Coco is more artistic than I thought. (Either that or something unexplainable is going on, which I don't want to contemplate.)
She has a white plastic frisbee, which she normally uses as an exercise plaything in the conventional manner. I throw it, and she catches it (often before it hits the ground). I really have no explanation to offer for why, but ever since the snow covered the ground, her attitude towards the frisbee has changed completely, and instead of using it as a toy, she has decided that it must be used as a snow scoop -- to carve long circular patterns into the ground. They look for the world like crop circles, and naturally, I'm worried that Coco might be tuned into some sort of extraterrestrial signal that I cannot receive.
Coco's snow sculpting technique is to grasp the frisbee with her front paws as best she can, then use it to push snow between her back legs and then behind her. Then without picking up the frisbee, she'll repeat the process from its last stopping point, moving snow behind her again and again as if she considers the frisbee an improvised snow plough.
The first picture shows how deadly serious she is about positioning her feet to obtain the best grip on the frisbee:
Here she is, giving it a shove backwards:
And finally, the result:
Coco spent quite a bit of time positioning and pushing, as if she wanted to get things just so. (An obsessive kind of perfectionism which was eerily like the people in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind.")
I've heard of canine art before, but not canine crop circles.
Frankly, I thought it looked remarkably like a giant hammer and sickle, but I quickly dismissed that possibility, for I refuse to succumb to such paranoid thinking, and I refuse to allow politics to enter into my relationship with my dog.
Er, companion animal! (Sorry.)
UPDATE: I'm afraid I've been busted as the fraud that I am. Bonnie Wren has conspired to conduct helicopter surveillance of my yard, deciphered Coco's snow writing, and reveals to the world what it says:
» Super Sabado: It's a Dog's Life from Ballpoint Wren
Today's nosh about the chip bowl concerns Man's Best Friend. Sort of. So let's order and I'll begin. Waiter, blended with salt for me, please.
At first I thought Lachlan's Sumi had figured out how to make snowballs during her first foray into snow... [Read More]
Tracked on December 10, 2005 10:19 AM
Comments
This looks so ... purposeful! The figure she has created is rich with ambiguity - I can hardly wait for Steven's take on it. It actually looks to me like a self-portrait seen from above, with a suggested improvement on the frisbee of a scoop opposite her head and paw; perhaps she really does want to get rid of the snow ASAP.
Aristomedes · December 8, 2005 12:57 PM
Are you being warned of an alien invasion? Sure looks like schematics for a force-field generator to me.
Coco is the reincarnation of a Chinese person. That is kanji. Not only that, it is kanji of an ancient form... so ancient the Chinese don't use it anymore... Koreans still do, though. Coco might be Korean, then, but the meaning of that symbol makes me think she is not- The symbol says "The women in Memoirs of a Geisha should be Chinese, 'cause Chinese chicks are the sexy."
Suprising that ancient Chinese symbols would be that specific and relevant to a modern day movie.
Sumi has been begging me for days to arrange a snow playdate with Coco. She says that since she and Coco are the geniuses behind our respective sites, it's only fair. ;-)
Well, because of her interest in the classics (and because her breed has been the subject of hate legislation in many areas), Coco has taken to calling herself an "Egytptian Terrier," and she might even consider starting a new breed.
(This is another possible explanation for the glyph-like writings.)
Be it drugs, explosives
or even cancers the olfactory capability of the dog needs to be exploited.
Surely it would behoove us to try and implant some human genes into a dog to make it easier to communicate with the animal.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
This looks so ... purposeful! The figure she has created is rich with ambiguity - I can hardly wait for Steven's take on it. It actually looks to me like a self-portrait seen from above, with a suggested improvement on the frisbee of a scoop opposite her head and paw; perhaps she really does want to get rid of the snow ASAP.