Daily Archives: May 19, 2018
Tag! You’re It!
After yesterday’s festivities, Jan and I just stayed at the rig today, never even going outside. We had kind of planning to take another load over to the storage room, but it just didn’t happen.
Instead, I spent the day updating my KnivesByLaClaire.com website. My client sent over 26 new knife photos that I have to re-size and process to put up on the site.
One thing different is some of the new handle materials they’re now offering. But some are more distinctive than others.
For example –
Here’s one with a White Epoxy-Filled Banksia Pod Handle.
And here’s one with a White Pine Cone Handle.
And this one with a Buckeye Burl Wood Handle.
And this one with a Spalded Maple Handle.
All very distinctive handles.
But this one, one of their most expensive for obvious reasons, was really kind of disappointing.
This handle is made from Mammoth Tusk. That’s 15,000 year old Mammoth Tusk!
But it’s really not anymore impressive than this one done with English Walnut.
Not much there to have bragging rights on. Who would believe you?
Jan wanted to know if it came with a certificate of authenticity. But then you’d have to carry it around with you. But I guess you could get it laminated though..
One of our blog readers commented, wanting to know how you train porpoises? Turns out it’s pretty much like training any animal, except easier. You start with something that the animal already knows how to do, and then try to get them to do it slightly different. Then you reward that behavior. Then it’s more modify and reward.
With porpoises it can be even easier. They love to play and to mimic you. In one case I taught Lori to do a flip in mid-air when she jumped by doing one myself a few times from from the high platform.
It only took three times before she was doing flips in the air, copying me. In fact she was happy to just have me scratch her head as a reward, since she knew she’d get a bunch of fish when we were done. I also taught here to swim on her back with her head out of the water, again by doing the same thing until she started copying me.
And you only have to train one porpoise to do a trick. Then put her through her paces with another porpoise nearby. Thor wasn’t near as directly trainable as Lori, but that’s how I got both of them to jump together, as shown in yesterday’s photo.
Another thing that made Lori easy to train was that she love to play, especially tag. She would come up behind me, poke me with her nose, and then swim away. But she would always swim slow (well, slow for her), staying just inches out of my reach, as I chased her.
Finally she would let me touch her fin, and then give me a head start before she chased me. But even then she would circle around me and dive under me for a while before she would poke me again, and it would start all over.
But I think the most amazing thing she ever did was the time she gave me a fish, rather than the other way around. The pools that Lori and Thor were in were both open to the Indian River with underwater bars and above-water fences keeping them in.
One time an unwary fish came into Lori’s pool and she quickly caught it. I was sitting on the side of her pool, dangling my feet in the water, and not paying much attention to her. I was mulling over in my mind what I could do to get that beautiful redhead who worked at the Miss Kitty’s Saloon across the street to finally go out with me.
Suddenly Lori poked her head out of the water holding a wiggling fish in her jaws. When I didn’t immediately take it from her, she tossed it up on the bank beside me. Thinking she wanted to play Fetch, another of her favorite games, I threw it further out into the pool. So she took out after it and brought it back, again throwing it up on the bank.
But when I raised my arm to throw it again, she chattered at me, her upset sound. So I put my arm down, and when I did she stopped. I raised my arm again, with more chattering and thrashing around in the water. Finally it dawned on me that she was giving the fish to me as a present because I always gave fish to her.
Lori gave me a present.
Since it was just about closing time, I headed and cleaned the fish and cooked it up on a small charcoal grill I had. Later she was perfectly happy to eat the head and the tail that I threw in to her.
BTW it took me over two weeks and five or six tries to get the redhead to go out with me. Today it would probably be called ‘stalking’.
But lucky for me, I’m persistent.
Thought for the Day:
“You can observe a lot just by watching,” – Yogi Berra
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