Monday, July 30, 2012

More Visitors

Who but Arthur Wilderson would visit and bring obscure, beautifully- made Czech battle rifles, other military goodies, a bottle of cherry dessert wine from a Colorado winery, and friends, Nate and (female) Evan, with interests in everything from fossil cat cladistics and Darren Naish's blog to Asian falconry and cartridges I had never heard of? (They brought me two examples!) At one point, the whole living room was covered with feathered dinosaur books and papers, followed by historic John McLoughlin articles, science fiction novels, and "modern" dino descriptions from the seventies; next, disassembled rifle parts; finally, material on dog evolution and photos of petroglyphs ...

I realized we had achieved terminal geek velocity on the second day, when I started drawing them a flow chart of my major biological fascinations, with the Burgess Shale at the top, such things as Neanderthals and bird origins somewhere in the middle, criss- crossing lines of connection everywhere, names including Jonathan Kingdon, Val Geist, and Darwin stuck in like raisins in the batter, and in the lower right, to the right of "Wallace's Line" and "Predator Ecology", a list: Canids, Columbidae, Falconidae, Afrotheria, Heloderma and Varanidae; VENOM EVO; Aussie species; Vampire bats; DODO.

And they understood it.

4 comments:

danontherock said...

Hi Steve

I have a Czech vz 58. They are allowed here in Canada though AK's are prohibited. As a result of such foolishness, there are quite a few vz 58's here in Canada. Most are manufactured by CZ, mine was made by Czech Small Arms.

regards
Dan

Darrell said...

Yes, I recognize a Vz 58 in the middle. I'd hazard a guess and say there's a Vz 24 in the pic too. I'd love to have a '24 if I could find one still bearing the Brno crest--ones for sale nowadays were rearsenaled by the Russians, who ground off the crests. :(

WilhelmDurand said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nathaniel said...

Darrell,

The rifle you identified as a Vz. 24 is in fact an m/96 Swedish Mauser in 6.5x55 caliber. It was made in 1915 by the Carl Gustav factory.