Meet a few of the raptors from the Black Prairie Raptor Center

Last weekend we had photography day at the Black Prairie Raptor Center where I volunteer. I took these with my new ipad (birthday present). Here are a few of our education birds.

Willie the Barn Owl

Otis the Screech Owl

This is Stoop, our Peregrine Falcon 

Peregrine Falcon

 

Pippin the Red-shouldered Hawk

Stay tuned for more information the Ancient Falconry Class for Writers Class I plan to teach in June.

Super Moon Real Werewolf Guest

Howlo,

In honor of the super moon, a real werewolf will come in to answer your questions about what the werewolf's life has been like since the scientist was bitten by a giant wolf while visiting the Chernobyl Forest known as the Exclusion Zone.

The werewolf's  identity is kept secret so there will be no photographs and the name has been changed. Wolf. Not too creative.

NO, it's not Wolf Blitzer!

Come in and fill out the comment box with a question. Don't worry the full moon does not cause the change.

I will start the questions;

How did this happen?

Wolf: Three years ago I went to Chernobyl on a mission to study and collect mutant animals and plants. We took blood sample of the local wolves.
 

At night a giant beast attacked and killed our entire team of six scientists. Only I survived. The creature bit my arm and I fainted from the pain. This was all kept secret.



















So what did it look like?

Wolf: It stood and walked like a man but it had fur and the head of a wolf. Like a Hollywood werewolf.

 

Do you shift on the full moon?

Wolf: No. At first I shifted when I became angry or sad but now I can control it. Because the change is tied to emotion I have isolated myself and live alone in the woods, far from people. I only communicate via the net.

Are you on facebook or twitter or any other social media sites?

Wolf: No.

Are there others like yourself?

Wolf: Except for the one that bit me I honestly don't know.

May I ask your age and gender?

Wolf: Yes. I'm a 35 year old woman. Single. No kids. And since I was bitten I have not aged. The one that bit me was male.

 

 Does your family know?

 Wolf: No. They think I'm dead. It's better that way. I'm no longer that girl. I'm stronger and my senses are powerful like those of a wolf.

 Do you think the creature that bit was some sort of mutated wolf?

Wolf: I doubt it, it was more man-like than wolf. Perhaps it was even a genetic monster created by the Soviets long ago.

Thank you for being open to questions.

Wolf: Thank you, this helps stave my loneliness.

All blog visitors feel free to ask Wolf anything you want. She will be available for questions all of May.

Howlo,
I'm back from the woods and I'm the guest blogger today on Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal RWA group's blog.

Here is the link http://ffnp.blogspot.ca/2012/04/wolves-as-archetypes-in-my-novels.html

Come and visit.

The Biology and Natural History and Lore of the European Wolf (A Guide for Writers)

*****March 2012 Class*****

 
The Biology and Natural History and Lore of the European Wolf (A Guide for Writers)
Class takes place: March 5th-18th, 2012
Cost: $5 BDRWA members/ $20 non-members

The Biology and Natural History and Lore of the European Wolf (A Guide for Writers)

Instructor: Eva Gordon

Class Info:

My intension is to give you enough background in wolf biology and lore to aid you in writing good strong wolf scenes or even create a werewolf inspired from all the global legends. I will start with basic wolf biology, taxonomy and behavior. I then will discuss wolf lore (European) and how the wolf went from admired archetype to savage evil nemesis. I will break up the lessons into 3 parts. Every 2 days or so I will add the next lesson. Hold your questions until I have covered the specific lesson.

Lessons
1.Introduction and Natural History and basic Biology.
2.Wolf Behavior
3.Wolf Lore in Europe and Central Asia
A.Wolf as totem
B.Wolf as enemy of man
C.Interview with a famous lycan.
Instructor Bio:
Eva Gordon, BA Zoology, MA Biology, California Secondary Teaching Credential in the Life Sciences. I also volunteer as a wildlife educator and have volunteered at the Howling Acres Wolf Sanctuary in Southern Oregon. I am an author of paranormal romance, fantasy and currently am working on a steampunk series. My paranormal romance series, the Wolf Maiden Chronicles was inspired by the wolf. My e-mail is evagordon@ravenauthor.com and my URL is www.ravenauthor.com
blog: http://evagordon.blogspot.com

If you wish to take my class, here is the link: http://www.bdrwa.com/black_diamonds_chapter_of/online-classes-1.html

Happy Wolf Valentine's Day

Happy Lupercalia! Wolf Valentine’s Day!


How an ancient Roman holiday inspired my werewolf universe.
My readers know I use this ancient Roman festival in my paranormal romance werewolf novels. In my universe it is the time when lycans are most fertile, find their mates or play naughty werewolf games. I use some of the rituals below, with the exception of sacrificing the dog in my lycan festival. The Lupercal, the cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf is what I call the ruling governing party run by 12 female alpha lycans. Below are some facts about Lupercalia from several sources on the web.


“The Origins of the Lupercalia
The Lupercalia was started to honor a forgotten fertility god, but the during the Augustan period, the god Lupercus had been invented to explain the festival, according to the Dictionary of Roman Religion. Adkins and Adkins, authors of the book, state that Faunus might have been the god the Lupercalia.

The Lupercalia Festival Itself
The festival was held on February 15th, the day after the modern Valentine's Day Celebration. The month of February occurred later in the Roman calendar. Celebrants would gather at the Lupercal cave on the Palatine Hill in Rome, where Romulus and Remus were suckled by their adoptive wolf mother, according to Roman legend.


Luperci Priests made sacrifices of goats and dogs as part of the festival, and two young people were smeared by the blood of the sacrifice and then wiped away by wool dipped in milk. As part of the Lupercalia celebration, young men would go through the streets whipping people with goat skins to encourage fertility.
The youths then donned loincloths made from the skin of the goat and led groups of priests around the pomarium, the sacred boundary of the ancient city, and around the base of the hills of Rome. The occasion was happy and festive. As they ran about the city, the young men lightly struck women along the way with strips of the goat hide. It is from these implements of purification, or februa, that the month of February gets its name. This act supposedly provided purification from curses, bad luck, and infertility.



Long after Palentine HIll became the seat of the powerful city, state and empire of Rome, the Lupercalia festival lived on. Roman armies took the Lupercalia customs with them as they invaded France and Britain. One of these was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in a box and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love - for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer.
As Christianity began to slowly and systematically dismantle the pagan pantheons, it frequently replaced the festivals of the pagan gods with more ecumenical celebrations. It was easier to convert the local population if they could continue to celebrate on the same days... they would just be instructed to celebrate different people and ideologies..
Lupercalia, with its lover lottery, had no place in the new Christian order. In the year 496 AD, Pope Gelasius did away with the festival of Lupercalia, citing that it was pagan and immoral. He chose Valentine as the patron saint of lovers, who would be honored at the new festival on the fourteenth of every February. The church decided to come up with its own lottery and so the feast of St. Valentine featured a lottery of Saints. One would pull the name of a saint out of a box, and for the following year, study and attempt to emulate that saint.”


My crazy thoughts:
In a sense I think we have gone back to a weird form of Lupercalia lovers lottery I call it computer dating. True, you do get to learn about the person, but do you really? It really is like drawing a date out of a lottery.

Three wolfish movies. Wolf Shifters, Lycans and Animated Wolves Oh, Howl

Howlo,
"Breaking Dawn", "Underworld 3D" and "The Grey" have one thing in common in terms of wolfish behavior, they are all fictional. In the first two movies, the wolves were based on the author's universe. "The Grey"  also seemed to have created new wolves. Now for some quickie reviews before I lament about a movie that is the polar opposite of "Never Cry Wolf".

"Breaking Dawn" had the wolf shifters not happy with Bella's baby. Death to the half-human vampire. Not a fan of the series but 3 Howls.

"Underworld, The Awakening" had a similar premise: Get rid of the hybrids. Loved lycan claws in 3-D. Fun and Selene is always kick ass. 5 Howls.

"The Grey" starring Liam Neeson was a Hollywoodish man against nature theme, but not as good as "The Edge" with Anthony Hopkins in terms of being realistic. More of a yelp than a howl, though I love Liam Neeson, who as always does a great job. I would give him 4 Howls for acting but the movie gets 1 Yelp.

Wolves are not natural man eat-eaters.  In Becky Kramer's The Spokeman's Review article,  Wildlife wolf biologist Gary Wiles dreads the portrayal of wolves as do I.

"Wiles describes wolf behavior in the film as “pretty far-fetched.”
Despite the presence of 60,000 wolves in North America, only two human deaths from wolves have been documented in the past 60 years.
One person was killed in Saskatchewan in 2007; the other death occurred in Alaska in 2010. The Saskatchewan death involved wolves that had become habituated to people."

In fact most wolf attacks can be blamed on rabies. I fear  that with the re-introduction of the wolf, people will think that packs will come running out of the woods to attack them.  These wolves acted more like werewolves and if that was so, I would have liked it better.

Grizzly bears, lions, tigers, and polar bears have been known to stalk humans for food. Go rent:

The lions in "Ghost and the Darkness" were man eaters and are displayed in the Field Museum in Chicago.

 Loved "The Edge".

 Don't forget what happened to The Grizzly Man. Not saying wolves are not dangerous but rather that the movie did not exhibit real wolf behavior. Even our best friend can turn on us. In 2010, 34 deaths were due to dog attacks(http://dogbitelaw.com/dog-bite-statistics/dog-bite-statistics.html). But really? Why would the wolves go out of their way to kill (not eat) the plane crash survivors? Add rabies to the mix and maybe the story would have been credible.

Which reminds me, I better go walk my dog before he gets an attitude.

Hooty Owl-o-ween. This year's Halloween creature, the owl

Hooty Owl-o-Ween

Trick or Treat From the Bestiary: The Owl

Last night I was on a night hike in a wooded wetland in Northern Texas. I heard the ‘hoot’ of the Barred Owl (Strix varia). 

The Barred Owl’s call sounds like this: "who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all," and "who-who-who-who, who-who-who-whoowha" Listening to their calls and the song of the night insects made me feel in touch with twilight. Click on link to hear their calls

http://youtu.be/Id2A8yC_JJY

These days as the sun sets, we are tuned to electronics from TV to i-pads or driving with our radios blasting. I highly recommend going out in the woods and listening for your local owls and or other night critters. Imagine what hearing the hoot might have sounded like as you rode your horse through the dark forest on your way to deliver a message to King Guy on the Throne.

On Halloween, as you walk down the streets and to the storefronts, you will see a decorative owl or two. Throughout our history and across many cultures, people have had a great fascination with owls. You can spend days, reading about global owl myths and lore. The owl can evoke a series of emotions, from fear to admiration. Owls are associated with witchcraft and therefore a favorite Halloween decoration. 

In Romania, vampires were known as Strigoli, from the Roman word, strix, which referred to the screech owl. Strega, which is Italian for witch is also derived from the word, strix. They are also associated with medicine, birth, death, the weather, and wisdom. 

According to Paul Johnsgard (North American Owls: Biology and Natural History, Smithsonian Institution Press), Mesopotamian tablets from 2,300 B.C. depict the goddess Lilith as "winged, bird-footed, and typically accompanied by owls," a significant association because Lilith was Sumeria's goddess of death. 

Pallas Athene--Greek goddess of fertility and power--was also affiliated with the owl, possibly "because of the nocturnal (and especially the lunar) . . . associations between female fertility goddesses and the cycles of the moon."

Owls have been associated with wisdom. A bird sacred to the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena.

To the ancient Romans, to hear the hoot of an Owl presaged imminent death. The deaths of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Commodus Aurelius, and Agrippa were apparently all predicted by an Owl.

"...yesterday, the bird of night did sit Even at noonday, upon the market place, Hooting and shrieking" (from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar")

Fortunately, for me and other owl enthusiasts, owl hooting has not presaged our deaths. 

Though stumbling over a log in the dark, while listening to hooting can cause injury.

So why has the owl earned a special place in our lore? Especially spooky lore. Allow me to muse.

For one thing owls are crepuscular, which means they come out at the most mysterious time of the day, twilight. The sun is setting, darkness rises and these nocturnal creatures become vocal and active. Man’s fear of the dark, or night has added to the fear of the owl as a harbinger of death. 

Owls look so darn human. This is due to the position of their huge eyes. Unlike most birds whose eyes are on the sides of their heads, the owl’s eyes look ahead as our do, and they have to rotate their heads to see all round them, again, as man does, but owls are a bit better at it, their heads can swivel nearly 180 degrees to each side, adding up to nearly 360 degrees. A pretty freaky thing to see.


Here are reasons why Owls appear supernatural:
They swoop in silently because of downy feathers. Without a warning the owl’s powerful talons silently crushes the mouse.  Fan an owl’s feather compared to another bird’s feather to hear the difference.

Owls have amazing night vision and can see in almost complete darkness.
Their hearing is also superior and they can pinpoint a mouse’s footsteps despite other ambient sounds. At a raptor center, there was one barn owl that was nervous around a handler. It detected that she had a heart murmur.

They have a ravenous (sorry ravens) appetite. Researchers found that one barn owl family can consume 3,000 voles/year. Owls are our best ally in eating rodent pests. The owl regurgitates undigested bones and fur called owl pellets or castings. Finding such pellets might have inspired ancient people to associate owls with death. 

Other reasons why owls contributed to eerie legends:
Often owl vocalizations and screeching cans sound very human and even evil.
Seeing a white owl at night might have been one of the reasons the lore of white ghosts evolved. Even recently mystery lights can possibly be blamed on owls. Or what about those aliens we call the greys with their owlish faces and huge black barn owl like eyes? 

Also, owls consume a lot of what we see as vermin, young rats, mice, rabbits and other small mammals who enjoy eating our cash crops or garden veggies. That they also occasionally eat song birds and snakes. Birds will often be seen mobbing owls. Did we identify with diurnal birds who deem the owl as a threat? 


So step outside and listen for the owl. If you do, thank him/her for keeping our rodent population down and wish them a Hooty Owl-o-ween. Hoot me comments.