Tag: yoga

Lord knows I’m not an art critic, but I thought I would add my own take on why the Mona Lisa is smiling. Not that 80,000 other people throughout history, many of them art critics, haven’t already tried to answer that same question. Personally, I think that the Mona Lisa is smiling because she thinks I’m going to fail utterly at trying to write a blog that somehow includes shoebill cranes, sea cucumbers (Genus: Holothuria), and also a book. Ha, ha! Little does she realize…

 

 

 

I’ll start with the book. No sense starting with the shoebill. We’ll get to it in due course. I just realized that the book cover is almost the same color as the sea cucumber! Weird. Anyway, the book is basically about how to lead a better, more examined life. I found it very helpful.

One of the things the author suggests is that instead of striving to be right all the time and to be certain about everything, we should try to just be a little less wrong every day, and to embrace uncertainty. We should try to remain uncertain and hence less judgemental about the motives and actions of others; we should be uncertain about our values and should always attempt to reassess them; we should also be uncertain about whether or not I should have strung this last bit together with colons, or used something else. Commas maybe. Definitely not hyphens.

My point here is that we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do. Take the shoebills for example. Where do they live? Are they friendly? They seem friendly. They look happy. ARE they happy? Are they related to cranes, storks, velociraptors? Something else? Why are they also known as whaleheads? Are they patient? Can they fly?

Received wisdom says that their large beaks or bills resemble large shoes-which is why they’re called shoebills-no suprise there. So whose shoes are we talking about? Paul Bunyan’s? Shaq O’Neal’s? Bozo the Clown’s? Great question.

I have to add Rosa Kleb’s shoes to that list though. She was the SMERSH agent in the movie From Russia With Love; she also tried to kill James Bond with a poison-tipped shoe dagger. By the way, SMERSH stands for Shoebills Mostly Eat Really Slimy Holothurians.

Don’t give me that blank look. I told you already that sea cucumbers belong to the genus Holothuria.

I’m pretty certain that shoebills would use that wicked spur on the tip of their beaks to spear the sea cucumbers before the spiky, edible sea creatures could inch away. I’m not certain that shoebills eat sea cucumbers though.

Sorry, I got a little sidetracked there. Back to the long list of uncertainties surrounding shoebills: What else might shoebills eat besides sea cucumbers? What kind of noises do shoebills make?

So many questions. Thankfully I have answers. Some of them are even true. Most of them are true. Maybe they’re all true. I’m not sure.

Shoebills live in marshes in various African countries. They are NOT friendly. They’re feisty and pugnacious as hell. They will go toe to toe with a crocodile if they have nothing better to do. Or fight with their nestmates if there are no crocodiles around.

As adults they’re pretty solitary. I don’t know if they’re happy creatures, but they always seem to be grinning in the photos and video clips I’ve seen. This could be misleading though. The average shoebill is likely thinking: “Hey buddy, I’m going to put you off guard by appearing to grin at you but secretly I’m just waiting to rip one of your ears off with my fearsome beak if you even THINK about calling me a whalehead.” They’re most closely related to pelicans and herons. Since all birds are descended from dinosaurs, I guess you can also say they’re sort of related to velociraptors.

Apparently shoebills are super-patient. They will lurk in tall marsh grass for hours on end, waiting to lunge out and rip the ear off a tourist or nab a tasty eel, a lungfish, a snake, a duck or maybe a poodle. (No loss there.)

They make some great noises. For example, their mating call is a series of loud pops that sounds like a machine gun. Some describe it as terrifying. I don’t think it’s particularly terrifying; somehow I don’t think they mate very often though. Not sure why.

They can fly with a series of slow flaps interspersed with gliding. They can grow to be as tall as Danny DeVito. This one kind of reminds me of the Mona Lisa:

They also like to do yoga:

I want one…I think. It would probably clean out the rabbits that are racing all over our neighbourhood this winter. I might check in with Mark Manson first though. He gives pretty good advice.