animals

Follow the Flock

March 17, 2021

I’ve recently taken up the conscious practice of avoiding the use of animals as representational embodiments of negative qualities in humans. From “cowed” to “eating like a pig” (and don’t even get me started on “dogging”…), we’ve long employed metaphors based on what we think we know about our fellow non-human animals that are, in fact, too often everything from partial misunderstandings to simply flat-out wrong. And of all the animals that figure prominently in our figurative language, sheep are among the most – if not actually the most – commonly used.

Of Black Swans and Purple Squirrels

February 8, 2021

As most any naturalist with a healthy interest in words does, I’ve long enjoyed the past-time of venereal – or collective – nouns. From the traditional, widely known, and more-or-less official – an exhalation of larks, a school of fish, a pack of wolves – to the playful and decidedly unofficial – an aroma of […]

Invasive Aliens

January 10, 2020

Focusing on the natural history of the British Isles, Mr. Eatherley takes up the search for the stories behind some of the “endless succession of animals, plants, fungi and other alien lifeforms” that have taken to calling the Isles home over the past centuries, and indeed, facing up to the reality that it’s now “often hard to work out what actually is native, and what is foreign.” (There’s a larger metaphor in there somewhere…)

Crows Just Want to Have Fun

December 4, 2019

It was when I took up walking in the very early mornings in order to improve my health that I came to better understand the local deer. Columbia Blacktails, Odocoileus hemionus columbianus, are abundant around our Pacific Northwest home, being particularly visible in the hours just before and after sunrise. Each day, as I set […]