hollywood and myth and legend, there isn't an animal out there that kills just for fun, except us.

Sorry, Bri, but it's been my belief that reality is impressive enough in nature without the need to unrealistically anthropomorphize it, at least in non-fiction.

What you do in your fiction is up to you.

:)
 

BriMaresh

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And, more likely, because it's too big to hunt the usual croc prey, as increased size makes it slower. People make easy prey, by contrast.

Contrary to Hollywood and myth and legend, there isn't an animal out there that kills just for fun, except us.

Sorry, Bri, but it's been my belief that reality is impressive enough in nature without the need to unrealistically anthropomorphize it, at least in non-fiction.

What you do in your fiction is up to you.

:)

The thing with Gustave is that he's been just killing a person and leaving the body - not noming, not saving it for later like is sometimes a thing they do, just killing and moving on, with an obvious lack of intention to return to it. His behavior has been utterly atypical, from what I understand. I've been doing more and more research on it, because it is unusual, and it does fascinate me. It's not entirely unheard of, but rare. I think it DOES happen, however.
 

CDaniel

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Abie, please tell me you are not sitting on the couch with reggie too. :Wha:
 

slcboston

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The thing with Gustave is that he's been just killing a person and leaving the body - not noming, not saving it for later like is sometimes a thing they do, just killing and moving on, with an obvious lack of intention to return to it.

*sighs*

No, actually.

Start here, which should be the top of page 6 in the article, for an explanation of that.

It's not entirely unheard of, but rare. I think it DOES happen, however.

Unheard of? That's awfully damn vague.

Documented? Not ever. In all so-called cases of animals that just attacked "for sport" it has always been more a case of eye witness exaggeration.

And the more salacious, the more sensational, the more exaggeration there is.

As I explained to a student who is doing a paper on how aliens helped found all the ancient civilizations, just because there are sources on something does not mean it's the truth. Not all sources are created equal.

Again, you want to do fiction on this, fine, I don't have a problem with that, but don't present fiction as fact.

Also, to quote from page 1:

Trained herpetologists agree that Gustave could be that large and that he is certainly one of the most infamous man-eaters of all time. But Faye's assertion that Gustave kills for sport—knocking off villager after villager like some killing machine—leaves skeptics clearing their throats.
 

TedTheewen

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Sorry, Bri, but it's been my belief that reality is impressive enough in nature without the need to unrealistically anthropomorphize it, at least in non-fiction.


:)

You've never met a sexy wolf, have you? They'll seduce you when you least expect it! And a fox? You don't have the will-power to say "no".

Maybe if we found you a cute sheep....
 

TedTheewen

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Ok, so tonight I've been coming up with the latest Branch Tedian holiday and while I can't really post it here, (maybe in the humpNgrunt) I have to say it is some great fun.

I need to figure out a way to incorporate fursuits, too...hm...

Bri!!!!!! Missed you! I have some candy in the van, in case you need some. And I have puppies in my basement now!
 

slcboston

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You're bordering on being preachy and judgmental (ever since the whole sushi/sashimi incident).

If you can't tell the difference between a tongue in cheek pet peeve - which was the whole sushi thing - and when I'm seriously correcting a misimpression, you need to start reading more carefully.

Please, relax. Take a deep breath. We're not your students -and some of us are very smart people ourselves.

Greg, if I thought you were my students I'd have smacked you all about a lot harder.

:rolleyes

Nor do you have absolutely any room to talk. I could run a long, long list of all the different subjects you have seen fit to preach to us about over the years, often with absolutely zero prompting and out of nowhere.

But you know what? I've never called you on it, because I view you as the slightly inappropriate uncle of the Horror Hounds. The one who when he starts spouting about this or that (like, say, self-pubbing, or even just the lions tonight) we all just roll our eyes at it and let you rant on in your frankly often exceedingly long and tedious posts.

I generally don't take anything personally, though you're bordering on it at the moment. By the same token, though, I don't suffer ignorance well, even from people I like.

I applaud Bri's interest in these things, including the croc, but I'm a firm believer that if you're going to learn about something, you ought to have your facts straight, and that can be a hard thing to do in this day and age where everything about everything is on the net in some form of spin or another. And I hate to see the gullible taken in.

Unless of course you really do buy into the "it's aliens" end of the spectrum on these things.
 
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