Real life animals are cuter than animated cartoons

Hunnybee sent me these charming photos of a real life Bambi with his friend Thumper. I did a bit of research about the photographer, wildlife Czech photographer Tanja Askani. There are more wonderful photos of other species on her website.

Tanja wrote on her website:

Walt Disney Studios produced the well-known children’s movie “Bambi” in 1942. It was based on the 1923 book, “Bambi, A Life in the Woods” by Felix Salten. In the book, Bambi was a European roe fawn. As part of the American book translation and the Disney movie version, Bambi turned into a North American whitetail deer.

As this picture series shows, fairytales and reality are often very closely related. There truly are animal friendships across species boundaries.

She also posted this video:



Thank you, Hunnybee, they're lovely!

Small big world

Or should I say big small world?

Mrsgunka sent me a link to this fascinating video:



This is the world's biggest train set which covers 1,150 square meters (12,380 square feet), features almost six miles of track and is still not complete.

Twin brothers Frederick and Gerrit Braun, 41, began work on the 'Miniatur Wonderland' in 2000.

The set covers six regions including America, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Germany and the Austrian Alps. The American section features giant models of the Rocky Mountains, Everglades, Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore. The Swiss section has a mini-Matterhorn.The Scandinavian part has a 4ft long passenger ship floating in a 'fjord.'

It is expected to be finished in 2014, when the train set will cover more than 1,800 square meters (19,376 sq ft) and feature almost 13 miles of track, by which time detailed models of parts of France, Italy and the UK will have been added. 

It comprises 700 trains with more than 10,000 carriages and wagons. The longest train is 46ft long. The scenery includes 900 signals, 2,800 buildings, 4,000 cars - many with illuminated headlights... and 160,000 individually designed figures Thousands of kilograms of steel and wood was used to construct the scenery...

The 250,000 lights are rigged up to a system which mimics night and day by automatically turning them on and off.

The whole system is controlled from a massive high-tech nerve centre. In total the set has taken 500,000 hours and more than 8 million to put together, the vast majority of which has come from ticket sales. Gerrit said: "Our idea was to build a world that men, woman and children can be equally astonished and amazed in." Frederik added: "Whether gambling in Las Vegas, hiking in the Alps or paddling in Norwegian fjords - in Wunderland everything is possible"

Thank you, Mrsgunka.

Women drivers

Our friend Tom (in Thailand) sent me this joke:

This morning on the Interstate, I looked over to my left and there was a woman in a brand new Cadillac doing 65 mph with her face up next to her rear view mirror putting on her eyeliner.

I looked away for a couple seconds... to continue shaving and when I looked back she was halfway over in my lane, still working on that makeup.

As a man, I don't scare easily... but she scared me so much I dropped my electric shaver which knocked the donut out of my other hand.

In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car using my knees against the steering wheel, I knocked my cellphone away from my ear which fell into the coffee between my legs!

It splashed and burned Big Peter and the Twins, ruined the damn phone, soaked my trousers and disconnected an important call.

Damn women drivers!

You may remember Tom from an old open thread, when he sent me this photo of an amazing sunrise:

Thank you, Tom.

Now you see me... now you don't!

These pictures are great!

Satanic leaf-tailed gecko

Bat-faced toad

Lichen spider

Mossy leaf-tailed gecko

Great potoo

Katydid

Peppered moth

Orchid mantis

Sandhopper

Find the snow leopard

All I Want For Christmas

Sleuth posted this video on the Wednesday thread, but as HMS Ocean will be back in Plymouth today, it seems appropriate to show it in a post. Thank you, Sleuth.



The BBC reported:

Pop star Mariah Carey has tweeted the crew of a Royal Navy warship after they made a Christmas video using one of her songs to celebrate their homecoming.

HMS Ocean's crew mimed to her 1994 hit All I Want for Christmas Is You and put it online.

After watching it, the singer tweeted: "This is the best thing I've ever seen, you guys just made my day! Happy Happy Christmas!!! x0x0 to the troops."

The ship will be back in Plymouth on Friday after a seven-month deployment.

More than 1,000 friends and family are expected to meet the ship.

HMS Ocean left Plymouth - initially for a seven-week training exercise - in April, but was then diverted to Libya to support the UN air mission during the uprising against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Lt Kelly Cleeve, who filmed and edited the video with WO Mick Wakeham and the aviation department, said it had been a stressful time and recording the song had been "a way to boost morale and give the guys a bit of a diversion".

Lt Cleeve said the idea for the video came when the crew was told the ship would be back in Plymouth for Christmas.

She said Maria Carey's song was the most appropriate choice as "as all we wanted for Christmas was to get back in time to celebrate."