Salvador Dali Walking an Anteater Up From the Subway

Sometimes my post titles are not at all misleading.

This should really be enough for you. It’s plenty for me. Happy Tuesday. (Via.)

That's What You Do With No Sunlight

Yesterday, I received the following comment on the first YouTube video I ever posted

Do you know how lucky you were to catch this on film? This is a natural action a mother will teach her child. It is used for defence from jaguars, cougars and other large south american preditors that may try to kill and make a meal out of the anteaters. This is exelent footage! 5 stars and a favorite for this video.

Misspellings aside, it taught me something about the video that I didn’t know before and has prompted me to post in on my blog again. In short, no, I did not realize how lucky I was to witness this, but I suppose someone with the user name CoasterZooFreak might know.

Two notes: No, that’s not me laughing. I originally put this video up on this on this blog on July 3, 2006, according to this post.

Stand Up for Anteater Rights

Both members of Brooklyn-based power couple Sanaemon saw fit to give me a heads-up about notable online anteater goings-on of the past few days. The male half did so with the explanation "anteaters blowing up on reddit.com." Not literally.

Notable cyberanteater unit one (a.k.a. "fuck you" anteater):


And notable cyberanteater unit two, (a.k.a. "anteaters in sweaters" and courtesy of theinternetisterribel.com):


Sanam and Aemon, in case you wanted to know, live in Brownstone that reportedly looks just like the Cosby house — which would make sense, seeing as how they are raising two scene-stealing moppets named Rudy and Olivia, respectively. (Eldest daughter Sondra moved out.)

Snug as a Tamandua in a Mop Bucket

It wouldn't matter even if I didn't like anteaters. The little dears just won't leave me alone.

Some of you might remember "Belated Christmas Present from Sanam," in which I discussed the differences between anteaters and the horrible look-alike species, aardvarks (tardvarks). The post drew the attention of one commenter, TamanduaGirl, who seemed to share my love for the tube-nosers. She even keeps a blog, It's all About the Animals, on which she posts photos of many animals — including Pua and Stewie, two tamanduas who frequently do entertaining things.

See?


Anyway, I thought my awareness of TamanduaGirl and her pets was well behind me on Wednesday when I was at work and posting Starshine's new column. One of the steps in putting up a column is finding an image that can be posted at the top. This often necessitates a Google image search. And for whatever reason, looking for image to accompany Starshine's pieces often results in more porn than not. It's strange, really: Even when the column doesn't even mention sex, I still end up polluting my computer with Google image search pages filled with smut. This week was no different: as the column's subject was Starshine's discomfort with allowing her cleaning lady to toil away while she types at a computer all day, I looked for a picture of a maid.

Big mistake. Turns out hardly anyone posts plain old photos of maids nowadays. No dusting, no scrubing, no wearing a saucy French uniform. Just naked ladies taking it from all sides and angles. Next, I went for "cleaning lady." Nope. Nothing good, and a lot of porn thumbnails labeled "horny cleaning lady takes two at a time." (Still, these searches were less dirty than the ones I had to find for the column on having sex in the back seat of her car. And even then, I was only Googling "back seat.")

In an act of desperation, I ended up searching Flickr just for "mop bucket" to see if anything PG-rated could be found. As I scrolled down the first page, one image in particular caught my eye:


Unless I'm mistaken, that's little Pua, "snug as a tamandua in a mop bucket," as the photo's title says. And yes, it's posted by TamanduaGirl.

I'm not saying it's destiny that I ended up encountering the same person's anteater-loving online identity twice in one week. I'm not saying it results from some grand convergence of celestial bodies. I'm just saying it's a pretty damn remarkable coincidence.

Plus, there were anteaters, too.

And I liked that.

Belated Christmas Present From Sanam

I realized this never made it to the Back of the Cereal Box. Near the end of last year, Sanam posted on her Archivolt blog something titled "FOR DREW." The posts consists on just one image, which I've posted below.


Of course, it's not one of my beloved anteaters. It's an aardvark, or "dirt pig." Confusing the two is like calling a Kiwifruit an Aussiefruit, but I'll forgive Sanam. I'm assuming this aardvark is a pup, though if he's actually an albino midget aardvark who's been denuded through some terrible turn of events, that's the saddest thing ever. Why do so much things that I associate with Sanam make me feel happy and sad at the same time?

Here's a quick lesson that should help everybody tell the difference between the lovable anteater and the lowly aardvark, so no one makes the same mistake Sanam did.


Here's an anteater, being adorable and politely extending its paw upon meeting a new person in accordance with the ingrained anteater sense of manners.


And here's an aardvark, slyly trotting away after having mauled a toddler. He's eyeing the cameraman only because he doesn't want to leave any witnesses and he's therefore memorizing the camerman's face. Note the obvious "criminal" posture with which this slovenly creature carries itself.


Here are two anteaters re-enacting a scene of the Holy Mother and Jesus Baby. Anteaters are devout Christians with a flair for the visual arts.


And here's an aardvark. Thought it might look like it's in a zoo, but it's actually in prison. This aardvark stole money from war widows. The spots on its forehead are actually gang demarcations.


Here's a saintly baby anteater, resting up after having cured several blind children. Performing such miracles drains even the considerable will of the noble anteater. To certain indigenous South American peoples, the anteater is known as the "jungle doctor" in recognition of its well-documented medical miracles.


And here's an aardvark. The picture doesn't properly convey it, but this aardvark is shouting a horrible racial slur that I won't taint my blog by printing here.

Now let's see if we can keep these two animals straight from now on.

The Backpack

As the seven hours of war protest activities scheduled for tomorrow have rendered my Saturday into a work day, I took today off and went to the zoo. It's my third trip. The zoo has animals. See?

I'm happy to report that this zoo trip afforded me my first-ever opportunity to photograph the Santa Barbara's famed crooked neck giraffe, who, as its description implies, has a crooked neck. See?

As anybody who's read this blog beyond this past year knows, I was, for a brief period, obsessed with anteaters. The psychosis has subsided, for the most part. But that hasn't stopped me from spending a good half-hour at the anteater pen, waiting and anticipating the moment Momma and Baby Wobbly Nose would wake up and entertain me. You see, I've been aware of the anteater born at Santa Barbara Zoo since October of 2004, when I found that my friend Val worked there and had ready access to the pair. The zoo staff was in the process of selecting a name for Baby Anteater. (Val suggested "Little Lafawnduh.") Eventually, someone came up with "Mochila" — Spanish for "backpack," as the newborn little freak had a habit of riding on his mother's back. Cute, huh?

Like I said, that first awareness of the anteater happened more than two years ago. You'd think that Mochila would have outgrown the need — or at least the habit — of riding everywhere piggyback.

Not so.

It turns out that anteaters don't stop doing that, as I learned today. What initially looked like horrendous mother-son humping soon revealed itself to be mere affectionate piggybacking in spite of Momma's nearly buckling legs. Mochila, after all, looks to be close to full-grown. My take: Momma needs to say "no."

See Mochila's arrested development in action.

Tongue and all. I'm seriously so impressed with myself.

Momma and Baby in action, courtesy of YouTube: