Revelations

So I was talking to Henri the other day, and in the course of the conversation -- I don't remember how this came up -- I randomly referred to him as a giraffe, because, you know, I'd always assumed he was a giraffe.  Don't you think he looks like a giraffe?.  Here is a random cute picture of Henri with Winslow the whale.

Henri and Winslow

Well, it turns out I was entirely wrong, and Henri is not a giraffe after all!  He's a girrafe.  That is pronounced [dʒr-ref], with a vocalic [r] in the first syllable followed by another [r] as the consonantal onset in the second syllable, and the whole thing rhymes with treif.  He showed me his official public ID on the tag on his ear (the one you can see in that picture), and it clearly identifies him as a girrafe rather than a giraffe.  I felt really bad.  Henri's been with me for at least four or five years now, and this whole time I've been assuming he was a giraffe! 

This does make the fact that Henri is carnivorous suddenly make sense, though.

A Creative Project

The Mini Republic doesn't get much face time on this blog.  This is because they don't interact in the same way as the Wild Republic; they mostly stay remain in fixed positions on my various bookcases.  They get moved around from time to time, so they're not always in precisely the same place, but you don't find them in interesting configurations the way you do with their larger counterparts.

This doesn't mean that the Mini Republic is boring; they're just interesting in a different way, primarily by way of having amusing conversations.  

Not long ago, Henri and Winslow came up with what they are sure is a creative project that cannot fail.  They want to film a pilot for a television show featuring a pair of best friends who go around the world having wacky adventures and fighting crime.  The friends, naturally, will be played by Henri and Winslow themselves, and the gimmick is that they roam through the world with Henri riding on Winslow's back as Winslow swims through the ocean.

This is incredibly cute.

I'm not as certain as they are that this is a concept that Cannot Fail, but it's cute enough that I want to see them succeed.

Since Henri and Winslow announced their grand plan, various other animals have got interested in similar ideas.  Gilly isn't interested in fame, but thinks swimming through the ocean on the back of an aquatic mammal sounds like a capital plan; sometimes Humphrey indulges him a ride.

You cannot resist requests from someone with Gilly's little face.

Barry, being something of an attention slut, wants to steal the idea, and he keeps trying to talk Humphrey into getting in on this first.  Humphrey is not particularly good-natured about this, so sometimes Barry sort of leaps on his back and starts talking about how famous they'll become, to Humphrey's annoyance.  (It's hard to move when you have an elephant on your back.)  We've taken a few pictures of this, but they tend to look a bit obscene, so for Humphrey's sake I'll only show you the least offensive.

It's lacking a certain something, I don't know.  The formula is the same - large land mammal standing on sea mammal - and yet...

An Addition to the Mini Republic

There has been a recent addition to the Mini Republic: AJD has gifted me with a gnu.  Here he is; the Chinese lion with him is Sheng.  At least, I think that one is Sheng.  (The other lion, not pictured, is Fergus.)

Isn't he darling?  He's remarkably coordinated; he likes dancing and balancing on his head, neither of which are activities I would have predicted as canonical for gnus.

The new gnu is named Gyork.  This was the suggestion of our friend WMPT (who was visiting us for the day with his wife EHC), and the rationale ought to be clear with a second's reflection.  Gnus create far too many possibilities for terrible puns.

For the moment, Gyork seems to be enjoying hanging out with Sheng, although I'm not sure he's going to stay there.  Initially he was getting to know Henri; they had a good time talking about their mutual beloved homeland of Africa.  Here they are, along with a bat.  (There's a story behind the bat, as it happens, but now is not the time to tell it.)

It is my dearest wish (in a manner of speaking) that "bovines must have names related to New York" is not actually a rule, because if so, it's even worse than felines requiring nature names, which is bad enough.

My Menagerie Gets Media (sort of)

AJD's team has just finished running the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt (very successfully, from what I hear), which means that I can now reveal that several members of my menagerie were involved as well - in pictures, even.  The others who weren't included (particularly Rusty) are very jealous.

The puzzle featuring my darlings was called Soooo Cute!  If you go to the solution page (by clicking "Call in answer"), you'll see at the top that they're all credited:

featuring Parsley, Seleucus, Desmond, Barry, Vim, Winslow, Khamsin, Humphrey, Henri, and others

The others alluded to are not from my menagerie.  Barry was, initially, one of those others, but DS was looking for homes for them (because it would have been hard to transport them, I think?), so we adopted Barry.

Not only can I now reveal that this has happened, but I can also show their pictures, which I wasn't at liberty to do before.  So, here goes.

Barry:

You'll see that one again shortly, because I ought to do "so I have an elephant named Barry" post.

Humphrey:

Desmond:

We did two shots of each of them.  Desmond blinked the first time.

Henri:

Henri is very shy.  I'm not sure if you can tell.  It's something about being a mini-giraffe; it would probably make me shy too.

Winslow:

It's really hard to get a good picture of a beluga whale on a white background.  Try it yourself and you'll see.  The other one we took was sort of blindingly incandescent; it made Winslow look like a whale god, as far as you could make him out.

Seleucus:

Khamsin:

Parsley:

Vim.

You can't see his earring in this picture very well, but he has one.  If there are prizes for cuteness to be given amongst my animals, Vim is a really strong contender.