Living things

I'm not really a hippy. Some of my friends think I am with the way I bang on about the environment and how to preserve it.

I am a hypocrite though. While I can eat a nice steak or a rack of ribs and have zero guilt. At the same time I can't put a lobster into a pot of boiling water. I usually get them to the front of back door of the house and let them out.

Last month my brother in law when to Thailand or something, and brought back a tennis racquet for me. But this wasn't an ordinary racquet. It was smaller than a full sized one. It was made of plastic, and it had a button on it that when you pushed it would send sparks out to kill innocent inserts.

While the idea is fun and novel. I wasn't sure I'd like to use it. It's one of these.

So, time did come to finally try it out when one of those really long winged ants flies into your house. The wife got me to try it out on the ant.

There were three loud pops. Really loud. The wings got blown off the ant. It crawled around, clearly dazed from the massive shock treatment it just received.

I regretted doing it, I apologised to the ant. I said I was really sorry. I regretted doing it, watching it helplessly crawl around in circles. Probably thinking "WTF happened just then?"

I promise to never use that contraption again.

Animal talk

I've subscribed to a podcast recently (a vidcast in actual fact) that interests me. It's about cars.

But this post isn't about cars at all. It's about talking.

As humans, we love to socialise. We love to talk. Have a catch up, a pow wow. We love a good yarn. A good story.

I love chatting. I love catching up with friends to find out what they're up to these days. So when I was waiting for a friend at a cafe today for a quick catch up, I sat alone waiting and listened to another conversation. Then I went off into my own world, as if I took a pill and waiting for the magic carpet bus to arrive and take me away.

I started to think about animals, in other words living things besides humans. And I started to think about if they have any conversation at all.

Are humans the only living creatures on this planet that have general banter and chit chat?

I'm sure the answer is easy.... Yes, animals communicate. But that's not what I'm asking. Do they converse?

Do they talk about their day off? How hard it's getting to find pollen? Does a dog sniff another bogs butt and laugh (in their own language) and say "dude, you have worms".

Do they sit around on their mat at the end of the day and talk about their day to their sister or friend?

Okay, so maybe they don't. Maybe they don't talk or communicate at all.

Maybe they just live every day like that's all there is. It's another day, lick my balls, piss on the grass, ooh the master is up, time to eat, drink, walkies? ooh, check out that bitch, wonder who she's seeing.

Do you think a dog would think that, how about a parrot?

I'm sure they communicate, but do they like to have a chat?