I spent about an hour on Sunday out around Little Lake Valley, looking for more typical scenes of ranches and woods to photograph. The broken clouds created nice light, and textured skies, which improves the odds of catching something presentable for a quick-clicker like me. I got out of my truck near the Davis Creek Bridge, and grabbed some pastoral images, then looked down at the fence in front of me. It looks like horse hair caught in a barb on the wire fence. It looked too heavy to be human hair, and it was too long to have come from cattle. It must have hurt to pull away from that.
It also did not come from a fantasy creature. I am sad to say that The Willits News recently printed an account of a "b--foot" sighting, written by one of their paid staff "reporters". This is at least the second time this year they have run a story that details someone being taken in by a hoax, and writing it as if the hoax were true, without any sensible research or quotes. I don't fault the people who were fooled, I fault the paper for printing it. If they feel compelled to "entertain" us with this nonsense, they should provide a separately formatted column for such things.
If you find this blog post by Googling b--foot, and feel an impulse to give me descriptions and links of "proof", or to pile on with links to disputations, don't do it. Your speech is not constitutionally protected here, and I will be swift to nuke any such time-wasting commentary. I'm even tired of seeing myself talk about this. Go instead to The Willits News website and comment on their story. That's what you were looking for in the first place. There's a long discussion going on over there, and it has vastly greater numbers of readers than this blog. This picture, above, just shows evidence of a painful moment for the backside of a horse.
On a brighter note, there are some shots of country scenery, photographed at the same spot, on my Overflow blog.
15 comments:
nice
Ha! This reminds me of how some of the old rubberbands I used to look on my hair looked when I removed them...!
these shots make me want to run away from home
It's a surprising visual turn. It reminds me somewhat of the eerie feeling I sometimes have when watching a thriller movie.
Thanks for a great picture of the horse hair. Just to clarify horses feel nothing when their hair is pulled out.
I'm looking forward to the next installment in this mystery story :)
Bibi - And my hair still does it, with the mix of gray and brown too.
PA - Come running up here! We have a fair concentration of artists in our county.
EA - It was an irresistible sight, and I'm relieved I was able to force the camera to focus where I wanted in this shot.
Marlane - I've heard that said before, and I don't feel much when my hair sheds either. But are there absolutely no nerve endings in their follicles? In any case, you busted me for being melodramatic. I hear ya.
Chuck - And so, a CDP bloggers' convention was held in little Willits, and they set out upon the roadsides to discover more clues...
Horses seem to have very little or no nerve endings on their manes and tails. Their fur is more sensitive and sheds twice a year but the mane and tail stays and does not shed. In fact it is common practice to pull out the main hair to shorten and thin a horses mane, and the same with the top of the tail. I do have one horse who does not like having her mane pulled however.
Ouch.
Although, I guess if what Marlane says is true, I suppose it really doesn't hurt. Hair has no nerve endings, but follicles have to have some kind of nerve. Don't they? Hm. Now you've got me all curious...
Human hair follicles have nerves in them so that we can pick up information about things we make contact with. It's also the reason pulling our hair out "by the roots" is so torturous. But the school science classrooms only ever put up cross-sections of human skin and hair, so I don't know where the divergence might be with other mammals.
I was glad to read Marlane's comments.
This is such a great shot. It's a story all to itself. And I love the overflow pics.
Glad you "forced the camera to focus" LOL! You're so good on details as well as the big picture.
I wish barbed wire could be outlawed from equine pastures.
:-D CAUGHT!!!!!
Did I ever tell you that barbed wire was invented in my home town? DeKalb, Illinois. Two men were rivals in its invention and their homes still stand as small local museums. Our high school teams are "the Barbs," and the mascot is "the Barbie Crow." Go ahead. Google it.
Whenever I see barbed wire I remember when I was about 14 and slid off the back of a galloping horse (bareback riding) and tore my hand to shreds as it came down on a barbed wire fence. I still have the scars in my palm.
Nice shot!
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