Eagle Snatches Child in the Park: Thoughts?

UPDATE: Huffington post reveals evidence of faked footage.

For those keeping score at home, I'm now two for two at perpetuating bogus memes on this blog.  My next post, should there be one, will contain only factual content (Boring, yes, but safer.) 
--Matt Mullenix

A Facebook friend forwarded the above video footage.  Perhaps you've see it, but it was new to me.

The bird is identified as a Golden eagle and the location as Canada.  The video was posted, at least in this instance, yesterday by a YouTube subscriber named MrNuclearCat.  No idea who, when or where, this scene actually represents, but I'd love to know more about it.

Quick observations: It strikes me as a natural sequence, although obviously remarkable and curiously well timed camera work.  If it's a wild eagle, it is one that has evidently hunted parks before, perhaps for stray pets; the flyover and quick turn into a dive, and the general disregard for bystanders makes it seem like habituated behavior.

Is it a Golden?  It would have to be that or a Bald in Canada, although I guess a Stellars is possible.  And of course, if this is artificial, it could be anything from anywhere.  I have to say that the color patches and wing shape seem odd to me, but a Golden would be my best guess too.

Of course, my powers of observation have failed me before.  :-)

Thoughts, anyone?  BTW: the child seems to have been unhurt.

Quote

"Thus my advice to the aspiring fiction writer: don't be tempted by that graveyard of literary talent, creative writing courses. Take a sharp turn and study history instead."

- Caleb Carr, WSJ Weekend

One more on Plum

... To thank everyone; I will not belabor the point or fill the blog.

Jameson Parker sent Robinson Jeffers' wonderful tribute to his bulldog Grip. In part:

I hope than when you are lying

Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dear, that's too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided. . . .
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

And from Jutta in Germany, whose photos of Nhubia and Taalai often appear here, a photo she took of the old boyo here in his prime several years ago, one that made us laugh...

UPDATE: JP got the caption: "I don't know what you were trying to do with the tape measure, but clearly you don't have nearly enough hands."

A Dog Eulogy

The best, amazingly, (other than Rudyard Kipling's maybe, and Kipling is a minor god) is Ogden Nash:

My little pup ten years ago
was arrogant and spry
Her backbone was a bended bow
for arrows in her eye
Her step was proud, her bark was loud,
her nose was in the sky,
But she was ten years younger then,
And so by God, was I.

Small birds on stilts along the beach
rose up with piping cry.
And as they rose beyond her reach
I thought to see her fly.
If natural law refused her wings,
That law she would defy,
for she could do unheard of things
and so, at times, could I.

Ten years ago she split the air
to seize what she could spy;
now she bumps against a chair
betrayed by milky eye!
She seems to pant,
time up, time up
My little dog must die,
And lie in dust with Hector's pup
So, presently must I.

Plummer lurcher: March 1 1999- Dec 13 2012

My old dog Plummer is gone. He was born (bred for us, a Hancock designer NM blend of greyhound and bearded and border collie) in David Hancock's kennel in an England that still allowed hunting with dogs, and died in his bed in his home in New Mexico. Once the greatest single- hand hare dog I have ever owned, he was failing badly the last few days, and falling down constantly. Loyal, rambunctious, sometimes loud, overbearing, smart and cheerful, he was one of a kind, very unlike the tazis, though descendants of his mating with Lash still win in New Mexico meets. I doubt I will ever have another dog like him. Lib may write more.

His birth announcement: I assume most can still recognize a Polaroid!

With David

Scenes from a life

A note of congratulations from Terence Wright's late Logan longdog on his first hare; another...

He liked hunting, water (much more than salukimorphs), and food, and comfort...

He grew old with his friends, and will be missed...

(And thanks once again to Terri Gonzales, DVM)

Saturday Signing

Understandable Error, Matt!

I don't know about a banana (see Matt's comments below) but most Americans would see a double rifle from England, with its barrels arranged side by side, as a shotgun. We have not quite NEVER built a double rifle here but I would be surprised if we had built over 100 in the last century. Everything from our hunting habits (long, open country shots) to the expense of "regulating" doubles, which like everything about them is done by hand, works against this. (The English and European demographic for hunters, restricted to expensive private land for the most part, skews much higher than ours; no US mag, however pretentious, could call, as a review in The Field recently did, an 18,000 pound gun "modestly priced". And The Field isn't even pretentious-- just comfortably what it is.

Here is a "typical" VERY Best London side by side shotgun, perhaps my favorite, a Boss in 20 bore. As it could go for over $100,000 used I will never own one unless like one lucky writer I know I am given one as a present by an older man who is retiring it.

Another shotgun, a Churchill, rather stouter...

The next two are rifles but without seeing the iron sights how would you tell? The first is a classic Rigby with its distinctive "dipped" lock plates, in .470 Nitro (rather like the small shotgun but BIG rifle bore of .410, and just one actual caliber lower than Bond's .500); the second, also by Rigby but made in California I think-- very long story-- is what is known in my circles as the Lion Porn gun, proving that money does not convey taste though it may buy craftsmanship...

Incidentally Ian Fleming's brother Peter, who wrote books that are among the 25 I would take to the proverbial desert island, especially News From Tartary (you should also read his travel companion Ella Maillart's Forbidden Journey; when have two such writers written two such delightfully different books about the same trip?)* shot a pair of Purdeys, rather like the Boss above, and a ".275 Rigby" bolt rifle like my friend Jonathan below. We are entering the realm of "affordable with effort" here, but I doubt I will ever own a double rifle that costs more than my house, truck,and last trip to Asia combined.

*Links still slow but both available on Amazon and other places.

Wrong, Dead Wrong

Steve and Friends,

SECOND UPDATE: Alternative gripes substituted 

UPDATE: MATT ERRS IN FIREARM ID.  Lawd.  How funny is that title now? The following gripe is totally without basis (see gun link).  But I leave it intact, like a coyote pelt on a fence, as a warning to others who dare to tread where they have no business.  

A bit tangential, but I just saw the new Bond flick, "Skyfall," and enjoyed it. This latest installment is a return for the franchise to some of its traditional themes and trappings, and at least a half-turn away from the "James Bond as Jason Bourne" meme, where 007 was reduced to a martial arts expert and hired assassin. The villain of Skyfall, a severely disgruntled former agent played by Javier Bardeme, was the best, maybe, ever.

But I have a gripe, and I wonder if anyone else caught it?


ALTERNATIVE GRIPES:

• Bond's iconic Aston Martin DB5 actually a Subaru Outback with after-market modifications
• Ancestral Bond family home on Scottish moor actually a flat in East London
• Latest "Bond girl,"  model/actor Bérénice Marlohe actually actor/comedian Zach Galifianakis

At the climactic scene near the end, where an outmatched Bond and friends face a squadron of para-military killers, 007 is told by the family's Scottish gamekeeper, "The only gun we have left is your father's old hunting rifle."

Bond nods gravely at this news and picks up the offered side-by-side, breech loading shotgun, noting his father's initials on the stock. He then proceeds to test the accuracy of this "rifle" by shooting a can off a post from about 70 yards away.

I'm no gun guy and can't tell you if a shotgun could do that, but even I can tell you that the firearm Bond shoots couldn't possibly be his "father's old hunting rifle," and that no retired gamekeeper would claim it was, and no MI6 operative with a license to kill would accept that it was. It took me 10 minutes of non-stop gunplay after that line to get my head back in the story.

Hollywood...! All the millions of dollars spent on that movie, the dozens of writers and advisors and presumably weapons experts, untold numbers of viewings prior to release, and no one caught that line? Just one edit: "All we have left is your Dad's favorite bird gun," and the movie would be perfect.

Well, except for the ending. But I won't spoil it.

Magdalena Pics

My computer seems to have problems-- have plenty of material but posting will be slow until they are deciphered. Meanwhile some light photos from the Spur Christmas party last Saturday for your amusement (if I try to link the machine will pinwheel for ten minutes) plus one of Phil's grandfather John Foard that I have gone back and added to his memorial essay (I already captured that URL!)

Spur pics, the few I kept out of 25 or so; band (Bartender 4 Mayor),who played a lot of good stuff including Steve Earle's Guitar Town and Copperhead Road (may link later; funny how he made better songs back when he was a legendary bad actor than now, when he resembles a Marxist history prof in politics and pomposity); Lee Henderson, who bought Gorbatov his "Mexicanski Vodka" and received a print of quail on his ranch, dancing with Cat Aragon and bowing after; our sometime mushrooming colleague and half of the team that saved our roof, Della Armijo, and Linda Middleton, who works at Alamo Navajo and who is married to longtime resident filmmaker Matt Middleton (Google "Way Out There"-- link LATER dammit); "born in the bar" Q Foreign correspondent, temporarily employed teaching writing HERE, Phil Grayson; his grandfather, the legendary Johnny Foard, whose band played here when the present ones were in diapers...

Jutta's pair- week's pick

Taalai and Nhubia: the eternal game:

One More Quote

From Jules Older, The Writer's Lifeguard:

"Job applications used to routinely ask you for your hobbies. I always proudly answered, 'None.' I'm a man with goals and dreams, passions and projects, not hobbies. Real writers don’t do hobbies."

Pointing Dogs

There are breeds other than tazis that I love, and places other than New Mexico. Daniel Riviera's team is on the Northern Plains.

Literary Cartridges

What famous short story do these two very distinctive cartridges represent?

A VERY light gun returns

Thanksgiving's shoot made me realize regular shotguns may be beyond me, barring surgery, steroids, or scarier drugs. So from California and artist Tom Quinn, my old T Turner English boxlock is returning. Only .410 I could ever shoot- 4 pounds 8 ounces but FIFTEEN INCH stock. Compare to old Grant Pigeon 12 for scale. Again, to be continued...

Tavi File

Leap by Shiri, T- Kong by Jess...

A Very Few Links

Hopelessly busy and slow but you NEED these...

Jameson Parker has a post about an amazing gift shotgun, a Boss, perhaps the most austere (and best) Best. I have a corrollary tale-- remind me-- about someone who had one, and naturally, was given one. Now that I have about what I need, old friend, dog in law, and falconer friend Bodie, who shoots a Darne, has offered me a loan of-- something special. Stay tuned...
Boss-- I think this second hand one goes for well over $100,000:

Bodie & Darne

Slate says "Hunting Good!" HT Eric Eliason.

An Animal Rights activist east of the mountains near Albuquerque has apparently been stealing dogs whose owners she disapproves of, even from inside houses. When the police caught up to her, they report she threw two pitbull pups out the window of her car. What a burden it must be to "love" animals so-- Vicki Hearne had a lot to say about THAT. Paul, your neighborhood-- any thoughts?

MUCH more to come.. sorry to be slow.

A Young Farmer's Perspective

NC sent us a link to a fascinating Op- Ed in the Denver Post by an intelligent and analytical young farmer. She says: "People all say words like "farm fresh," "sustainability," but they don't want to actually pay for what it actually costs me to make it. Almost everyone tries to talk me into lowering my price or asks me to give my eggs away for free." Also: "... If I have customers coming over when I am gathering eggs, I put my hair in pigtails, and I use a small straw basket and make lots of trips. People like to buy eggs from little kids skipping through the pasture with a basket of eggs." !!

Among other lessons that can be drawn is the indubitable fact that many of the rich are inveterate cheapskates ("How do you think they got that way?" I can hear my old Dad mutter)-- and that the average postmodern urban dweller has no idea where anything comes from.

NC has more to say: "That's the heart of the story. Is it any wonder that the likes of Monsanto dominate food production when the deck is so stacked against small producers? Is it any wonder that local and organic food is so hard to sell when the customers are so clueless that they think it could somehow be given to them for free?

"That was the part of the story that had me in stitches; these people who go to farmer's markets and think that small-scale local farming exists in this magical bubble that makes it immune to economic reality. Of course they would think that! I bet Marie Antoinette thought that animal husbandry was all carefree giggles when she went off to play milkmaid!

"Inasmuch as any of us have a technophile streak, I think it's substantially rooted in the desire to understand the human economics of it all. I won't say I understand computers, but thanks to a high school physics teacher who worked in the semiconducter industry, I at least have some idea of the long hours engineers spend poring over circuit diagrams, of the super-sterile factories filled with unbelievably nasty chemicals for etching silicon, all so we can have magical electronic gadgets. I'm definitely not an electrical engineer, but I watch the trucks carrying wind turbine blades up and down I25, and I can do basic math so when someone says we ought to switch to wind energy, I have some notion of how many more trucks carrying how many more of those blades such a task would entail.

"The goal here isn't necessarily to understand all aspects of technology or production or economy perfectly. It's to have some idea of all the sorts of things that people around the world are doing to keep civilization going. The goal is to be able to see some pale reflection of the sweat of other people's brows in modern conveniences; not necessarily to extol or deplore them. Just to understand them.
"Because the alternative is to go through life thinking that meat just magically pops into existence on supermarket shelves, that alternating current and wall sockets just sprout from the ground, that cars just go and gas stations are sitting above natural deposits of gasoline. In short, to believe that the world is built around oneself for one's own comfort."

Quote

From "Caliph of the Tricksters: Cockfighting in the Ruins of Kabul", by Christopher de Bellaigue, in the December Harper's:

"... Then he quoted an Afghan saying: 'Drinking wine is forbidden; tell me something that is permitted in this world!'"

Weekly Dogs

From Shiri...