Meetin’ some mammals… part 2… Some tips on mammal meeting…

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Not all mammals are as excited about the prospect of meeting you as most dogs, some cats, and… well, whatever percentage of horses that can sense that you are worth meeting to the point where they are willing to walk over to the fence to meet you.  In fact, most mammals would just as soon not meet you. I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings. You can’t take it personally. We did spend a lot of our history basically trying to kill and eat most of them.

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Your average mammal will start walking away as soon as they see or smell you.

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At the very least, they will turn and stare at you while they try to decide exactly what you are up to.

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And then, seeing that you are human, and therefor, no doubt, up to no good, they will depart, often at a fairly good rate of speed.

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The was to overcome this is by approaching them slowly and quietly… from downwind if you can. Oh, and having a good zoom lens doesn’t hurt. But remember, to some mammals, a big camera looks like a gun, and brings up unpleasant memories of stories passed down by their elders.

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Yes, I know that isn’t a mammal. But I didn’t take any other bird pictures on this trip, so I can’t very well do a sill series of posts about meeting birds, can I? And it is a good picture of a wild turkey.

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Meetin’ some mammals… part 1…

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I did mention that I met some very nice mammals today, on the way back from my little adventure to the Bay Area, didn’t I?

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I have decided… okay, the crack squirrels in my head have decided… to combine the photos of the mammals I met today… like those two adorable sea otters eating kelp right up there, and the elephant seal saluting me in the first picture… with mammals I met while I was still actually in the Bay Area… and do a funny series of posts.

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Yes, I took a few more pictures of the deer wandering around in front of my mom’s house… I like deer.

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I will admit that I am using the words:’met’ and ‘meeting’ a little bit loosely in some of these instances. I mean, I didn’t actually pet some of these mammals. I will try to be more clear as we proceed. Like, I did pet… and speak to that horse on the right. He was very nice. I spoke to the other horse, but she was busy eating and didn’t come over to get her ears scratched.

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I petted the heck out of my cousin’s weird cats…

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Yes… both of them… what kind of guy do you think I am?

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I mean, I do actually have a few photos that show my hand actually petting some of the mammals in question, but we are just getting started. Don’t rush the squirrels.

 

 

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I promised you a sunrise… I didn’t say I was going to get out of the car…

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Oh, calm down… I’m just being silly. I have tons of pictures of the sunrise, taken from all along highway 1.

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And there are stories… with photos… about… uh… stuff… and mammals… lots of mammals. And I am exhausted from driving for more than 12 hours today… have I mentioned that I hate Los Angeles?

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And I still have a bunch of pictures from my adventures in the Bay Area… with even more mammals… so get ready.

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This is not a travel blog, or a photography blog. This is my life and my art. If you are new here, (especially if your blog has the word ‘travel’ or ‘photography’ in the name), and are expecting nothing but pictures of babies and dogs and sunsets and sunrises, I am just warning you that my life is weird, and weird stuff shows up here… unexpectedly… and it won’t be boring, but you might want to put that in the back of your mind somewhere.

That being said, you might be safe for a little while… maybe.

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It’s 3:30 in the morning, and I am going to go take some pictures of the sunrise as I drive along the cliffs of central California, so here are some pictures of a sunset to look at while you wait…

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I just like to mix things up…

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So, some of you might remember this little guy. He is my cousin, Campbell. I have done posts about him and his brother, Clark. The last ones were right before I did all those photos of my drive down the coast of California, with elephant seals and otters and a sunrise from the cliffs over the Pacific Ocean.

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There’s Clark. I am actually babysitting him right now… (he is taking a nap, I’m not ignoring hem, calm down)… while his mom has the little one at the doctor’s office. They live in Santa Cruz, on the coast, which is… sort of… more or less… on the way home to San Diego from the Bay Area… if you like the long, scenic route.

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So I like to stop and see my cousin, Mallorie, especially when I can be helpful. Last time, I stayed almost a week, because the little guy is not a good sleeper, and they needed me.

So, now that I have the new laptop, I have the capability to post pictures day by day on my little adventures. But the thing is… (Yay, thing, how have you been, I missed you)… my adventures are so adventury and packed full of adventurousness that, in order to keep up, I would have to post 50 times a day, and you hate it when I do that.

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So, even though I no longer have to wait until I get home, and then sort through five million photos, and save the best ones for you… which includes free resizing and cropping and everything… and then do posts in whatever random order me and the crack squirrels think it would be fun to share them in…

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… and bearing in mind that tomorrow, very early, I am going to be getting up and driving the coast cliff route again, which will involve taking lots more pictures… but I still have sunset pictures and dog pictures and stuff from my time at my mom’s house in the Bay Area that I haven’t gotten to yet… so I guess what I am saying is that things will still be just as random and jumbled here on the blog as they always were.

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Ummm… I am actually on my way back to San Diego right now… sort of… more or less…

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Okay, I might have made a short detour…

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Fire in the sky…

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When the Golden Gate really is golden…

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The party… the final chapter… in which I meet a flying dog and was accidentally a racist…

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That’s me. I’m drunk. I am also waiting for a slice of pizza. It’s late at night, and the night still isn’t over.

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That’s Big Johnny, the person who was responsible for me being there… both at that pizza place specifically, and in the Bay Area in general.

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Assuming that you have been following along with the other posts in this series, you know that there was a big party celebrating John’s birthday, down in Oakland, at a warehouse that makes beer. After everyone else went home, Johnny, and that guy on the right, a friend of John’s whom I had just met, decided to Uber to a bar in nearby Alameda. It was my very first Uber ride ever. I am not sure if I am supposed to use the name of my new friend, but I loved that guy!

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yeah… more beer… like I hadn’t already had enough.

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Also, we showed up smack-dab in the middle of ‘zombie crawl’, where a bunch of people dressed as the undead were going from bar to bar.

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I can’t read that sign, and I can’t remember what the bar was called, but we had fun.

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We had a lot of fun. In fact, we had so much fun that there were two photos that Johnny asked me not to put here. He doesn’t look like he is having fun, but that is a look of momentary shame. HA!

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You thought I was kidding about the flying dog, but that dog clearly has wings, and I met him… so…

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The night drew to a close, as nights will.

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We reminisced about the good times, getting older, life in general, and drinking too much, specifically.

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After some pizza slices, a fiasco at a a German bar, and another Uber ride, Big Johnny and I were on BART… that’s: Bay Area Rapid Transit… and on our way home… and this is where I was accidentally a racist…

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After Johnny got off the train to transfer to the San Francisco line, this group of young African American guys got on the train. There was something about the way they moved… like cats, or like a trained combat unit… and scoped out the car like they were sizing us all up… that made me take notice. And then they pulled out a boombox and put on a dance show that blew our minds. I mean, they all seemed to be double-jointed, and they did stuff that I can’t explain. I wish I got the camera back out faster.

Hey, I am not proud of my momentary nervousness, but I am honest about it.

 

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