Well, last night ended up being one for the “Nearly Bit It” record book – which already has an eerie number of pages in it. Remember that highly engineered bird feeder I made last year.. the one made out of PVC… ugh, here’s a refresher (link here). Turns out there is a demon side to this contraption that didn’t occur to me until… well, LAST NIGHT when I almost lost an eye and somehow avoided a broken nose. I’ll leave off the ghastly details, but I didn’t take into account how slippery the rain had made the crank system and didn’t bring the feeders (I was trying to fill) all the way down. When I let go, the crank continued freely unwinding. The interesting part of this was attached to the crank was a 1.5′ coated wire with a large metal latch hook on the end. This mace like object was whipped directly into the bridge of my nose. Now there are hits to the head and then there are WHITE LIGHT events. This was of the latter and my third major one in my lifetime (martial arts, snowboarding and now -embarrassingly- a bird feeder). Quite frankly I can’t believe it didn’t hit directly into my eye socket. Half a centimeter and I’m celebrating Talk Like a Pirate day every day.
Speaking of eyes, how about those haunting eyes on the covers of today’s main topic? Those are windows into a truly majestic animal. I think this may be a record for me, three book recollections in the same month. This recollection is about The Wolf: Ghost Hunter by Daniel Leboeuf with photography by Thomas Kitchin and Victoria Hurst. To my surprise, this book was originally a French publication from 1995 that had an English translation published in 1996. It is probably unfortunate that I had read Wolves (link here) earlier in the month. As a result, the impression of this offering suffered some. For starters, the front cover shot on this book is fantastic and the rest of Thomas and Victoria’s work was very good, but it was eclipsed by the photography of Monty Sloan in the other book. I make that statement only in the comparative light seeing how all of them far exceed anything I have been able to produce on the wolf front. The text seems to suffer some too and this is likely due to the translation process. It just seemed to lack any depth and unlike Shaun’s work it really didn’t have a lot of new insights. It did have some interesting European dates for wolf extinction and a tidbit on Jewish views on the wolf (so harsh, so very harsh). If you are looking pick up a fairly quick read on wolves and enjoy some outstanding wildlife photography I’d have to recommend Shaun Ellis Wolves book over this one. There were a few takeaways/confirmations from the book so feel free to hit the jump to see those.
