Tag Archives: margaritas

Upward Facing Bull

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Yoga in Yellowstone – Bull elk in velvet

It’s Spring again and everything has been just as crazy up in Yellowstone National Park as it has been down here what with the threat of various virus’s and other problems such as layoff’s, furloughing, high unemployment amongst the animals that are the heart of Yellowstone. It has been a troublesome Spring. Every year when it gets close to the park reopening the National Park Service instructs the Federal Fish and Wildlife department to inventory, catalog, determine specie fitness and check each animal prior to opening the park for this years visitors. The animals need to ready for the long days of being on display and performing whatever their particulars species activities require.

As you might imagine this is a very large undertaking due to the size of the wildlife population that normally resides in the park. Just inventorying the Yellow-rumped warblers takes forever and they’re only one species out of 300 that call the park home. The initial groups brought in for re-indoctrination of park guidelines and requirements are of course, those species that are large enough to be problematic regarding interaction with the tourists, who as you would expect, have paid a large sum of money to view the wildlife and be entertained. They have high expectations due to being cooped up for the last several months with nothing to do but watch Nature programs on TV. Fortunately there are activities that the largest animals can participate in, such as Buffalo Soccer which is perfectly suited to the buffalos mentality and physique, and is a huge favorite of the foreign visitors to the park. You can expect to hear Gooooooal ! all thru the Hayden valley once the games start.

Other large animals that can require management due to their propensity for violence and misbehavior are the hooved ungulates, such as the Rocky Mountain Elk, who have a huge representation in the park. Mostly they are not considered to be a problem early on as they just eat and grow antlers until Fall approaches. Then they shed their antlers and begin to get all chesty as the “Rut” gets nearer. That’s where they get to choose as many cows as they can get their hooves on. Then it’s “Katy Bar the door!” as all hell breaks loose when these big boys battle to decide who the bull duck in the pond is going to be and who gets to keep all those cows they claimed. When this is happening no one can get near them without something terrible happening, as these 1200 lbs. love buckets care for only one thing and that is mating. The last thing on their minds is being sociable with tourists regardless of what those folks saw on TV. These animals are not here to be your new best friends.

To try and keep the damage down to a manageable level the Fish and Game department is trying something new this year. Yoga. One of the senior officials in the department was informed by his wife that Yoga is good for managing stress and anxiety, something these bulls have plenty of as they wait for the velvet to fall off their antlers, so why don’t you try Yoga to see if it doesn’t do the trick for settling these boys down. There have been several articles in Cosmo, Elle and Vogue that stated this was the new best thing to do and since this dialogue took place over a pitcher of Margaritas, there you have it. Yoga in the park and attendance is mandatory. The young fellow above is in his new favorite pose, Upward Facing Bull and as you can see by the sheer bliss settling over his face it appears to be working. Lets’ see how this all holds up in September when the Rut is starting. They may have to give Cosmos a call and get a retraction.

Grand Canyon Diorama

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This is the proposed sketch for the new Grand Canyon diorama. Due to possible governmental budget cuts (by shortsighted bureaucrats and other government officials with comb overs), where our National parks’ funding for upkeep and improvements is considered a frivolous and unnecessary expense, we have been contacted by the state of Arizona to create a diorama that would be viewable from the various lookouts and other vantage points most used by visitors today. This would be undertaken to help offset some of the detrimental effects that would occur from this shortsighted but lucrative action.

The officials of Arizona, where some of you know the Grand Canyon is currently located, have indicated a growing concern for the likely loss of tourist dollars if large portions of the Grand Canyon are closed to view. The new Wingnut in charge of overseeing our Nation’s National Parks and wildlife’s well being and good health as well as other parts of our citizens lives and freedoms here in our good but not great enough yet country, is proposing that not only should funding be cut for the maintenance of our park system but actual use of the parks should be curtailed as it would be more beneficial to the overall public good if those individuals who insist on visiting our national parks and take nonprofit advantage of its beauty, would stay home and tend to their coal burning furnaces and visit places more suited to enhancing our economy, such as the various golf courses, gambling casinos, high-rise hotels and other privately owned profit centers.

To aid in encouraging this new type of activity large areas of the Grand Canyon will simply be blocked off and closed to viewing. Some of it may simply be filled in and leveled off for building new golf courses, gambling casinos and high-rise hotels and to make it simpler to mine the minerals that may lie beneath now useless land under the Colorado river drainage. This hither to now unused property has not yet been fully developed to extract profits that could be gained by strip mining, river diversion, etc.

Well this could be an unmitigated disaster as there are many people here in America who like to go to these areas, especially the Grand Canyon, just to look at it. They like it. It makes them feel good in a way that is different from losing their money at the craps table in high-rise hotels with gambling casinos. They, the visitors, spend money on bumper stickers, frybread, the occasional hotel room, binoculars to look into the Grand Canyon and other national wonders, t-shirts with pictures of the Grand Canyon on them and phrases like “I’m with Dumbass” and arrows pointing in different directions indicating where dumbass might be, margaritas, sunglasses to replace those that fall into the Grand Canyon, new $8000 digital cameras with even more expense lens’s and straps to keep them from falling into the Grand Canyon when they’re leaning closer to get better pictures, sunburn prevention systems, and tattoos of the Grand Canyon, as you can see the list goes on and on.

With all of the possible catastrophes that could and probably will befall our most scared traditions and places we like but don’t really make the kind of money that large commercial ventures make, the officials of Arizona called and said “Hey, looks like we’ll need some dioramas. Better get busy.” What you see above is the first draft of one of the new Grand Canyon dioramas we are preparing for installation as soon as word comes down to kill the parks. This will be slightly different than our usual 3-D dioramas such as the one in Yellowstone National Park as we cannot get the necessary permits to construct and install our normal fiberglass and concrete dioramas. Instead this will be a 6 mile wide by 47′ ¾” high canvas roller, much like the old window shades you used to get at Woolworths. Remember? The kind that if you let them go before they got to the bottom they’d snap up and roll around the wooden spring thing at the top of the window making this cool flapping sound, then the canvas is mounted on tasteful cast iron or aluminum 60′ uprights shaped like Saguaro cactus in front of each view that you can no longer see as it is gone.

We’ll only be installing these on the South rim as there won’t need to be any for the North rim. Access will not be available to the public as that is where the bulldozer ramps and conveyor belts down to the canyon floor will be set up. Plus the tailings from the ore extraction will be dumping back into the river and that would be dangerous for the public to go wandering through that stuff.

We’d prefer to do the old style diorama as we have to cut slits in the canvas of these new ones to let the wind through so they don’t shred themselves. But since we can’t, there it is, make the best of it. Since most people have short little spans of attention they most likely won’t even remember what the real deal looked like anyway.

It looks like we’ll be making dioramas for the full 137 miles of the canyons length as once these new directives go into effect they’ll be busting hump to get this place shut down and development underway. Let us know if you like the new look of the replacement or not. We’re  going with it regardless but it’s always fun to hear  what you think about it.

In the interest of full disclosure the image above is a photograph taken at the Grand Canyon then run through several versions of software that includes Photoshop (Yes Virginia there is a Photoshop and we use it) to produce an image that looks like a painting. But then you knew that just by looking at it.