The world is a mask that hides the real world.
Thatâs what everybody suspects, though the world we see wonât let us dwell on it long.
The world has ways - more masks - of getting our attention.
The suspicion sneaks in now and again, between the cracks of everyday existenceâ¦the bird song dips, rises, dips, trails off into blue sky silence before the note that would reveal the shape of a melody that, somehow, would tie everything together, on the verge of unmasking the hidden armature that frames this sky, this tree, this bird, this quivering green leaf, jewels in a crown.â¦
As the song dies, the secret withdraws.
The tree is a mask.
The sky is a mask.
The quivering green leaf is a mask.
The song is a mask.
The singing bird is a mask.
Monday, May 09, 2005
pandas in heat & test-tube gorillas
It's a Jungle Out There!
Sounds like we got a bunch of overpaid eggheads who have been getting their jollies watching two giant pandas - Bai Yun and Gao Gao - do the dirty, according to this story [63] from the Associated Press.
"Two giant pandas at the city's zoo retired to their favorite spot under a few bushes and mated over the past two days."
Two days. Geez, that's gonna make more than a few housewives wistful.
OK. Says here, "Bai Yun had displayed signs of being receptive to mating in recent days, including yipping and raising her tail, walking through water and scraping pine tree bark onto her head and face."
As Lauren Bacall suggested, famously, "If you want anything, just yip. You do know how to yip, don't you?"
They've got to get it while they can, these giant pandas. Only in heat one or two days a year.
Geez, sounds like my wife....
Panda love, AP photo
OK. So they spend all this money to get these wild animals to get it on, get 'em pregnant...here come the little ones and whaddya know? Momma wild animal doesn't know how to take care of baby wild animal. Could it get any worse?
Well, yes.
Also from the Associated Press: "Test Tube Gorilla Not Bonding With Newborn."
"The world's first test tube gorilla...."
That's right, "world's first test tube gorilla is not bonding with her new daughter, zoo officials said Saturday. Timu, a 9-year-old Western lowland gorilla, took care of her newborn for a few hours after Friday's birth, but then lost interest, said Dr. Lee Simmons, director of the Henry Doorly Zoo....The baby will be hand-raised and given to a surrogate gorilla mother in hopes that Timu will learn from watching that relationship and will be a better mother when she has another baby."
And this isn't the first time, either.
Continuing: "Timu also failed to bond with her first baby, Bambino, who was born at the zoo. That baby also had to be hand-raised."
So much from learning from the past. "The surrogate mother is expected to be Rosie, the gorilla who gave birth to Timu in 1996 through in vitro fertilization."
Test-tube gorillas!
Gorilla keeper Janice McNearny holds a newborn Western lowland female gorilla at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb. The gorilla's mother Timu, the world's first test tube gorilla, took care of her newborn for a few hours after Friday's birth, but then lost interest, not unlike more than a few human mothers. [63]
