The Year of the Tiger

I found this picture in the Facebook page of the British Museum. It was shared to celebrate online the Chinese New Year. It's a tiger shaped bronze and thus fitting for this Year of the Tiger. More details about it here. I really want to go back to the British Museum. And I love tigers, so maybe this Chinese year will be good for me.

Tigres et vacances

J'ai pris cette photo dans je ne sais plus quel zoo lors de nos vacances de septembre, nos avant-dernières vacances. C'est un peu drôle (enfin, pas vraiment) de penser que l'on ne reprendra pas de vacances de sitôt, bien que dans ma situation actuelle je suis un peu en vacances. Donc, il m'arrive de regarder des photos de nos vacances avec une certaine nostalgie. Je ne suis pas très porté sur les zoos, en tout cas moins que ma femme et les amis avec qui on était, moins que mon fils aussi. Quand on en a vu un, on les a tous vus et le zoo n'est pas pour moi un arrêt obligé à chaque vacances. Cela dit, j'ai toujours beaucoup aimé les fauves en général et les tigres en particulier. Alors s'il y a des fauves dans un zoo, je veux prendre le temps de les voir. Morale de l'histoire: je me demande quand sera la prochaine fois où je verrai des tigres.

Voir le tigre de (très) près

Photo prise dans je ne sais plus quel zoo lors de nos dernières vacances. Dans les zoos et en fait dans la nature, j'ai un gros faible pour les gros félins, tigres et lions surtout. Et c'était sans doute la toute première fois, de mémoire, que je voyais un tigre d'aussi prêt, à quelques mètres tiut au plus et séparé de moi par un (mince) grillage seulement. C'est un spectacle assez impressionnant et c'est juste assez terrifiant pour que ça demeure agréable.

Tigre gonflé

Photo envoyée par mon père lorsqu'il était, je crois, en Californie. Nous avons des jeux gonflables comme ça ici aussi (des châteaux gonflés ou "bouncy castles", parce que pour une raison quelconque c'est toujours un château), mais je n'ai jamais vu un truc aussi énorme. Si j'étais jeune, je crois qu'il me ferait peur un peu ce tigre géant, avec ses crocs acérés (bon d'accord, ses crocs gonflés). Je ne sais pas trop si je l'aime ou si je le déteste.

Des enfants et des tigres

Faisons encore un peu dans la vie des bêtes. Lors la première soirée de notre visite à Totnes dans le Devon, il y avait une parade avec des chars allégoriques, pour je ne sais trop quelle raison. Notamment, ce char qui représentait l'Inde (non, je ne vais pas parler de notre PM folklorique quétaine dans ce billet!). Avec filles en sari pas indiennes pour deux sous et des statues de tigres grandeur nature. Si jamais on retourne à Totnes, j'espère qu'on pourra le voir encore. Car récemment, notre petit loup est allé dans une classe d'art plastique pour bambins où ils ont fait comme activité un collage avec un tigre. Ça ressemble pas mal au contenu du char. Mon fils aimant beaucoup (mais vraiment beaucoup) les félins, c'est un tableau qui touche ses sensibilités. Peut-être que je devrais appeler petit loup petit tigre, au fait.

Jungle Animals?

I took this picture last year. One of my colleagues had bought this for her son. Something struck me and being sort of academic about these kinds of things, I mentioned it right away: "This display is all wrong: elephants, giraffes and lions live in the savanna, not the jungle, and tigers don't even live on the same continent!" I could have added that the elephant seemed to be an Asian one. Anyway, one of my colleague teased me about this and said: "I can imagine you refusing to buy your son such a set, because it's not accurate". I would, but would also tell him that these are not all jungle animals. Anyway, I thought that what he said was funny enough to be a great unknown line. Even though I am right.

Calvin's summertime wisdom

It is not technically summer yet, but it feels summery enough and this is a bank holiday weekend, so now is a good excuse as any to publish this strip from Calvin and Hobbes. Back when I was much younger and summer was a long holiday, I welcomed it. And this is pretty much how I felt about it.

Calvin's wisdom about New Year's resolutions

I have not blogged about Calvin & Hobbes for a while and thought as we are already the second day of the new year, I would share this one. I am not a big fan of New Years, if that makes sense, or the whole celebrations and traditions related to them, for a number of reasons which may be for another post (probably around 2018). Let's just say for now that I always hated new years resolutions, looking back on them even more, so I absolutely adore what Calvin says here. And the expressions of Hobbes is priceless.

Autumn Sunday according to Calvin and Hobbes

I will write my countdown to Halloween later on today. Right now, this is a blog about autumn and Calvin and Hobbes. I re-read this particular strip recently and I wanted to share it with you. Autumn is now my favourite season, but to be honest it was not entirely the case when I was a child. Especially not on Sunday, for the reasons expressed in this cartoon: there was school the next day, lights were going down early. Then again I always loved the colours, so I also shared Hobbes' views. Because it is both funny and explains in a nutshell both autumn and Sunday melancholy, I decided to share it on the blog.

Christmas Eve

As I am writing this, it is already Christmas in Europe, where I usually blog from. But here, there are a few hours to go still. To commemorate this moment and to wish an early Merry Christmas to all my readers, I thought I would addthis little piece of poetry from Calvin and Hobbes. I find it a beautiful evocation of the season and it perfectly captures the moment. I read many Christmas stories, I even read a few Christmas poems, but this single comic strip is maybe my favourite. So here it is.

Tigers and other predators

This picture was taken at the Natural History Museum, it is one of those old stuffed animals they have, depicted in a dramatic pause. Here, a tiger eagerly eating the fresh carcass of its prey, a deer I think (or some kind of cervid anyway). I love these stuffed animals, the fact that they date back from ages, more than a century sometimes adds to the charm.I have no idea where the tiger is from or if the depiction is authentic: can such deer exist in the wild in the same environment as a tiger, does the flowering sapling behind them come from the same area as either the tiger or the deer? I don't care, it is beautiful and so life like.

And I have something to confess: while I find the tiger terrifying, I can't help not finding this image cruel. Or rather, I accept the cruelty of predatorism. It is true of every predator of the animal kingdom, it is even more true of feline predators. Tigers, in the end, are merely big cats, and I love cats. They hunt, but they always eat the kill. Which tones down the cruelty of the action. In fact, in the tiger's mind, there is no true cruelty, just hunger. Of course, I would not befriend a tiger. I will reserve this to its smaller cousins. All the same, I look at this image and cannot help finding the tiger quite cute.