elephants

Simply 6 Minutes — Strawberry Fields

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“Listen up, folks. Tomorrow is National Pick Strawberries Day and we have to have this commercial ready to be released to all the major media outlets first thing in the morning,” the director, Bruce Wareward, said.

“Excuse me, boss, can I talk with you for a minute before you start?” Calvin, a computer animation engineer assigned to the team, asked.

“No time, kid,” Bruce said. “We’re on a deadline and I’ve got to get these elephants in position and it’s turning out to be harder than I thought getting these live elephants onto three platforms without trampling the strawberries in the field.”

“But, sir, I can….”

“Quiet kid, I need to focus,” the director said. “The third elephant is being lowered on the platform and if we can get it there without the cable snapping or the crane arm breaking, we will be ready to start filming.”

Unfortunately for Bruce, the cable securing the third elephant did snap, sending the poor elephant to a crash landing onto the strawberry field. The elephant was uninjured but the director was pissed. “Shit!” Bruce yelled. “We’re fucked now.”

Calvin ran up to the director. “I have a low-cost solution that will get you what you need. He opened up his laptop and showed Bruce an AI image he created.

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“Hmm,” Bruce said, “Can you animate this image to show the three elephants sucking up strawberries with their trunks?”

“Easy peasy,” Calvin said.

“Jesus, why didn’t you tell me this yesterday, kid?” Bruce asked. “You could have saved me a lot of time, aggravation, and money.”

“I did try to tell you but you kept blowing me off,” Calvin said.

“Never mind, kid,” Bruce said. “Just get it done.”

Written for Christine Bialczak’s Simply 6 Minutes Challenge.

Q is for Quakes

Fandango25 Comments
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If you live in California or another part of the world that experiences frequent earthquakes, then you know that many refer to these earthquakes as “quakes.”

The first time I felt an earthquake after moving to northern California, I thought that the guy who lived in the condo unit above us dropped a bowling ball on his bedroom floor and let it roll across his floor until it came to rest in his living room. And then I received a text from my son that read, “Dad, did you feel the quake?”

It turned out to be a small quake (under 4 on the Richter scale) about 50 miles southeast of San Francisco.

The next quake I experienced occurred at 3:20 am on August 24, 2014. It was centered in Napa Valley and caused significant damage in and around the city of Napa. It had a magnitude of 6.0 and I was woken up by the sounds of my windows vibrating and shaking for close to a minute. It scared the shit out of me.

On average, about 1,300 to 1,600 quakes happen annually in the San Francisco Bay Area, but most are too small to be felt. Typically, residents feel about 3-4 noticeable earthquakes per year, but larger, damaging earthquakes (magnitude 5.5 or higher) happen roughly two to three times a year in California, including the Bay Area.

Speaking about quakes, I read something interesting in the paper a few days ago. Last week, when a 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck Southern California, adult elephants at the San Diego Zoo moved quickly to protect their younglings.

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Video captured by the zoo shows the elephants running to the middle of their exhibit and forming what officials called an “alert circle” just after the tremors began. The herd of elephants are shown back-to-back in a circle as they looked around to survey their surroundings. They stood in the same position for about four minutes, after which they resumed their normal activities, though staying close to one another, according to the zoo.

This behavior is a natural response to perceived threats that helps protect younger elephants and the herd as a whole,” zoo officials said on social media. Officials said that elephants could feel sounds through their feet, referring to the rumbling of the quake.

Photo courtesy of the San Diego Zoo.

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One-To-Three Photo Processing Challenge — May, 2023

Fandango20 Comments

For this monthly prompt from Kate at The Squirrel Chase, the idea is to pick a photo we want to play with and process it using three different methods. The photo I’m featuring today is one I took at a local zoo at the elephant area.

All processed photos were made using apps available for the iPhone at Apple’s App Store. Also, all images, including the original, were resized (shrunk) to make them quicker to load (and to take up less space in my WordPress media folder).

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Original Photo
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Processed using the Prisma app
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Processed using the Aquarella app
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Processed using the Tangled FX app

Which image do you like best?

Sunday Photo Fiction — Elephant Parts

Fandango9 Comments

30BFEB94-6B92-4B36-96B7-8967FAD22681Brian could hear his son, Billy, laughing hysterically, but when he looked around the natural history museum floor, he didn’t see Billy.

“Billy?” Brian called out.

“Over here, Dad,” Billy answered. “Behind the elephants.”

“Are you okay, son?” Brian asked when he got to Billy’s side. “What were you laughing at?

Billy started laughing hard again. When he finally could control himself, he pointed up to the large elephant and started laughing again.

“Shh, Billy,” Brian said. “We’re in a museum.”

“I can’t help it. The spotlight is aimed right at the elephant’s private parts,” Billy said. “And it’s a female elephant. I can see…” Billy leaned in closer and whispered “… its vagina.” And he started laughing hysterically again.

(120 words)

Written for today’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt. Photo credit: C.E. Ayr.