On my way to the shop yesterday morning I noticed all the RV’s parked by the side of the road next to the river, an annual reminder of the great salmon trek and a reminder of last week’s Boston Legal episode.
Which got me thinking about the most amazing video scene I have ever witnessed. It was about 15 years ago , a documentary on a 4000 mile salmon river journey. As you know, as the salmon approach the spawning period they slowly change morphologically, getting weaker and weaker, yet determined as ever to reach their historically allocated spawning bed.
The Scene:
A male salmon has just struggled by snaking itself over a sand bar into a shallow pool on the river. A female salmon accompanied him, but her forward progress had clearly halted in the middle of the sand bar. The male salmon snaked itself back to the female and nudged her ahead for at least 10 feet until she too reached the pool and disappeared.
Not a video, but I saw this happen a year or so ago. Your story reminded me of it.
I was outside work, and it was big goose migrating time. Lots of honking. I heard one lonely honk, repeated every few seconds. One big goose was flying over the building where I worked. I looked where he was headed and a half mile or so away was a big flock of geese, honking happily away. Lonely goose was trying to catch up with them, and failing.
As I watched, the flock turned as one, flew back over the building, gathered lonely goose up in their midst and flew on in the direction they were going to begin with.
Animals are balls out!
While at a restaurant with some friends, we were looking out the window out on to the street. We were on the second floor so we had some perspective on the it. We all saw this squirrel climb a light post. It then stopped at the edge of the arm with the light on it. A busy street was below. It stood there for a second and a friend of mine said jokingly “He’s going to jump.” We all chuckled… then it did! It just leaped off the edge of this lightpost and onto the top of bus that passing under it. It then jumped onto the roof of a car next to the bus and then onto the ground across the street. It was amazing. That squirrel was like the action hero of the squirrel world.
I also saw squirrel rape one morning while eating breakfast on my porch. That or the girl squirrel just liked it rough.
This one time, on America’s Funniest Home Videos, they put this little party hat on a small dog and made it dance around, and Bob Saget did the funny little voice like he was a dog…
It was so funny that I immediately turned off the TV, went to my bedroom dresser, got my revolver, got in the car, drove to the nearest train tracks, laid down, and cried myself to sleep.
It is good you had the revolver; any train insensitive enough to try to run over you at that time should have been shot. Glad it wasn’t necessary, though.
I’ve asked friends about this before. On National Geographic (the cable channel): how sperm whales slept (vertically, about 18 feet or something below the surface) and a monkey struggling to get its head out of a crocodile’s mouth (he escapes). Amazing!
I remember watching a bunch of small birds, sparrows I think, diving at and otherwise hassling a kookaburra (a large native Australian bird rather like a kingfisher) whch was sitting on the roof of a two-storey house. Finally it had had enough and flew down towards the ground to get away from them; and one of the sparrows hopped onto its back for the ride down! They were basically using it as an amusement park ride.
This would have been 35 years ago, so no video, sorry.
Best program I ever saw was the Killer Whales in Patagonia, the ones that beach themselves to get at the seals. One mother was teaching her calf the technique of screaming into the shallows and hurtling up onto the beach. The youngster was less than enthusiastic and slowly approached the shallows. She got beached in about 3 feet of water. The underwater mic’s picked up her distress signals as she completely panicked.
The mother calmly beached herself alongside her calf, “speaking” to her the whole time. And then, just raised one fin out of the water, rolling to one side. She kept doing this same thing until the youngster did the same. Slowly she wriggled back off the bar.
Just thought that was so cool. Loved em ever since.
Well, if we’re going to stick to the animal kingdom, one thing that I remember is footage of two jaguars working together in a rainforest in 3 feet of water killing a rather large Crocodile (or Caymann, can’t remember). What a spectacle! The guy filming it must have gone crazy first watching it and then hoarding his tape all the way back to the copying machine.
This one blew me away. This group of gazelles is drinking water from a river when one gets snatched by a crocodile. So the poor gazelle is going through its death throes when a nearby hippo must have thought, “that’s enough!” The hippo charges the crocodile and the croc drops its prey in retreat. The hippo gently carries the gazelle to dry ground and then blows onto it, looking for all the world like he’s trying to do CPR. After a few moments, the hippo figured out that the gazelle was dead and went about his business as usual.
Not on video, but worth telling. A few years ago I got lost while driving, and while trying to find my way back I passed the same stretch of road three times.
First time, there was just this stretch of road.
Second time, ten minutes later, a dead crow laid there, a bit to the side of the road. It clearly had just been hit by a car.
Third time, the crows crow-SO was agitatedly hopping around it, nudging it, oblivious to the cars passing just inches away from her. Then she shrieked and flew away.
1: Nat Geo prgram- Giant African river crocodiles (like 16 + feet long and a weighing a ton) ambushing wildebeests on their annual migration where they crossed a river. Huge beast & total carnage with the occasional escape. Amazing stuff. National Geographic Crocodiles: Here Be Dragons (1990)
2: Christy Canyon’s (real) breasts in slo-mo while she was “working hard”. You could see them move in a wave back and forth up and down her chest like twin tsunamis hitting the beach, then back again. I never realized real female breasts were so hydrodynamic until seeing them like that.
I remember seeing one of poisonous frog that was eaten by a lizard of something. The frog released poison while in the lizard’s stomach and killed the lizard. The frog then crawled out of the dead lizard’s mouth and hopped away.
There’s a video of an octopus using its camoflauge floating around on the internet. Either that or any scene from the “Deep Sea” episode of The Blue Planet.
