"If You Have Come This Far...
...and haven't already done this meme, consider yourself tagged." From http://snailstales.blogspot.com/2007/10/interesting-animal-meme.html So, that's me tagged then, is it? Here you go:
An Interesting Animal I've Had
My sister and I raised a snail. I forget why we had him, I think he was a Turkish snail that showed up in our baggage when we came home. We kept him in a jar and fed him on carrots and lettuce. There was some dirt and twigs in the jar too. He would outgrow his jars and have to be transferred to other, bigger jars. Our mom did most of the work. Then one day he escaped! We searched for him, but he was gone. A few months later the cleaning lady came up to my mom and said, "is this yours?" holding out the snail. He had been living on the dining room carpet. My mom released him into the wild after that... Too bad we don't have any photos of him.
An Interesting Animal I Ate
It seems I've never eaten anything wacky or weird. For about five months, when we lived in Turkey, my husband and I ate kokorec from random food stands in "downtown" Istanbul. It was meat with herbs, grilled right in front of you, and wrapped in pita bread. A mystery gyro, if you like. Then we found out what kokorec is - cow intestines. But too late - we already loved the stuff. Now they're trying to sanitise it and so on, as part of the plea to enter the European Union (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D8153BF937A15755C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print). I'll miss it.
An Interesting Animal In A Museum
I just spent ten minutes or more looking for photos from the Natural History Museum in London, before I realised that when we went there two years ago, we were still using a non-digital camera. But there were lots of neat remains of animals in there!
An Interesting Thing I Did With Or To An Animal
How about an awful thing? My first cat, nearly ten years ago, was a stray that I started looking after at the beginning of one summer in Turkey. Ian was my best friend for nearly three months, and though I kept him in the house at night, during the day he was still very much an outdoor cat. But he never strayed very far, and I had him in sight as often as I could, even though this was before the days when packs of large stray dogs roamed the Kadinlar Denizi streets. While he was still very small, I let him sleep on my bed, and had a near-panic attack at the idea of being so close to and so responsible for such a small thing.
I wanted to bring him back to Canada at the end of the summer but wasn't allowed. I left him. I saw him again the next summer and he gave me one awful look of reproach and then I never saw him again. Oh Ian...
An Interesting Animal In Its Natural Habitat
Can we consider mitochondria animals? Of course. They used to be animals. A long long time ago they swam into human cells and stayed and now we depend on them to breathe. And we're animals. How you doing in there, mitochondria - and Yadah and Sporos? Of course! Naturally, learning about mitochondria starts with Madeleine l'Engle's A Wind in the Door (www.madeleinelengle.com). Requiescat in pace.
An Interesting Animal I've Had
My sister and I raised a snail. I forget why we had him, I think he was a Turkish snail that showed up in our baggage when we came home. We kept him in a jar and fed him on carrots and lettuce. There was some dirt and twigs in the jar too. He would outgrow his jars and have to be transferred to other, bigger jars. Our mom did most of the work. Then one day he escaped! We searched for him, but he was gone. A few months later the cleaning lady came up to my mom and said, "is this yours?" holding out the snail. He had been living on the dining room carpet. My mom released him into the wild after that... Too bad we don't have any photos of him.
An Interesting Animal I Ate
It seems I've never eaten anything wacky or weird. For about five months, when we lived in Turkey, my husband and I ate kokorec from random food stands in "downtown" Istanbul. It was meat with herbs, grilled right in front of you, and wrapped in pita bread. A mystery gyro, if you like. Then we found out what kokorec is - cow intestines. But too late - we already loved the stuff. Now they're trying to sanitise it and so on, as part of the plea to enter the European Union (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D8153BF937A15755C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print). I'll miss it.
An Interesting Animal In A Museum
I just spent ten minutes or more looking for photos from the Natural History Museum in London, before I realised that when we went there two years ago, we were still using a non-digital camera. But there were lots of neat remains of animals in there!
An Interesting Thing I Did With Or To An Animal
How about an awful thing? My first cat, nearly ten years ago, was a stray that I started looking after at the beginning of one summer in Turkey. Ian was my best friend for nearly three months, and though I kept him in the house at night, during the day he was still very much an outdoor cat. But he never strayed very far, and I had him in sight as often as I could, even though this was before the days when packs of large stray dogs roamed the Kadinlar Denizi streets. While he was still very small, I let him sleep on my bed, and had a near-panic attack at the idea of being so close to and so responsible for such a small thing.
I wanted to bring him back to Canada at the end of the summer but wasn't allowed. I left him. I saw him again the next summer and he gave me one awful look of reproach and then I never saw him again. Oh Ian...
An Interesting Animal In Its Natural Habitat
Can we consider mitochondria animals? Of course. They used to be animals. A long long time ago they swam into human cells and stayed and now we depend on them to breathe. And we're animals. How you doing in there, mitochondria - and Yadah and Sporos? Of course! Naturally, learning about mitochondria starts with Madeleine l'Engle's A Wind in the Door (www.madeleinelengle.com). Requiescat in pace.
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