January '09 : Another month, another contest!
- Thread starter bigguapote
- Start date
Yes artemis, a loricarid.artemis1;2597582; said:
Yes Gr8KarmaSF, a catfish. More or less pleco as you also added.
Call it a tie for question # 3.
No, not a 'split the $25 two ways' - you both got it, so each of you have $25 fish credit. I was not back to check the thread in time to call it either way.
Please each of you contact me by email for the goods.
I can explain how a couple Rhineloricarids ended up in my mouth later. Can't take the time at this moment. Suffice it to say you've all done another incredible job.
Thanks for playing!
Last night was a 'DVD movie date night', so I couldn't take the time to say any more than I did to acknowledge our January winners.
In regards to question 1:
Congrats liberator! And although there's no runner up prize, sncboom also recognized my dog to be a Karelian Bear Dog (KBD).
How did you two know that? Amazingly few folks are familiar with the breed. I've found that many veterinarians have never heard of them, yet they're really a very primitive dog and have been around looking pretty much the same for a very long time.
She's a trip-that's for sure! Good thing my wife picked up her puppy, the Shih Tzu, a week after we received Corina. They are great friends! Bear Dogs aren't the easiest breed to socialize with other dogs. The early socialization with a small breed (and our cats) was key.
Still, I joke around by saying that she should have come with a bumper sticker that reads 'Warning: I freak for small furry animals!'
Imagine the sensory overload if your sense of smell was keen enough to track a shrew's day old trail to a hole in the ground! I never would have believed her reaction to the scent of a bear the first time we found bear tracks in the snow around our back yard! She can spot birds and squirrel activity in trees much farther away than we human folks.
KBD's absolutely love to play with the kids or go hiking for hours and hours. Her energy level is quite high. Luckily she's also very intelligent and trained very quickly to run along on 3-5 mile bike rides with me.
By the way, if some of you dog lovers are interested in a dog like this, here's a great site to check out http://www.karelianbeardog.us/
Great work on question 2 Sherlock the Optimist!
Felipe's adorable little daughter, Corina, was only about 3 years old when I stayed by him. She and her name were very endearing to me.
When I returned back home from my time in Uruguay, I took my daughter (who was 4 then) to Toys R Us. She helped me pick out a Barbie set with a horse (little Corina already had her own real horse even then!) and clothes and stuff to mail down as a gift. I bet Corina was the only little girl in her neighborhood to own a Barbie. I hope she enjoyed it.
Oh yeah, the Rhineloricarids en mi boca thing.
Being humans and essentially creatures of habit, we each sort of fell into a 'designated' seat in the van that we used for transport to and from collection sites.
We also found ourselves a more or less assigned spot to place our water bottles.
Collecting in the north of Uruguay during the height of their summer was really hot.
How refreshing is was to get out of the hot sun after a collecting excursion and grab a swig of water from your bottle of water.
How the hell did I know that my friend who sat beside me decided to start placing Rhineloricarids he was collecting in a water bottle that was identical to the one I drank from? And why the hell did he decide to place it by my feet, under the seat in front of me? That's where I kept my water drinking bottle every day.
So when I pulled the sliding door shut with everyone in the van and ready to roll, I instinctively reached for my water bottle and chugged.
GACK! @#^&*!
It was too late. I pulled a 4-5" squirming and fully armoured Rhineloricarid off my tongue. But that was the 2nd fish to have entered my mouth in that gulp gone bad.
The first fish in line on that chug was already in the back of my mouth. Wedged between the base of my tongue and the left side of my lower jaw, a Rhineloricarid was doing what it instictively does when in mortal danger of being swallowed alive. It spread out both it's pectoral fins and effectively locked them in place!
For the life of me, I could not push the fish any further forward (that direction would be further down my throat) to release the pectoral lock it was in.
Nor was I able to pull it out by it's tail with the emergency brakes (fins) locked in place.
I was not freaking out, and actually slurred out a few crude jokes while this was going on. My traveling companions, on the other hand, were simply mortified.
I finally conceded to allow Felipe (who had been waving a pair of long nose pliers in his hand from the driver's seat for a minute or two already) to have a go at it.
Stan Sung has a wonderful (not) photograph of Felipe smiling from ear to ear with a very dead Rhineloricarid gripped by the tail in his pliers and dripping of my blood and saliva.
My traveling companions on this particular Uruguay adventure were a well-seasoned bunch who have traveled all over the globe, undoubtebly experiencing countless faux pas in their journeys.
We were a rowdy bunch much of the time, particularly at the evening meal as beer and wine and stories flowed. That night, however, it was like they all saw a ghost. Jeez, doesn't everyone nearly die joking with an armoured catfish embedded in the back of their throat at least once?!
Is there a lesson to be learned here?
If so, I'll leave that you, the reader of this happily ending short story, to decipher.
In regards to question 1:
Congrats liberator! And although there's no runner up prize, sncboom also recognized my dog to be a Karelian Bear Dog (KBD).
How did you two know that? Amazingly few folks are familiar with the breed. I've found that many veterinarians have never heard of them, yet they're really a very primitive dog and have been around looking pretty much the same for a very long time.
She's a trip-that's for sure! Good thing my wife picked up her puppy, the Shih Tzu, a week after we received Corina. They are great friends! Bear Dogs aren't the easiest breed to socialize with other dogs. The early socialization with a small breed (and our cats) was key.
Still, I joke around by saying that she should have come with a bumper sticker that reads 'Warning: I freak for small furry animals!'
Imagine the sensory overload if your sense of smell was keen enough to track a shrew's day old trail to a hole in the ground! I never would have believed her reaction to the scent of a bear the first time we found bear tracks in the snow around our back yard! She can spot birds and squirrel activity in trees much farther away than we human folks.
KBD's absolutely love to play with the kids or go hiking for hours and hours. Her energy level is quite high. Luckily she's also very intelligent and trained very quickly to run along on 3-5 mile bike rides with me.
By the way, if some of you dog lovers are interested in a dog like this, here's a great site to check out http://www.karelianbeardog.us/
Great work on question 2 Sherlock the Optimist!
Felipe's adorable little daughter, Corina, was only about 3 years old when I stayed by him. She and her name were very endearing to me.
When I returned back home from my time in Uruguay, I took my daughter (who was 4 then) to Toys R Us. She helped me pick out a Barbie set with a horse (little Corina already had her own real horse even then!) and clothes and stuff to mail down as a gift. I bet Corina was the only little girl in her neighborhood to own a Barbie. I hope she enjoyed it.
Oh yeah, the Rhineloricarids en mi boca thing.
Being humans and essentially creatures of habit, we each sort of fell into a 'designated' seat in the van that we used for transport to and from collection sites.
We also found ourselves a more or less assigned spot to place our water bottles.
Collecting in the north of Uruguay during the height of their summer was really hot.
How refreshing is was to get out of the hot sun after a collecting excursion and grab a swig of water from your bottle of water.
How the hell did I know that my friend who sat beside me decided to start placing Rhineloricarids he was collecting in a water bottle that was identical to the one I drank from? And why the hell did he decide to place it by my feet, under the seat in front of me? That's where I kept my water drinking bottle every day.
So when I pulled the sliding door shut with everyone in the van and ready to roll, I instinctively reached for my water bottle and chugged.
GACK! @#^&*!
It was too late. I pulled a 4-5" squirming and fully armoured Rhineloricarid off my tongue. But that was the 2nd fish to have entered my mouth in that gulp gone bad.
The first fish in line on that chug was already in the back of my mouth. Wedged between the base of my tongue and the left side of my lower jaw, a Rhineloricarid was doing what it instictively does when in mortal danger of being swallowed alive. It spread out both it's pectoral fins and effectively locked them in place!
For the life of me, I could not push the fish any further forward (that direction would be further down my throat) to release the pectoral lock it was in.
Nor was I able to pull it out by it's tail with the emergency brakes (fins) locked in place.
I was not freaking out, and actually slurred out a few crude jokes while this was going on. My traveling companions, on the other hand, were simply mortified.
I finally conceded to allow Felipe (who had been waving a pair of long nose pliers in his hand from the driver's seat for a minute or two already) to have a go at it.
Stan Sung has a wonderful (not) photograph of Felipe smiling from ear to ear with a very dead Rhineloricarid gripped by the tail in his pliers and dripping of my blood and saliva.
My traveling companions on this particular Uruguay adventure were a well-seasoned bunch who have traveled all over the globe, undoubtebly experiencing countless faux pas in their journeys.
We were a rowdy bunch much of the time, particularly at the evening meal as beer and wine and stories flowed. That night, however, it was like they all saw a ghost. Jeez, doesn't everyone nearly die joking with an armoured catfish embedded in the back of their throat at least once?!
Is there a lesson to be learned here?
If so, I'll leave that you, the reader of this happily ending short story, to decipher.
