| Photojournal
- 29 July 2006
Easter
Bunny
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On the 28th, I had
finally gone out to take some photos after a week or two of not
taking any. That had whetted my appetite, so on the 29th, a Thursday,
I wanted more. I took my camera with me to work, and since I had
finished all my meetings by mid-afternoon, I still had a little
time to go out and get some sunshiny photos before my yoga class
(I've taken up hatha yoga again). I decided that I'd go by Glenbrook
Ravine Park, which is roughly on the way from work to home, and
also quite close to the yoga studio that I go to.
The city does a great
job of keeping the front part of this park alive with beautiful
flowers, and it's a good place for turtles, dragonflies, and the
occasional butterfly or flycatcher. My plan was to get flower
shots, though. I kept my macro lens on the camera.
The city's gardeners
didn't disappoint me on this day. I arrived to find a bed of very
pretty Osteospermum, the kind where the petals roll up in the
middle.
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| Nearby there
were several Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susans). |
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| I crossed
the little cement bridge, and found a few of the following flower.
They were quite pretty, and I took lots of photos of them. Unfortunately,
they have defied all of my attempts to identify them. Let me know
if you know what they are. |
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| My next
subjects were around the other side of the pond. This flower grows
on a stem about a meter and a half tall. It's some sort of Kniphofia. |
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| And this
nearby flower is one of my favorites, which I've seen in the park
before. It's a Chinese Globe Flower (Trollius chinensis).
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| Next I caught
this Bumble Bee sipping nectar. |
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| My last
subject at Glenbrook Ravine was a Cornflower (Centauria).
I'd been in the park less than a half an hour, but I had to hurry
on to my yoga class. |
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| After yoga,
I went on home, and as I was walking through the courtyard, I stopped
to get this photo. |
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No, that's not really
a bug on my shorts, it's the discarded exoskeleton of a bug that
had molted. I had found it stuck to the wall. I took some photos
of it there, and then took it off the wall and put it on my leg,
which turned out to be a better background.
About this time my
friend Jodi came by, and we talked for a bit.about my little exoskeleton.
Then her partner David came by, and they asked if I had met the
new addition to the family in our little courtyard. I hadn't.
So they took me over
to meet him. He's a little kitten named Easter Bunny (or Easter
for short), and he's an adorable little guy.
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| Easter Bunny
doesn't have a tail, but that's natural; he was born that way. |
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| What Easter
Bunny also doesn't have is a front left leg. One of my neighbors
(the one who is Sonic's human) works at the SPCA, and Easter had
been brought in there as an abandoned kitty, with a badly infected
leg. They fixed him up, but had to remove the leg. She brought him
home to foster him, but it looks like he may be around permanently. |
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Now, a three-legged
kitty may seem sad, but don't feel too sorry for this little guy.
He's irrepressible. He really hasn't figured out that he's missing
a leg. To get around, he hops like a bunny; I presume this is
where his name comes from. In the photo above, you can see how
he compensates: he puts his one front leg right in the middle,
where in a four-legged cat that leg would be more to the right.
Anyhow, this little
fellow zooms around the courtyard, chasing bugs, jumping on other
cats, and going up and down stairs. (Going down stairs is the
only thing that seems to slow him down a little...but just a little.)
I will not be surprised to one day find him in my condo, he having
figured out how to jump in my window, like his brother Sonic.
Easter's also a very
friendly kitty who enjoys being held, petted, and scratched behind
the ears. He's a great addition to our courtyard.
Always happy to meet
new kitties,
Tom
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