You musk have been basking in the moonlight, Crave.
In all seriousness, muskox is a fine game meat, and the wool can be woven into excellent clothing.
Oh no, I was trying to sleep last night in the sweltering heat in this the armpit of the universe. I was referring to the urban ledgend about how the full moon brings out the loonies. As evidenced on the thread.
there is no dark side of the moon, its all dark
cavfancier wrote:In all seriousness, muskox is a fine game meat, and the wool can be woven into excellent clothing.
Tastes just like chicken -- provided the chicken has laid dead in the sun for a few days before cooking and provided it is served with a dressing of hog ****!
Goddam moon. It gives me hives. And I can get cranky when I've got hives.
Question, if I may:
Has this thread gone into serious diversion -- or is it my imagination?
Beavers and muskrats
Believe it or not, I actually came up with my sodomy-is-an-addiction theory while I was lazily sitting by the side of the Huron River (in 1992) looking at some muskrats (who unlike beavers are like us in not possessing a cloaca) in the eddy before me. I noticed that they seemed to be spending lots of time tending to a mat of rotting vegetation floating on the river. It had a frothy foam in it reminiscent of beer, and somehow it occurred to me that maybe muskrats brew beer so as to attract the opposite sex. Then, voila, it occurred to me that maybe analogously human males use chemicals to attract the opposite sex, and somehow a light went off and sodomy popped into mind. I was kind of down at the time, thinking about how it seemed like some female who looked like she would be very smart and nice hadn't behaved with as much refinement as I had expected (to my misery and loneliness) and I don't know, it just looked to me like those muskrats (they were a pair) were good-naturedly laughing at what an idiot I was:
"Well, we know what he's down about, the ignoramus. Aren't humans idiots?" " Yep, they aren't smart like us muskrats," Swim, swim, swim. "Well, we know why some females sometimes don't want to be rescued. No mystery there to us." "Ha. ha. Yep, yep."
A difficulty rodents face is allowing bacteria to breakdown cellulose so that it can be digested. Rabbits get around this problem by swallowing a certain amount of their feces to recycle the bacteria, obviously not a desirable situation. It just occurred to me today that perhaps muskrats, beaver, and duckbill platypus breed these bacteria in still-water places, so that they can digest the cellulose without having to swallow feces. Bacteria or yeast perhaps do produce in this broth various addicting concoctions like alcohol as a result. So in fact, it may be that it is very important to these animals' ability to survive in nature that they be able to avoid being influenced by addictions. Thus, an ability to not be influenced by addiction being unusually important to these animals, sex or sodomy being addictive might not be quite as dangerous to them inasmuch as by sex being somewhat addictive, the ability to avoid being influenced by addiction would be selected for, because females possessing such an ability to not be influenced by introduced chemical addiction would be able to engage in sexual selection more reasonably and therefore to prosper more. I should think the importance of the beaver being able to digest cellulose would be especially important, wood bark doubtless being especially difficult to digest; so that may explain why beavers have a cloaca. These animals especially need to be experts about addiction.
Apparently, there are also a few insectivore placental mammals such as (some) shrews (the most primitive placental mammals) who also have a cloaca, and I believe one marsupial insectivore (the monito del monte or colocolos) who also possesses a cloaca. That may be it, but I can't find any site that definitively lists the cloacal non-monotreme mammals, so I'm not sure. The colocolos sounds pretty weird. It looks something akin to a cute mouse, but apparently the Indians where it lives in South America consider it so unlucky, some will burn their house down if one is spotted in it. I have no theories yet on what could make small primitive insectivores have more of a tendency to have a cloaca.
Actually, I got my wrong information from an encyclopedia, and not from internet (though many, many places on internet do say that monotremes are the only mammals with a cloaca). It's an understandable mistake, "monotreme" literally means "one hole," referring to the possession of a cloaca.
wow, thanks for sharing that, i may go back to shooting beavers.
Just make sure they aren't attached to a female.
at my age, it takes awhile to reload
Frank, it is not your imagination, but I am so digging step314's posts
Language to sink teeth into....damn you mathman!! You may just inspire me to read again!! I am laughing too hard right now to post a serious response....it seems gustav has a rival for the title of "funniest man on the net".
Step
I certainly enjoyed your post.
Stay outta the moon for a while!
I think we're all moonstruck and Cher ain't even here.
Where am I?
In the Village
What do you want?
Information
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling . . .We want Information
You won't get it
By hook or by crook . . .
We will
Who are you?
The new Number Two
Who is Number One?
You are Number Six
I am not a number . . .
I'm a free man!
I dunno 'bout tastin' like chicken ... it struck me as being more similar to bison, maybe a little like elk or moose, but definitely a lot like bison. They have superb eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell, which makes 'em a challenging hunt. They really aren't as big as most folks think; a fair-sized bull will be around chest-high to the average human, and weigh somewhere in the vicinity of six or seven hundred pounds, of which less than half will dress out into useable meat (the haunches make fine roasts, ant the sirloin and tenderloin are especially flavorful and nicely textured). If you're inclined, you can try to go get yourself one after next year, since the permit application deadline for the 03-04 season has passed. Naturally, just getting a permit is no guarantee you'll git a critter. Most folks don't. There's a hefty fee for folks who aren't Alaska residents, and it goes even steeper if one is not a US citizen. I figure the one I got came out to around $73.00/lb, if you look at it that way.
Muskox Hunting Tips
Shoot for the center of mass in the chest for a clean kill.
I was about halfway through the Hunting Tips when it occured to me that I would never have thought there was this much interest in shooting an Musk oxymoron. ( I guess they all called that because they stand there and let you shoot them. Oxybrainiacs would whip out their own 30.o6 and blast away at you.
Anyway right after you learn to indentify the cows from the calves you have to learn where in all that fur to shoot and I started thinking about how soft my bed is.
J
Wow. I sit in awe.
At risk of utterly failing to contribute anything of substance or even anything of, I dunno, energy, to this thread, let me say that again: wow.
I sit in awe.
Beavers have cloacas?
Goddamn it - you learn something every day.
