Category: Wildlife

A Few More Snakes with Feet

Hi all! – hope everyone had a great Valentine’s Day.  Once again I had another bizarre experience trying to purchase Linda one of her gifts that will definitely make its way to an upcoming post.  Not sure what it is, but buying jewelry in this town is a trip to Bizarro World.  Part of the problem is the experience has become equally pleasing as a trip to a car dealership – … stay tuned for that entertaining post.  So, speaking of Valentine’s Day we have more lizards!   What, you do not think of lizards around V-Day?.. yeah, me neither – I just needed a lead in to today’s topic so went with it.

As mentioned in the previous post, the Indy lizard series is a two parter – lizarrific if you will.  I figured we’d start with the unidentified lizard.  Like the last set there was extensive research done on this shots in a desperate attempt to provide an informative post… and as discovered with the first set it’s damn hard to classify these scaly creatures.  You would think with a Google image search there would be at least one similar picture in the 10,000+ images being waded through.  Two of the three specimens had a hit, but this one … no clue.

Pretty interesting coloring and would probably merge right into a darker rock setting.  The claw positioning was intriguing as well.  Kind of gives the impression it either just finished a a giant leap onto the rock and still bracing from the impact or possibly showing off his claws in defiance to the biped with the scary looking glass pointed at it.  Before you ask, I really have no clue if it is a male or female so just went with a he.  Once again, a complement to the Beast for throwing the background into creamy goodness.  This is due to the tight depth of field in the 200-400 glass which you’ll be able to see even better in the upcoming shots.  Definitely a plus to be able to create that effect in-camera rather than having to artificially produce it in the digital darkroom.  Let me know if any of you have a guess to what this thing might be.  Until then “I shall call him spiky and it shall be mine and he shall be my spiky”.

Okay, now on to what turned out to be a cruel joke by our friends at the Indy Zoo.  For a long time in the heat of their Desert Biome I took shot after shot of this particular lizard.  I’d snap off a bunch of shots, he’d transition into a new interesting position, I’d snap off a ton of shots and then he’d move into another position… I felt like yelling out “work it baby work it – vogue strike the pose”.  To save Linda the embarrassment I opted to keep that inside hehehe.  Needless to say with the big glass I was up there all close and friendly like.

Hit the jump to see my scary discovery

Continue reading A Few More Snakes with Feet

Snakes with Feet

So one of the reasons I take the time to write these posts is to allow me the opportunity to look back and see what I was interested in or maybe what the state of the world happened to be in at a given point in time. In essence I have a backup plan when the o’l memory starts to go. Crap.. what was I leading into…. Oh yeah. Every once in awhile someone comes out with a statement that I NEVER want to forget. Typically these are statements made by individuals in the entertainment business that feel obligated to proclaim their stupidity. Last week we were blessed (er.. subjected) to two examples of this. Figured I’d just put them here in case I ever want to reference them in the future.

Chris Rock:
I am just here to support the President of the United States. President of the United States is our boss, but he is also, you know, the President and the First Lady are kinda like the Mom and the Dad of the country and when your Dad says something you listen and when you don’t it will usually bite you on the ass later on. So, I’m here to support the President. Note to self: be sure and point this comment out during future administrations – something tells me this position will change.

Tony Bennett:
It’s the kind of turn that happened to the great country of Germany where Nazis came over and created tragic things and they had to be told off. And if we continue this kind of violence and accept it in our country, the rest of the world is really going to take care of us in a really bad way. Note to self: A big thank you for fighting in the Battle of the Bulge now go read history and figure out where the Nazi’s “came over” from and take special note on their stance on gun control.

There, now I only need to go to my blog and search for stupid reptiles and poof there will be the two “entertainers” that are now on my list.  That reminds me, the main topic of this post is Reptiles at the Indianapolis Zoo.  Yes, this is a continuation of the Indy Zoo series, but now that the mammals are out of the way, it’s time to move to those scary “snakes with feet” as Linda likes to refer to them.  This will be a short series primarily because I know absolutely ZERO about lizards.  They have a long heritage, their typically scaly and for some reason there are people out there that think they are cool pets.

Personally I find that identifying snakes and lizards about as hard as distinguishing one sparrow from another.  Translated… damn near impossible.  Since I like to go the extra mile for my millions of readers I did take a stab at it.  A check of the Indy Zoo website did provide a small list of animals on display in their Desert Biome (link here).  Apparently putting their picture or at least a link to the animal is asking way to much from an educational organization.  So, next step was to search individually for each of the names on the list – with exception of the turtles which are clearly not in play here – a shout out to my Biology teacher for getting that in long-term memory.

Hit the jump to read more about these scaly creatures.

Continue reading Snakes with Feet

If He Hollers Make Him Pay

While I sit here and do battle with what we’ll simply refer to as the Plague of Peoria, it seemed like a good time to whip out another post.  This could be a sad time or joyful moment depending on your feelings towards the Indy Zoo mammals that have been bombarding you as of late.  If you can’t get enough of them and sit there continually refreshing your browser until the next post arrives.. you are going to be on the disappointment side because this is the last of the mammal shots – well technically not the last because there is one more but that will be a little bit different than these.  Now if you are sick and tired of these and are looking for the Hank William’s Jr. concert post well, you can start dancing now (how about an endurance test – you stop dancing when the HW Jr. post is actually made hehehe).

There are a lot of similarities in this post to the last one.  First off it is again about the big cat family.  Secondly, it contains a head to head competition with a certain someone else.  That certain someone else is in a bit of a pickle at the moment due to having difficulty navigating around the house with that giant ego inflation she received in the last set of comments.  Unlike the last post, I am going to make it more objective – not going to tell you who shot the pictures – you pick your favorite one or two and we’ll let the chips fall where they may.  In the meantime I’m interviewing for new brothers just in case.

If you didn’t get the topic from the title, how about now..

Yes folks, we are talking about the cute but oh so deadly Tiger.  This is one of the sets of shots that need some background to get the feel for the difficulty involved.  This specific enclosure has a visitor viewing area that consists of thick glass – possibly plexiglass – hard to tell at the time, but clearly difficult conditions when you are trying to get enough light through and not produce the shadow images as it passes through the glass.   Linda did impress me with being able to pull this off having only recently been taught by yours truly how to shoot on Manual mode (she doesn’t bring that up much does she?!).  She’s like my little Padawan.

As mentioned before, it was good and hot out and this particular specimen was doing its best to remain cool.  This must be serious business when it comes to cats because this one seemed to be only thinking ONE thing – what would it take to make it through that glass and snack on these idiots with their cameras. It is possible that the Tiger coloring just makes it appear pissed but Tony the Tiger doesn’t look that threatening.

Hit the jump to read more about these bad-ass killers

Continue reading If He Hollers Make Him Pay

I Shall Call Him Spotty and He Shall Be Mine and He Shall Be My Spotty

Owwwe bad Spotty, bad Spotty.  Sorry, I just wanted to complete that movie quote.  I happen to remember this quote from the day I heard it basically because it was so off the wall stupid – note, I did modify it slightly to fit the post topic.  Tonight I finished another project (foreshadowing) and decided to relax with a little Winter X Games.  Of course, just sitting and watching the boob tube is a colossal waste of time so I’m going to crank out a post at the same time.  Eeeeeshh – sorry, some dude just about killed himself on snowmobile jumping.  He had a whopping 4 hours of practice on the machine and figured that was all it would take.  Gravity says… NOPE.  He flew off at the top, snowmobile lands hard sticking the throttle, nearly hits the former rider and then flies off into the parking lot.  I predict a rule change coming.

Back on task.  Today’s focus is somewhat of a mascot for all us runners out there.  More for the sprinters, but I don’t know a distance runner who wouldn’t at least once go the speed of this animal.  Yes, I am talking about the Cheetah.  The gold medal champion of the plains track and field games clocking in at the 65 mph mark.  Say it with me .. Sixty Five Miles Per Hour.  I am not aware of any way to tell the sex of this specific specimen (well, from the picture angles I have) so let’s just go with a female.

Clipped a little bit of her tail but you can see some of the stripes that circle the tip of the tail.  Other than that, it’s all spots.   There was a slight confusion while prepping for this post.  While doing the customary research on the animal, it mentioned that the Cheetah is sometimes confused with the Leopard.  That actually resulted in some second guessing which required a little deeper dive into the description.  But, all for not.  I do indeed have a Cheetah.  although they have the same basic coloring, the Cheetah can be distinguished by the black eye-line from the edge of the eye down to the mouth.  According to Wikipedia, this allows them to cut the sun glare down and improve their vision – same principle for athletes putting black smudges under their eyes.  The other easy way to tell them apart is the spot coloring.  Cheetahs have solid black spots where Leopards are more like irregular circles.  Oh, and Leopards have the fuller facial features more like their bigger brothers (tiger, lions, jaguars).

Hit the jump to see a couple more super fantastic shots and one other (hehehe)

Continue reading I Shall Call Him Spotty and He Shall Be Mine and He Shall Be My Spotty

Fruit Stripes and Milk – A Snack of Indy Zoo

It’s time for another post and true to form so far this year we’re sticking with the mammals from our Indianapolis Zoo Trip from (hang head low) back in 2011.  But first a quick moment for some back patting.  Last post was a bit of a milestone here at LifeIntrigued.   Second guessing myself, maybe I should have gone with “Kudos to Me” for the title.  What milestone do I speak of?  Well, with the release of the last post I’ve now officially made 400 posts over the last 5 years and some change (..crowd goes wild, balloons fall from the sky, t-shirts shot into the crowd).  Kind of makes me chuckle thinking about a certain brother proclaiming to the blogosphere how he was beating me on the post count for this year.. trust me, that little issue has been remedied.

Okay, enough fanfare.  Time to get to the subject of this post.  Correct that, the subject’S’ of the post.  It’s a bonus day for our readers who get TWO mammals to look at.  The first one is an animal that always brings me back to my childhood.  Anybody out there remember Yipes?  If so, you will understand the title.

For those that do not know, Yipes is the mascot for Fruit Stripes gum.  Technically it is a zebra but those clever marketing people over at Beech Nut gave it colored stripes.  These same stripes were replicated on the gum itself.  Once again I learned something interesting from our friends over at Wikipedia.  They state the gum was actually wrapped in edible paper.  I do not remember that at all.  What I do remember quite readily is a) how flavorful the individual pieces were and b) that flavor lasting about 3 chews.  A deep psychoanalysis would probably reveal this being the source of my current compulsion to always chew two pieces of gum at a time.  Yipes pretty much makes our specimen pretty boring.  Plain old black and white.  In case the suspense is killing you, I firmly believe that it’s black stripes on a white body but this is opposite to the current scientific evidence – this being a clear government conspiracy to hide the truth.  The picture above shows the reason for this belief – the underbelly has large white sections that look more like a canvas (see back of leg and the section right below the neck).  During post processing I decided to leave the bird in- gave the impression it was standing it’s ground against the behemoth.  Although, would have preferred to have taken the time to get the whole bird in the original shot.  The Zebra ears also mimic the “I’ve got my eyes on you” look.  While I’m at it, what is your take on this head shot? –  this one has the full head, one complete leg and enough body to make the connection from the neck to the start of the leg.  Does the single leg give an odd feeling .. like something is missing or is it quirky enough to be captivating?

And then we have the wall mount shot.  With the ears pulled back a little more it gives a less sad feeling.

Hit the jump to read more facts about the Zebra and see the bonus mammal!

Continue reading Fruit Stripes and Milk – A Snack of Indy Zoo

Kudus to You

It’s Mammaltastic around Lifeintrigued these days.  Unlike the last two, this particular animal may not be familiar to you.  I say that because it was definitely not something I could name off the top of my head and confirmation why I need to get these shoots posted sooner.  After a year and half I had completely purged my brain of what this antlered thingy was.  That means hours of surfing the internet trying to find a similar image or at least a lead on what family it belonged to.  I recommend not starting out your search with “Horny Mammals”.  You just might blush at the results…or at least give you a chuckle.  A few refined searches narrowed it down a bit but having only the head and a little bit of torso really doesn’t give much to go on.  Eventually I came across this very helpful website called Buzzle (link here).  To be honest, that site has a wide variety of topics – seems to be an answer-all for any of your questions.  My question – “what animals roam around Africa?”  Sure enough, they had a very nice list with … wait for it … PICTURES.  At least now I could narrow it down. At first it looked like it was a Waterbuck but they lacked the hair down the spine and under the neck and chin – would have been tougher to think up a clever title for that one anyway.

About half way down there it was!

Want to take a guess as to what it is?   If you said Antelope I’ll give you an ‘A’ for effort.  It is actually one of the largest in the Antelope family.  This species is called the Greater Kudu.  Once again, The Beast was bringing the animal front and center causing me to work to get the composition the way I wanted it.  The most interesting aspect of this animal is the unique antler formation and therefore wanted to make sure that was captured in the shot, but leaving enough of the body so it didn’t look like a trophy room mount.  It took me awhile, but I think I pulled it off.  Thanks to the large aperture the background was thrown somewhat out of focus (could have blurred that out a little more in the digital darkroom, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk of screwing up the sharpness of the Kudu.

How about some facts.  This particular specimen is older than 6.  How do I know this?  Turns  out (ha pun) the Kudu does not develop its full two and a half twists in the antlers until at least that age.  Wikipedia also points out they get their first twist around two.  That must help on the dating front – my generation had to use the smallpox vaccination scar to get a rough idea of someone’s age (note, the US stopped giving that in the ’72 time frame having eradicated the disease).  Oh, and I know it is a male since the females are hornless.

Hit the jump to read the rest of the post!

Continue reading Kudus to You

Bear in Mind it was High Sun

It seemed appropriate to go with this topic for today’s post in light of the fact that our 2nd Amendment is under attack by clueless liberals who do not even bother to understand the intent of our Founding Fathers before pushing their own ridiculous agendas. The right to BEAR arms is not about how many bullets it takes to kill a deer (I am especially intrigued by the congressman – talking to you Franken – who give this asinine argument for why we only need 7 bullet magazines) The 2nd Amendment isn’t about hunting and it isn’t about sport and if you think it is then you are not qualified to be setting policy. Want something to think about? Consider what these pro-gun control advocates would do if their precious 1st Amendment was under scrutiny.

On a much lighter note… Hey look at the cute bear pictures!

Yes, we are once again back at the Indianapolis Zoo.  Unlike the elephant, this time we bring you a true carnivore – in fact one of the top carnivores in the animal kingdom food chain.  Okay, if we are splitting hairs they are technically omnivores, but I doubt they go around commenting on how much they prefer berries to the taste of raw meat and fish.  I’ve had the privilege of seeing these creatures in the wild and it is quite breathtaking (link here).  They exude a true sense of power as they lumber along that commands a high degree of respect.  I felt a little remorse watching it simply pace back and forth within its exhibit knowing their brothers were enjoying freedom in one of or Nation’s most beautiful parks – one must admit we have come a long way in our treatment of animals  in captivity and clearly this one was not outwardly suffering.  I am not a bear psychologist but guessing there is a call to the wild buried deep in there somewhere.  My utmost appreciation for letting us experience what it is like to be around one but out of harm’s way.  You will never catch me this close to one out in Yellowstone!

Hit the jump to read and see more pictures of the Grizzly!

Continue reading Bear in Mind it was High Sun

Sporting Some Junk in the Trunk

How’s the new year treating ya’ out there?  I’ve been busy as hell thanks in large part to my wife.. which will, of course,  ultimately become a future project post.  The good new is some of my time has been spent doing processing work for this month’s posts… and the next month’ s and the next and th.. you get the point.  Damn thee convictions, damn thee.  As a result of going back through last year’s posts for the year end summary it became very apparent that my photography outings were significantly outpacing my posts.  This backlog tends to weigh on me heavily.  With the new year comes a renewed emphasis to get this back under control  First on the platter is the Indy Zoo trip we took back … uh hmm July 2011.  I hope you like animal pictures, because you are going to get a healthy dose in the upcoming months.  I’ll try to sprinkle in some other topics as  relief.

Let’s start with the mammals – laaaarrrggge mammals.  Interesting enough, I’ve never really had an affinity towards these creatures and after years and years of analysis it suddenly clicked “why” while prepping these pictures.  How about I leave some suspense there.   This happened to be one of those posts where the title came before the content!  I thought it was clever but that left the challenge of finding something that made it cohesive to the subject layout (again, probably goes unnoticed but we do think about the presentation around here).  Luck would have it, we have a winner.

This folks is the one and only picture in the shoot that actually showed junk in the elephant’s trunk.  Redeemed!  We had the Beast with us on this shoot which was quite handy for some of the animals, but there is a downside to the Beast.  It does a great job of pulling the smaller animals into the frame, but on the huge animals, you have to start picking and choosing what you want in the composition.  I guess the other option is to foot zoom half  way across the zoo but forcing that many people to keep out of your shooting angle is quite the chore.  With the exception of some helpful angles on the little ones, all of these pictures only have a portion of the animal in the frame.   On a pure guess, the following specimen looked the oldest of the group.

It is also the only one that had the more brown coloring but not sure that really plays into the identification game.  Based on what I can tell from our friends over at Wikipedia, there are really only two types of elephants.  There are the Asian elephants an the African elephants.  The Asian ones have a more of a crown above their heads where the African species have more of a gradual slope.  Survey says… this is an African elephant.  In fact, all of my pictures turned out to be of African elephants.  Note, these also appear to have longer trunks than their Asian brothers – come for the pictures, stay for the gray matter filler.  Check out the caps on the tusks.  I have no idea if that was a result of poachers before it made its way to the zoo, a result of age or a safety precaution.  Let’s not rule out the option of just elephant bling – they’re not exactly the prettiest things to look at.

The next picture is probably  my favorite of the group.  Sure, everyone has seen the standard ham shots of elephants – looking all cool-like with their trunk, tusks and floppy ears.  What you don’t see much of is the camera shy shots.

On second thought, that might actually be elephant sign language for “Hey you with the obnoxiously big glass, take a hike or I’ll call my big shoe’d friends”  Harsh!

Hit the jump to see more pictures read the rest of the post!

Continue reading Sporting Some Junk in the Trunk

Santa Lost a Cylinder

Sorry folks, but this post is not for the squeamish (or for kids with Elf on a Shelf “narcing” on their every move to Santa).  Over the years, I’ve made a few posts that might have concerned some people and assuredly typed out  a few sentences that might have made a few readers raise their eyebrows.  Some of that is by accident, or more likely intentional (always keep your readers guessing).  Most of the time someone will call me on it and make some clever comment…. and then there are those times it just kind of slide by apparently unnoticed.  Those are the situations that are most intriguing to me.  Has my reader base defected? maybe it was too subtle or worse, readers are starting to associate these situations as “normal” for me (eesh).  As prime example, take a previous post on the Halloween decorations (link here).  In that post I was recounting how difficult it was to get ready for our annual Halloween party due to all the activities that were swirling around at the time.  Let’s recall the following sentence from that post, “Oh, on Tuesday I had to dispose of a body… but more on that in an upcoming post.”  I distinctly remember hashing over that sentence a couple of times and was kind of feeling bad since it was an obvious ploy to generate more comments to pad the year end summary – that is due shortly.  Guess how many comments I received as a result of that specific line?  20? 10? 5?  NOPE  – NADA.  Apparently disposing of a body is less controversial than letting my wife become a Peter Lik groupie.  The good news is this post is the referred to “upcoming post” and therefore I can set the record straight.

I’m not kidding about the queasy nature of this post so if you can’t stand a little bit of gore I recommend shielding your eyes – maybe read it through your fingers to cut d0wn on the exposure – don’t forget to hold your nose at the same time.  Proceed whenever you feel comfortable.

This all started when I was scouting out the woods for the Haunted Trail.  Everything was in fairly good shape.  There were a few trees down that had to be moved to the side, branches that had to be trimmed of their summer growth over the walkway and of course a mowing and weed whacking session to make it easier to navigate.  While mowing the last section of the trail I noticed a foul stench emanating from the direction of the stream.  There are some smells that immediately trigger memories (some good.. some bad … some veeerrry bad).  In this case, the olfactory perception was triggering the latter.  My mind immediately went to the dreaded coyote incident (link here).  A week before the party and there’s a dead coyote on the property.  The mind started clicking away – could I get by with just saying it was part of the Haunted Trail – added realism?  Maybe it will just dry out before the party and go away on its own.  As much as I wanted to believe the first option, the thought of horrifying children who might stumble on the dead carcass eliminated it.  The second option was debated some, but the fact was the dead coyote from before lasted quite a while and it was staying pretty warm out.   Crap, only option left was to deal with it – so off I went looking for it.  The coyote assumption had improperly prepared me for what I found.  20 feet off the path I was mowing and directly on the banks of the stream was THIS:

If you have a strong stomach, feel free to hit the jump to read how this all turns out

Continue reading Santa Lost a Cylinder

A Day in the Land of Odd

Happy Holidays everyone!  With all the activities as of late it has been difficult to find time to get out the remaining posts of the year. .. and by activities that includes tonight’s accomplishment of finally drumming through every single song on my Xbox for Rock Band 3 on pro-drums – including all three cores (RB1/2/3)  expansion packs (LEGO, AC/DC) and too many downloaded songs to admit in public.  Since I had a few minutes to spare while resting the arms, I thought I’d crank one out that I did the prep work on just a few days ago.  While going through my list of ideas I noticed one that has been on there for a looooong time.  To be specific, that would be like 1 year and 7 months.  This is actually a mixture of shots taken by both myself and Linda although not entirely sure which is which so for the most part assume equal credit.

So, back in May of 2011, Linda and I had the opportunity to visit an old friend of mine called Allerton Park and Retreat Center near Monticello IL (link here).  If you were fortunate to attend the University of Illinois, it is likely you are familiar with this location as it is a nice place to get out and away from the grind.  My brother Ron first introduced me to this place while he was going to school there.  The best thing about this place is that it’s more than just a place for some peace and quite – it is also a rich environment for creativity and a godsend if you are in to “photographing the odd”.  The site was the estate of one Robert Allerton who was heir to his father Samuel’s fortunes from his association with the First National Bank of Chicago and many stockyards including the Union Stockyards of Chicago.  Robert was passionate about art becoming an avid collector and philanthropist.  This passion resulted in his estate becoming  full of eccentric sculptures collected during his worldly travels.  Robert was also heavily involved with the University of Illinois along with his adopted son John Gregg.  I was not aware of this before reading up on Wikipedia and their official site, but it was actually deeded to the university back in 1946 (one of the largest gifts to date to the university).  I’ll let you read up on the history of this place, but hands down, if you are looking to spend the day behind the camera .. this is an excellent place to start.

First of all, there are statues all over the property that are stunning in both their size and subject.  Take for example this one.

I believe it is called Death of the Last Centaur.  Guess this is a good time to mention that a large majority of these images were SHOPPED.  I admit it (unlike Peter Lik) but the digital darkroom is one of my favorite parts of photography.  Unlike with wildlife photography I take a little more liberty in landscape shots – the animal world is a little more picky on maintaining the “natural” coloring of the species.  I wanted to learn some advanced techniques and the shots from Allerton provided a fertile ground for that.  I’m guessing from the wide angle shot that Linda actually took the one above – otherwise I would have had to hiked about 1/4 mile away to get that coverage with Beast.   The shot below shows the tighter ones I was shooting.  My goal was to fade out the background so the statue would pop a little more.  A lot of work with masks and filter brushes in Lightroom got me here.

Not bad, the sharpness of the status stands out better than in the first shot.  Some color manipulation accelerated the timing about 5 months into the fall.  The next task was to try my hand at some B&W and tone manipulation.  This is harder than initially thought.

The background did not lighten up as much as desired – need to read up a little more on the Dodging and Burning in the tool but the statue’s coloring came out close to expectations – it would have popped a lot more on a lighter background.  Maybe next time I’ll see if there is an angle that takes some of the trees out.

Hit the jump to see other shots from Allerton…

Continue reading A Day in the Land of Odd