#RDPDAILYPROMPT

Steady On

/ animar64 / Leave a comment

Every year I make a few New Years Eve Resolutions and every year I can pick them off and this is how I do it:

I never promise to lose weight or to excercie more or to ‘eat healthy’.

I only resolve to do things that I think will make my world- the one that other people visit- a happier place to be.

So I always promise to write more or read more or to get out more and to learn something new- like cooking  new dish or making it my goal to talk to people at the dog park instead of just sitting on the bench with my head down.

I know that we want to make grand gestures to go into the New Year with, but I prefer to meet the New Year calm, cool and unruffled- no matter what I face.

AI ARTWORK BY
CURSEJOURNEY

RDP Monday: UNRUFFLED

Cross Your Heart

/ animar64 / Leave a comment

RDP Sunday: WARNING

Everybody knows that it isn’t safe to wander into the woods without being fully prepared.

You should do your research on the trails and never hike solo.

Don’t ignore the weather conditions and never wander around the woods, alone and in the dark.

I say phooey to all of that.

Just head on in- I’ll be waiting for you.

I promise.

Cross your heart and hope to die.

Photographer Unknown

My Real Life Good Boy

/ animar64 / 5 Comments

RDP Thursday: UMBROUS

When this little good boy came into my life I was suffering from severe depression and in the process of rebuilding my shattered life.

He was only 12 weeks old and he proceeded to save my life.

Hamish Macbeth
Photo A.M. Moscoso
September 2014

10 years later my good boy, Hamish Macbeth and I were out for an evening walk- we ended up turning a corner and found ourselves in a street full of of police cars and what turned out to be a very nasty domestic dispute.

My neighbor had been beaten by her partner and the police were looking for him because  after he hurt her he ran off and came back a couple of hours later and all they knew was that her partner was in the neighborhood – that’s when me and Hamish came along.

When I saw what was going on I turned around and started to make tracks back home when we passed a bunch of trees and bushes all of the sudden Hamish tore the leash out of my hand.

He stood next to me and in the blink of an eye he turned into Cujo- he barked he growled he snapped his hackles were up. He didn’t run away from me, he didn’t charge- he pushed against my leg and continued to lose his cool.

If you’ve never heard your dog snap his bone crunching teeth together in fury, I’m going to tell you that once your do  you will never forget that sound.

In his entire life I had never seen this darkness and anger in him.

I grabbed his collar and started to pull him along when the police sort of swarmed passed us and I could hear them chasing and catching someone in the side yard we were caught in front of.

Hamish’s ears pricked up. He sniffed the air.

I looked down at Hamish, he looked up at me and then he wagged his tail and we went home.

Hamish Macbeth
2024

There’s a movie about a dog called Indy who wants to save his beloved owner from supernatural forces.

Not all good boys are fictional characters- some of them are very real-thank God.

Hamish Macbeth
2023
A.M. Moscoso

A Dire Question

/ animar64 / 4 Comments

I wasn’t going to weigh in on this particular topic but in the end I had to because I love Wolves.

When I was 10 years old and our class was doing reports on our favorite animals, I did mine on the Dire Wolf and I got an ‘ A’.  I slaved my heart out working on that report and this was in 1973- google didn’t exist then.

Dire Wolf Skeleton (Aenocyon dirus)

As you may have heard, Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences announced it has successfully created three dire wolf pups using ancient DNA and gene-editing technology.

I was curious who this company is and found out that Colossal is the highest valued company based in Dallas, Texas at $10.2 billion. That figure is as impressive as their website which looks like a promo for a movie:

Many companies claim they’re going to change the world.
At Colossal, we believe that the world doesn’t need to be changed.

THE WORLD
NEEDS TO
BE HEALED.

Cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) painting
Chauvet Cave

That’s a sexy headline, isn’t it?

You know what’s not sexy? One of it’s investors said she got the 411 on one of Colossal Biosciences from Elon Musk- you know the guy who want to go to Mars but his rockets keep blowing up.

As the debate about bringing back exitince animals ramps up,  I’d have to ask myself, who would gain the most from bringing back Woolly Mammoths, Saber Tooth Tigers, and Dire Wolves?

Obviously the companies involved with the breeding,  housing and keeping the animals.

Given the cost of caring and feeding and  paying for the insurance for these animals would not be cheap- PROFIT is going to be a BIG DEAL here,  so I doubt if families are going to pack their kids into a car or on a plane so they could go and feed a Woolly Mammoth or a Giant Sloth.

So who would get to visit these exotic high maintenance and valuable animals?

Well consider:

  • Axiom Space revealed the three private citizens who paid $55 million each to go to the International Space Station
  • Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic offers tickets to space for $450,000

    “Lions hunting Bison, Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, France. Upper Paleolithic, c.35000 BCE …

  • Exploring the Titanic wreckage site is one of a number of expensive experiences the wealthy take part in.
  • A submersible plunging the depths of the Atlantic went missing during a tour that costs $250,000.

But would there be  enough of these rich people to fund these ” zoos “?  Disney makes bank on tourists from various economic classes  but look at all of the sites and amenities they have to offer. A working class family could  and do swing it because they’re getting bang for their buck.

Unless you have  herds of Woolly Mammoths,  armies Dire Wolves and a Prides of Saber Tooth Tigers (whose mission in life would be to hunt  the animals  Colossal Biosciences  wants to bring back from extinction)  roaming around the Park waiting to get their pictures taken- it seems like an iffy kind of deal for a family.

So in the end I’m thinking the people who would go back again and again and again, who would spend a week chasing after these animals-

would be

Big Game Hunters with very deep pockets.

In my mind, the safest place for these animals that have gone extinct maybe on a shelf in a museum or a quiet and  undisturbed grave.

Royal BC Museum: Victoria BC
Photo A.M. Moscoso

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