Merman IV

See also:
Merman
Merman II
Merman III

Tan Lines XXVII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Edgy and Contemporary

Located in the hinterland of Byron Bay, Australia, the property of “Amileka” comes complete with 360 degree views, an outdoor pool and a giant red hare (or is it a rabbit?).

Awarded “Best Property Australia” in the 2009 CNBC International Property Awards, the 2008 Architecture Award from the Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Country Division), and the 2009 Master Builders Association Regional Award, “Amileka” has been described as an “edgy contemporary home.” When can I move in?

Tan Lines XXVI

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Running Hare VII

Image: Artist unknown.

Morning Light XXXVI

Subject: David Rich.
Photographer: Unknown.

The Sea Hare

Notes Wikipedia:

The clade Aplysiomorpha commonly known as sea hares are medium-sized to very large sea slugs with a soft internal shell made of protein. These are marine gastropod molluscs in the superfamilies Aplysioidea and Akeroidea.

The common name "sea hare" derives from their rounded shape and from the two long rhinophores that project upwards from their heads and that somewhat resemble the ears of a hare.

Sea hares are mostly rather large, bulky creatures. The biggest species, Aplysia vaccaria, can reach a length of 75 centimetres (30 in) and a weight of 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) and is arguably the largest gastropod species.

Sea hares have soft bodies with an internal shell, and like all opistobranch mollusks they are hermaphroditic. Unlike many other gastropods, they are more or less bilaterally symmetrical in their external appearance. The foot has lateral projections, or "parapodia."

Sea hares are herbivore/herbivorous, and are typically found on seaweed in shallow water. It seems to be the case that some young sea hares are capable of burrowing in soft sediment leaving only their rhinophores and mantle opening showing. Sea hares have an extremely good sense of smell. They can follow even the faintest scent using their rhinophores, which are extremely sensitive chemoreceptors.

Their color corresponds with the color of the seaweed they eat: red sea hares have been feeding on red seaweed. This camouflages them from predators. When disturbed, a sea hare can release ink from its ink glands, providing a potent deterrent to predators. This release acts as a smoke screen, while at the same time, adversely affecting the smell sensors of their predators. In a small environment, this ink could be toxic to the inhabitants. The color of the ink is white, purple or reddish, depending on the color of the pigments in their seaweed food source. Their skin contains a similar toxin that renders sea hares largely inedible to many predators.

Some sea hares can employ jet propulsion as a locomotory method, although without the sophisticated cognitive machinery of the cephalopods their motion is somewhat erratic.




Image 1: GetAHugeTank.com.
Image 2: ColdWaterImages.com.
Image 3: Zazzle.com.

Tan Lines XXV

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Dancing Hare

Paul Christiano as Strephon in the first of the Ritual Dances
in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage.

Morning Light XXXV

Images: Subject and photographer unknown.

Hare Care

Like all wild creatures, it is important for a hare to keep itself clean and they are always grooming. This puts them at risk of ingesting chemicals sprayed on the land, especially because they like to keep their feet clean after being balled up with mud. The risk of chemical poisoning to hares has decreased, as pesticides are used more sparingly and are a lot safer, but paraquat is still often sprayed on stubble after the harvest to kill off any growth, and this can be harmful to hares.

- Jill Mason
The Hare
p. 53

Morning Light XXXIV

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Eyes of the Hare

Brown hares have large golden-coloured eyes set on the side of their heads, providing them with almost 360 degree vision. Directly ahead of them is where they can see least. They have been known to kill themselves by running into an object or even each other because they have obviously been looking backwards at whatever was behind them rather than forward. This all-round vision means that from their hiding place they can view everything about them. It is a fallacy that hares never close their eyes. They shut them when they are fighting to avoid injury and also when they are dozing. In common with many other animals that are the prey rather than the hunter, they do not go into a deep sleep. They probably merely relax and nap.

- Jill Mason
The Hare
pp. 49-50

Tan Lines XXIV

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

In the Light of the Moon

The hare is nocturnal and spends most of its day in a shallow form on the ground; and unless someone approaches very closely it will not move away from its resting place. Apart from the certain times of year, in the spring mating season or during the corn-harvest when hares are disturbed, there are few to be seen about the countryside. But you will frequently see them out at dusk or in the light of the moon, moving and feeding in the fields. If they have lain in the open or in the woods or reeds of a marsh for the best part of the day, they will come out into the open at night to feed and disport themselves.

- George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 112

Morning Light XXXIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Creatures of Habit

Hares are creatures of habit and use the same tracks and gaps in hedges, which has always made them easy for poachers with nets or snares. They also make good use of the unsown lines left in arable crops which are now such a part of modern farming practices. When they are chased they know exactly where they are heading.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Image: "Hare in the Barley" by Bells of Suffolk.

Checkum

Former UK Big Brother House Mate Dale Howard is appearing naked in a campaign for the UK Charity Macmillan Cancer Support aimed at encouraging men to check for testicular cancer.

Tribe

Tribe, from "Survival" by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Color lithograph with chine colle; 35/50.

Tan Lines XXIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Catholic Tastes

The Brown hare has catholic tastes, feeding on a variety of crops. It is wholly vegetarian and is a fastidious feeder, much preferring the lush tender young shoots of corn and clover, different grasses, crops of swedes, turnips, cabbages, lettuces and carrots to rank herbage. The hare is not averse to dining on the bark and shoots of all kinds of trees and shrubs. It also enjoys the delights offered to it by smallholders and market gardeners who grow an even wider range of vegetables! In the flower garden hares can wreak havoc, having a penchant for dahlias, carnations, pinks, nasturtiums, wallflowers, primulas, heathers and herbs such as parsley and thyme.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Image: The Leveret.

Leporid Sculpture

In creating her 14' Leporid in St. Paul's Western Sculpture Park, artist Mary Johnson used rebar, lath and cement. She also invited children from the neighborhood to help create mosaic medallions from found objects which were then embedded into the leporid's "hide." She used the hub caps from a '58 Ford for the eyes!


Images: The Leveret.

Morning Light XXXII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Soul of the Sufferer

Write George Ewart Evans and David Thomson:

. . . Belief in the transmigration of souls either into animals or other human beings seems at one time to have been universal. The thought behind it is familiar to us all and comes from observation. A parent can often see his/her dead father or mother not only in the character but in the gestures and facial expressions of his/her child and it is natural for anyone who lives among animals to observe in them traits that belong to people too. They were and sometimes still are, invested with human souls by imaginative sympathy; the lion has the dignity and courage of a noble person, the elephant wisdom and the long memory that goes with it, Swallows are skilled and spiritual. The hare is chosen for qualities as varied as its nature and has the soul of the sufferer, the fecund begetter, creator of arts, inventive dreamer, and, principally, of the person who is gifted with an intuitive leaping mind.

In some societies it was not everybody’s soul that could enter an animal. Only the chosen – the wise elder or the child that was born to be a priest or shaman – possessed that power; they possessed it during their lives as well as after death. Like the witches they could shift their minds into paraphysical states, rendering themselves “beside themselves” as we say of people who have temporarily abandoned the controls of reason.

The [following] ritual rhyme of the Scottish witches . . . describes a psychological transformation that went together with dressing up as a hare. In modern English it means:

I shall go into a hare
With sorrow and sigh
and (probably) mental torment.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
Pp. 148-149

Cock Rock

In his "Salute to the Greatest Crotches in Rock," Morgan Short notes that "the crotches of rock singers have captivated the imagination of the world" for years.

As "an embodiment of the mystery, danger and freedom of the music itself," writes Short, "the crotch has occupied a central role in a stirring rock performance."

Continuing, he notes:

Of course, the crotch today remains a valuable weapon in the rock arsenal, as exemplified by the current wave of tight pants bands rehashing the Kinks/The Who sound of the 60s and 70s. More and more women are also mobilizing their crotches as well for the good of the rock. Take Peaches, for example. In recent years, the famed Electroclash chanteuse has turned her crotch into something of a cottage industry for photos, song lyrics and album covers.

His "salute," however, focuses on "elder statesmen and women of rock; those who burned bright, burned big and then (mostly) wilted away." Yet "whether by physical presentation, stylistic innovation or a certain ineffable spirituality," the crotches of those highlighted "will always live on in the hearts of the fans."

Top of the list is Led Zepplin's Robert Plant, who elsewhere on the web is described as the "Definitive Bulge of Rock and Roll."

"The crotch of Robert Plant," writes Short, "should be considered the fifth instrument of Zeppelin. For stripping away all ambiguity as to the proportions, dimensions and angles of his package, Robert Plant is a true innovator. On stage he may have been singing 'Kashmir,' 'All My Love,' and 'Ramble On,' but implicitly he was whispering gingerly into your ear, 'Here is the outline of my penis.'

Others highlighted in Short's "Salute to the Greatest Crotches in Rock" include Freddie Mercury, Iggy Pop, Bon Scott, Jim Morrison, Axel Rose, Prince, David Bowie, Courtney Love, and David Lee Roth.

To view and read more , click here.

Buck

Bucks are very promiscuous and many may be attracted to a female prior to her being properly in season. A male will stay close to a doe, guarding her, until after mating has taken place. Several males will be drawn to the vicinity of the doe from different directions and there may be scuffles as the males are intent on trying their luck and keep harassing her.


Fighting, boxing, scratching and biting takes place and the fur often flies, but usually it is the doe who is the aggressor as she tries to fend off their unwanted attentions.

Although they normally live a solitary existence, the bucks themselves have a loose social hierarchy and they are aware of where they stand in the pecking order, so that fighting among themselves is kept to a minimum. . . . Male hares play no part in raising their offspring.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Images: Jane Ford.

Tan Lines XXII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Abyssinian Hare

The Abyssinian Hare (Lepus habessinicus) is a species of mammal in the Leporidae family. It is almost entirely restricted to the nations of the Horn of Africa, though it extends marginally into eastern Sudan and may also occur in far northern Kenya. It has been suggested it should be considered conspecific with the Cape Hare, but is considered a separate species based on (presumed) sympatry in their distributions.

- Source

Image: Jeff Kerby.

Merman III

Image 1: Artist unknown.
Image 2: Lanisaz.
Image 3: Elf-Fin.

Morning Light XXXI

Subject: Kent Edwards.
Photographer: Ricardo Muniz.

Hare Moon

In the Middle East the female hare Akrasha, through her association with the moon and six stars known as Al Thurayya, was thought to drive away evil djinns. Cultures in many places around the world as far apart as India, China, Mexico, Africa, North America, and Europe linked the hare symbolically with the moon, the dawn, the seasons, madness, and sometimes with fire. In Britain the full moon in April was called the ‘hare moon.’

– Jill Mason
The Hare, p. 101

Tan Lines XXI

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Merman II

See also the previous post: Merman.


Image 1: Jade N. Bengco.
Image 2: Artist unknown.
Image 3: Frank Gembeck.