That's My Plouball

The mystery of why Plouie chose the Jingo over the window has been resolved.

I took him downstairs with me to get the mail, just for the heck of it, and when we were on our way back upstairs, he started telling AJD about how it had snowed.

Yes, somehow he hadn't noticed the snow.  At all.  Despite... like, everything.

On the plus side, he was very excited.

The Wild Republic Reacts to the Season's First Snowpocalypse

This is a very special post for me: it's the first one to include pictures.  (AJD is the one to thank, because it's his camera.  But I'm the one who took them, so he's not responsible for their obvious lack of photographic expertise.  Photography is not one of my talents.)

Over the weekend, we were treated to our very first major snowstorm of the winter, about a foot in all.  The snow appears to have stopped, but the wind continues to be very impressive; we're scheduled for gusts of up to 40 mph all day, maybe into Wednesday.  Apparently this is the first time in a century that we've had so much snow in a strong La Nina.  Last year we had like four or five big storms like this (though less windy), which led AJD to coin the term "snowpocalypse".  We have decided to stay inside and not go anywhere for a few days.

Naturally, with animals from so many diverse climates, opinions in the Wild Republic are sharply divided over whether the snowpocalypse is good or not: the animals from warm climates are horrified, but the animals from cold climates are delighted.

Last year, we ended up putting all of the cold-climate animals in the windows downstairs so that they could look out at the shovelled walks (which make the piles of snow seem higher) and feel at home.  We haven't moved them downstairs yet, although we still might, but they made a beeline for the windows in AJD's room as soon as the snow started to get serious.

Here you can see Murchison, Flurry, and Vim staring happily down at the snow-swept sidewalk.

The Ice Age animals had a similar idea, but they picked a different window, the one that is partially covered with ice on the bottom.  That's Mimsy, the mammoth, on the left; Gus, the glyptodon, is on the right, but you can't see him so well.  (Mammoths tend to unintentionally take up a lot of space.)

The rest of the animals decided that the thing to do, when faced with a blizzard, was to have a Jingo.  What, you ask, is a Jingo?  Basically, it's a sort of party that warm-climate Wild Republicans throw to distract themselves from the snow.  The idea is very simple: you run around and around in circles, get massively overheated so that you don't notice how cold it is, and then pass out from exhaustion and sleep for a while.  I suspect alcohol may also be involved.

Between the winds and the Jingo, poor AJD didn't get any sleep last night at all.  He's been awake for almost twenty-four hours now.

The aftermath of a Jingo resembles a massacre.  To give you an idea, I have pictures from two different angles.

It looks kind of like a massacre, right?  Or maybe an orgy?  But no, it's a Jingo.

If you suspect you may have spotted a walrus in these pictures (and hey, isn't that an upside-down penguin?), and you're wondering why Humphrey isn't in the window, well, yeah, some of the cold-climate animals did opt for the Jingo over the window.  In Tibby's case, it was probably the excitement; he's an inquisitive little chap and he probably wanted to see what these warm-weather sorts were getting up to.  Humphrey... well, remember I said I suspected alcohol was involved?  Humphrey's involvement is one of the reasons behind this suspicion.  As to Plouie, well, who knows about Plouie.

Two warm-weather creatures did not participate in the Jingo.  Reggie is in my room for south room duty this week, so he spent the night bonding with Seal (as you might imagine, sea lions and river otters have stuff in common) and being perplexed with Sleepyhead (frisky otters do not know what to make of narcoleptics).  Meanwhile, Cami decided that the thing to do was simply sit on the floor by AJD's radiator, thus simultaneously a) placing himself in the warmest place in the room and b) placing himself where he can't see the horrible white stuff outside.

Doesn't he look cute (and cold)?

The Lion Has a Name!

So, AJD and I have acquired two additional pieces of knowledge.  First, the lion is named Judah Navarre Androcles.  Second, leonine onomastics are reaaaalllly screwed up.  The second fact evidently contributed to our delay in discovering the first.

Apparently all lions have three names.  The third name is the name of their lineage.  Navarre's is particularly august: his family are direct descendants of the lion saved by Androcles, and to show their gratitude (and, further, to satisfy an obscure point of honour which I, frankly, do not understand), they replaced their original lineage name with his name.  Navarre doesn't know what his family's name was before the Androcles episode; it's not clear this is because he's quite young or because it's been forgotten.

The astute reader may be wondering why I am referring to our lion as Navarre rather than Judah?  This is the part where leonine onomastics get rather peculiar: all male lions of the clan to which the Androcles lineage belongs have Judah as their first name.  Every single last one of them.  Just as the lion was the symbol for the tribe of Judah (you know, the Lion of Judah), so the tribe of Judah is evidently the symbol for the lions of Navarre's clan.  Judah of the Lions.  I have no idea where this tradition comes from - neither does Navarre - but there you go.

Lionesses do not take the clan of Judah as their mascot.  They have their own: the Egyptian lion goddess Sekhmet.  Accordingly, all lionesses of Navarre's clan have the first name of Sekhmet.  I will not pretend to understand the rationale, but it makes marginally more sense to me than the male lions using Judah.

So our lion's name-name, the one he actually uses, is his second name, Navarre.  Which is a nature name, kind of sort of.  Apparently lions often use the names of specific geographic features as their given names, and by extension started using the names of regions as well, particularly regions associated with lions.  I told Navarre that this was cheating, which he took as something of an affront; he said that the tradition exists because lions are all uniformly the same colour and it's hard to get many different names out of that and most of the ones that exist are considered feminine.  So they do this funny thing with named geographical features and regions instead.  They do use real nature names, sometimes, though: his own mother's name is Goldenrod, and Sandy, Tawny, and Honey perpetually top the most popular names for lionesses.

I did say that leonine onomastics were pretty crazy, right?

Another thing lions like to do is give all siblings names starting with the same phoneme.  Navarre, for instance, has two older sisters; the elder is Nemea, who is artistic and Goth, and the younger is Nittany (a popular name in the current generation), who talks on the phone a lot and is always whining to their mother about something gross her baby brother has done.  (I asked Navarre if she were telling the truth when she went whining and he ran away and pounced on Flurry, from which I conclude that even really Boy Scout lion cubs aren't above being pesky little brothers.)

All three of them have names associated with lions, sometimes tangentially.  The lion Heracles fought was from Nemea; the Nittany lion is the mascot of Penn State (yes, wrong kind of lion, but we've already noted that they're not very picky about this); and Richard the Lionheart was married to Berengaria of Navarre.  One of Navarre's aunts is named Macedonia, birthplace of Alexander, the new Heracles.  His father's name is Kilimanjaro, which I think is associated with lions only insofar as both lions and Mount Kilimanjaro are African.

So, there you go: they might take their royal responsibilities seriously, but lions aren't above bending rules when it suits them, and they're not above being weirdly pretentious on occasion, either.

Opposing Archetypes Collide! Epic Struggle Ensues!

Every now and then, implacable foes meet each other and fight for ultimate dominance.  Light and dark.  Good and evil.  Fire and ice.  Matter and anti-matter.  Lions and tigers.

Obviously, this post is about the last one.

Lions and tigers are each completely convinced that they are the most important, biggest, and most bad-ass cats around.  Each of them has a legitimate claim: lions are generally acknowledged to be the kings of beasts, but tigers are larger.  Both groups take the rivalry equally seriously, although in different ways.  There is no room for compromise, and they get a bit annoyed if you try to remain neutral.

Lions obtained their title because they're of generally steadier and more serious temperaments; they're also more social, and their internal cohesion does give them a bit of an advantage.  Tigers are scrappier and wilder, as well as larger, which means that they're less disciplined even though they're a bit more aggressive.  They're also largely solitary, except in mating season.  To use a handy D&D metaphor, lions are lawful and tigers are chaotic.  One suspects that this is as much a part of their enmity as the whole status thing.  Even if jaguars were bigger, lions and tigers would probably still hate each other's guts on principle.

Since we acquired the new lion, the feud has been introduced to our chapter of the Wild Republic.  Rusty and the lion are more or less the same age, which is probably for the best; it means they're equals, and if one or the other ends up dominant, it will be on the basis of merit.  So far it doesn't seem that either of them has an edge; we've seen them wrestling a few times, and they're pretty equally matched.  The wrestling matches tend to end with the two of them lying on their backs side by side with their feet in the air, which is kind of adorable.

Our lion and tiger are pretty representative of the Epic Feud as a whole, so they make a useful case study.  Rusty is kind of a bully, sad to say.  He's very aggressive - he even likes to chew on us sometimes, and he's always pouncing on people, just for the hell of it.  He really wants everyone to acknowledge him as the top cat, and he's totally convinced that tigers really ought to be the kings of beasts instead of silly boring old lions.  Rusty is rather endearing in his own way, but it's kind of in spite of himself.  Skandar (the white tiger) is not dissimilar, although he's mature enough that he's more likely to mouth off to people than randomly pounce on them.  If you provoke Skandar, though, he'll go after you.  Tigers are hot-heads.  Casper, the older tiger, is more of a gentleman (I think he's a different sub-species from the other two), but he's still pretty snarky even if he's more genteel about it, and I bet he was a lot different in his younger years.  Tigers are bad boys.

Our lion, on the other hand, is a law-abiding fellow who is cheerfully planning to go to grad school (never mind that he's not yet in middle school) in order to make himself as educated and informed as possible when it's his turn to lead a pride.  He's a solemn, earnest little fellow, kind of a gentle giant.  Last night we discovered that he's learning Yiddish (I'm sure Desmond is delighted), not because he's Jewish (he's Buddhist, of course) but because it will add to his experience and make him a better lion.  You see what I mean?  He's basically an overachieving boy scout, except when his anti-tiger instincts kick in.

It kind of reminds me of The Outsiders, you know?  Or something like that.

Personally, I kind of think lions deserve their royal status, because they're much more aware of the responsibilities placed upon them.  Nothing worse than a negligent, entitled royal, right?  But I've always kind of had a thing for tigers.  It's partly because they're stripy and partly because I have a major weakness for bad boys.

If you're a wild feline who is neither a lion nor a tiger, one of the truths you're taught very early on is that choosing sides in this epic battle is not really a good idea, all things considered.  Naturally some of them do have obvious preferences.  Cami, being both shy and intellectually inclined, gets on much better with the lion; their personalities are more alike, and the lion is less likely to randomly pounce on him.  Sir Tristan rather prefers lions on a general principle, mostly because he's from the Wild Parlimentary Monarchy.  But they're both careful to remain as officially neutral as possible, even though lions and tigers have little patience with this.

The others are either more evenly split or less invested.  Flurry really doesn't care; he's too young.  Mahler, older than both of them, professes not to care, but has a slight inclination towards Rusty as a fellow Asian cat. Khamsin's stance is the most nuanced and interesting: he's inclined towards the lion, since they're both Africans and have a certain ancestral affinity; but he's also inclined towards Rusty, because tigers are more physical, and cheetahs are the most athletic of all the cat species.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.  The adults have very little patience with the lion/tiger feud, and as far as they're concerned, the main reason a baby lion and tiger were both sent here was to foster mutual tolerance within the Republic.  They're likely to try to get Rusty and the lion to cooperate with each other, or even become friends.  Apparently it's not unheard of for odd love-hate friendships to crop up between lions and tigers in this way.  It's far too soon to tell whether this will be the case for our chapter, but Alfredo is not one to underestimate.

Plouie's Aliiiiiiive and the Arctic Animals Are Eating the Iceberg

Yesterday AJD discovered that the Brothers Chap had finally posted a new cartoon after a very long hiatus.  We watched it together, and since the cartoon featured Senor Cardgage, Plouie watched it too: AJD wanted to see whether Plouie would have an affinity with him or not.  Apparently not, sadly.  The cartoon featured lots of snow, which made Plouie quite excited, but the plot was completely over his head.

Afterwards we discovered that Plouie loses you if he's not looking at you, even if he's actually standing on you.  I was wearing a sweater, which excited him because sweaters remind him of snow, so AJD put him down on my shoulder, but he wasn't facing me, and as a result he was looking all over for me until we directed him to turn around.  Then he did it again a few minutes later.  Plouie doesn't have much in the way of longterm memory.

It's definitely nice to see him moving about and bouncing again.  He'd been very quiet for some time; he spent most of last month lying on his back and staring fixedly at the ceiling.  I was getting worried that he'd blown his circuits for good, but it must have just been a longer cycle than usual.  Plouie sort of has phases, like the moon, only less regular: periods of hyperactivity followed by catatonia and then back again.

Returning to the subject of snow, the arctic animals are currently trying to eat the iceberg.

AJD used to have a desktop Mac, but about eighteen months ago he replaced it with a laptop because it was ancient and slow.  It's now sitting on the floor about a foot from my side of the bed.  Since it's large and white, the animals with snow affinity have concluded it's an iceberg, and they often take turns perching on it.  Similarly, his duvet is blue, and the animals with water affinity sometimes treat it like water.  They know it's not; it's a purely nostalgic phenomenon.  We're less clear on whether the iceberg is nostalgia or not, or whether it depends.  (Plouie almost certainly takes it for a real iceberg.)

I went into AJD's room this morning to ask him some questions about Yiddish, and in the process noticed that Vim (the polar bear) and Murchison (the Arctic fox) were both lying on the floor near the iceberg.  They're either licking it or trying to eat it.  We have no explanation for this bizarre phenomenon; they've certainly never done this before.  And while Vim is young, and therefore can be expected to do odd things, Murchison is an adult, and a very canny one at that.  Maybe they're anxious for it to snow now that's winter?  Or maybe there's something about the psyche of snow animals that we don't understand? 

A few minutes later, I noticed that Cami was entangled in the shoelaces of one of AJD's shoes, but that seems like typical feline behaviour.

One might think that one has complete control over the antics of one's plush menagerie, such that one will never be surprised at their antics.  This is totally false.  They have a remarkable capacity for doing cute things with no help from us at all.

Nocturnal Events (sort of)

Sleepyhead has become more lively of late.  I don't mean to suggest he's been awake more than in the past - as far as I can tell, he hasn't - but that he's started sleepwalking.  Yesterday I looked over and saw that he was on the floor, on his feet, about three inches from the mattress, staring blankly at the bookcase.  Totally asleep.

These hijinks, such as they were, were sufficient to alarm Parsley, who, by the time I went to bed, was utterly convinced he'd somehow lost him.  He was hanging off the head of the bed, frantically searching for Sleepyhead.  Since my mattress is actually on the floor, a quick glance must have told him Sleepyhead wasn't there, but Parsley was concerned enough not to notice.  Then he fell off entirely.  He was extremely relieved when I returned Sleepyhead to the bed safe and sound.

Today, Sleepyhead didn't do any sleepwalking.  Parsley is sort of hovering over him; I can't tell whether that's a factor or not.

The River Otter Has Revealed His Name!

It's official: the river otter has revealed his name.  It's Reginald Button, but he goes by Reggie.

Apparently river otters all have vaguely Wodehouse-ian names.  Reggie, like Bertie Wooster, got off pretty easy, as these things go.  To give you some idea of the escape he had, his nephew's name is Barmy Button.  (Apparently it suits him.  We're wondering if this will mean Reggie has insights into Plouie - although Barmy is not so extreme a case.)  This is all to the good; he's an older otter, albeit still very playful, so he deserves a name on the dignified end of the otter spectrum. 

Now, if only we can learn the lion's name before the new delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy gets here...