Help Thomas Cobb keep his snakes - The Petition Site
Hey guys, so as you’ve probably heard a few times over the past couple of weeks Thomas Cobb, the guy I got my baby Slice from, is fighting an ongoing battle to keep his boas.
You can get the initial story here. He was washing brand new bins in the yard (for the boas) when a neighbor called the cops with a suspicion that ‘he must be growing or breeding something’. Animal control and the cops showed up, and as he had nothing to hide he invited them in and showed them around. His basement is built specifically to house his collection. He has the best caging and materials money can buy, his set-up is top notch, secure, clean, and professional. The animals are VERY well cared for. The cops left saying all was well and it was noted how clean everything was. Shortly after that incident the city turned around to tell him he had to get rid of all but one animal, citing the city’s exotic animal law as a reason when in fact they were caving to the pressure of the nosy neighbor and her sympathizers.
Thomas is a stand up, honest man and a responsible herper. He had just moved to Salt Lake recently and was unaware of the need for a permit. The exotic law in itself does not state a limit to the number of animals that can be owned, and vaguely encompasses all non-native animals (turtles, sugar gliders, guinea pigs, etc. - the things you usually find at pet stores). As you can imagine this law is not enforced and people still own exotics. Nevertheless, they cited his lack of a permit as a reason and attempted to get him to remove the entirety of his collection down to one snake while denying him the ability to actually apply for a permit.
Thomas fought back and thankfully, he was granted a little more time to work things out. This is the current situation. He has been been meeting with the city council in order to work things out.
Now just yesterday, the nosy neighbor submitted a petition to have Thomas’s snakes forcibly removed. Her reasons were that she is ‘worried for her kids’ and she touted that a neighbor that owned snakes would ‘bring the value of the neighborhood down’. The ignorance displayed by both her and the people supporting her is astounding, and reflects the incredibly poor attitude many uneducated people have about these animals. In response, Thomas’s supporters have put up a petition to counter hers in order that he can keep his snakes in peace.
I ask that you guys take a minute to sign the petition above. We all love our animals and no one would want to be forced to part with any of their beloved pets. Please help Thomas keep his boas.
My two ball pythons are living with a friend because my landlord said we either got rid of my snakes or moved out.
When coming in to fix something my landlord spotted their enclosure (custom boaphile plastics enclosure, very secure) and asked what was in there. I told him two ball pythons. He got very mad that I didn’t tell them I had snakes. I’ve never, ever had a landlord have a problem with me having two innocuous tank pets, so I never mentioned it before we moved in. To me it would have been like saying, “Oh we have a couch, is that going to be a problem?”
He told me the snakes had to go immediately or we had to move out (we had just moved in). He said his homeowner’s insurance didn’t allow me to have them, which was a complete lie. I reiterated that they were non-venomous, full grown, and 100% harmless, and that I would be happy to clarify things with his insurance. He asked me, “What if they get out?” I told them they’d do nothing, absolutely nothing. Finally he admitted he just plain doesn’t like snakes.
Now, legally our lease was signed and said absolutely nothing forbidding snakes as pets. If I really wanted to, I could have started something, but alas, I did not wish to start our lease on that note. I agreed to remove the snakes. Thanks to the kindness of my friend I will be getting my snakes back when we move and she is lovingly caring for them, taking them in instantly. I can’t thank her enough.
So, the point of this long story is that I completely sympathize with this guy. There’s no resolution for him like mine, and he’s got a lot invested in his collection.
People who hate things based on bias and misunderstanding, and refuse to listen to reason and educate themselves, strike a very, very sore spot deep in my soul.
I’m not even sure internet petitions do anything whatsoever or actually affect change, but I’m signing regardless and encourage others to do so.
Such a shame. I hope this man gets to keep his animals.
This is a potoo post.
I’m not dead, I promise, just too busy with non-art things to do art :(
Enjoy this as my apology!
Re: Rusty
“orangedragoness said: You HAVE a hawk? That, is very cool”
Yup, my husband and I are licensed falconers. The season is coming to a close and today is probably one of the last hunting adventures with Rusty as I will be gone for the later half of the month. We plan on releasing him in April. We will trap a new juvenile red-tail in the fall.
Rusty’s probably the most adorable red-tail I’ve ever seen and he has an exceptional personality, but alas, he is built for shrews and mice, not for hunting rabbits or grouse, the game we are after. He will be really happy back in the wild (and no, he won’t be prone to coming to humans for food or be a nuisance, he will be a regular wild hawk again). Hopefully since we helped him survive his very first winter it means he has a nice start to life and will find a lovely female to make baby Rustys with :)
My hawk, Rusty, “caught” (he did attack it…) this horse skeleton! I only ended up taking the skull home.
I knew he and I were kindred spirits ;)
Extinct Emus
I was commissioned to do a painting for my good friend Todd Green’s article in Emus Today & Tomorrow (a magazine for the emu farming industry). Todd’s article is on extinct emus. (Here is a photo of Todd featured on the cover of a previous issue of the magazine for an incredible skeleton he articulated…Todd loves ratites!)
I took a lot of progress shots to show Todd, and I figured I’d share them here as well. The trickiest thing about this illustration is figuring out what these emus looked like. The standard extant emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae novaehollandiae) was easy as I have a ton of my own reference photos from assisting Todd with his research. The Tasmanian emu subspecies (Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis) was also not too bad as there are pretty good written descriptions of them and a reasonably reliable illustration of one done by a 19th century illustrator. However, the King Island emu subspecies (Dromaius novaehollandiae ater), and the separate emu species (determined separate only very recently using genetic data), the Kangaroo Island emu (Dromaius baudinanus) were a lot more difficult and quite a bit more speculative. You can do a Wikipedia or Google search and come up with images right away, but it’s not that easy in reality. The illustrations of the two, both dwarfs only standing about 3ft (~1m) tall as adults are not exactly labelled accurately, especially with the emus undergoing taxonomic renaming since the illustrations were created. To complicate things further, the two emus, despite being difference species, are so similar that the specimens collected by 19th century explorers were mixed up on the way back to Europe. So, the illustrations, one done from live animals and one done from a skin (post-extinction) may not even be properly labelled by the illustrators. Additionally, Victorian/turn-of-the-century taxidermy was not exactly something amazing and could skew the physical features of the animals. Not to mention taking the illustrators’ style in to account.
So, what I did for this painting was take in to account the three illustrations of the extinct emus and written descriptions of the animals to recreate them. Accounts of the live animals place the Tasmanian emu about the same size, maybe slightly smaller, than the modern emu, and lighter in color with a white throat. The King Island and Kangaroo Island emus were both island dwarfs and I can assume, since their remains were confused and mixed up, that they stood about the same height. The King Island is hailed as the smallest emu though, so I made it slightly smaller. One article discussing the genetics of the King Island emu confidently used this illustration for the article, so I chose the King Island’s colors based on that illustration and made the darker coloration the Kangaroo Island emu. It makes more sense to me that the separate species, versus subspecies, would have the most different coloration and slightly different head and neck feather densities.
Okay, let’s get on to the artistic process. First I did a really rough sketch to get the sizes and proportions down in my mind and a basic layout scheme.
Second, I refined the sketch:
I moved the two dwarf emus to the left a bit so that their bills were not conflicting with the lines on the two taller emus. I then transferred the sketch to the stretched watercolor paper I prepared the night before. I put masking fluid over the emus so I could freely work on the background.
The background was done using a wet on wet technique with water colors. I laid some actual emu feathers and salt on the drying paint to get desired textures.
Once the background was dry I removed the masking fluid and hooray! Clean emus to work on!
Here’s the initial go at the modern emu. I used gouache for the rest of the painting. Note that I applied more masking fluid to the emus in front of the one I was working on.
Starting on the Tasmanian emu. Note again, masking fluid onthe emus in front of it.
Done with the initial color on the Tasmanian emu, on to the Kangaroo Island emu.
Kangaroo Island emu color down and on to the next one,
King Island emu color complete. Now I can fuss at all the emus and fiddle with color, contrast, and values.
Here’s a view of my work area at this point.
As I worked on the details I took a black and white photo with my phone (yay technology!) so I could quickly look at just the values of the painting. I saw a few things to tweak, but I was otherwise satisfied.
Painting complete and signed! Ready for (hopefully!) the cover of the magazine C:
I could probably eternally pick at it and fix things, but I’m on a deadline and rather happy with it considering I haven’t worked with traditional media in a while. And yay! A chance to art finally!
Costa Rica
I’ve decided to make my efforts to get Costa Rica funding (only 2 months away!) a little fancier by using “Go Fund Me” and I’m hoping maybe my online social networks will help with my endeavor.
Signal boosts/reblogs always appreciated!!!
Thanks C:
Reference Images for Artists: vondell-swain: at the end of All Yesterdays (the extremely good book...
at the end of All Yesterdays (the extremely good book about imagining and illustrating dinosaurs in complex speculative ways i was talking about yesterday) there’s a section where they prove the point about the fact that we need to be more open to imagining skin coverings and…
(Source: itsvondell)
End of the world?
I don’t buy it. But, for the fun of it, let’s pretend that it’s going to happen.
What are three things you’re glad you’ve done, and three things you’re sad that you’ve not accomplished?
Glad:
-Married my best friend
-Pursued my love of natural history to a graduate level.
-Done my best to treat everyone with kindness and understanding.
Sad:
-No children.
-Finished my Ph.D.
-Haven’t traveled the world enough.
This is a complete remake of an old picture of mine, and is hopefully the last full picture for this creation/evolution book, though I know I’ve been saying that for a while. It’s very interesting how much the scope of the project has, well, evolved since 2008. This painting is, obviously, a depiction of Microraptor gui gliding down from a rock. It is a rock and not a tree branch because (in my opinion, at least) there is not yet enough evidence for the idea that Microraptor was arboreal, so it’s possible that it didn’t spend very much time in trees at all. Here it is chasing Pompiloperus, a species of early Cretaceous Jehol digger wasp. Insect-chasing was unlikely to be something that Microraptor did often, but as we can learn from All Yesterdays, animals commonly do things they don’t do commonly, if you know what I mean.
This is old news at this point, but the main impetus for deciding to redo the old drawing was the Microraptor color study, which revealed a few finer points of the animal: that its long-assumed headcrest was more likely to be an artifact of smushed feathers in fossilization, that at least some Microraptor had a pair of long tail ribbons extending back from the fan, and most notably, that the animal’s feathers were iridescent, perhaps shiny blue-black like a crow.
There seems to be some debate at present about whether Microraptor’s legwings were typically held perpendicular to the metatarsals or more in parallel when gliding, so I painted them somewhat intermediate - a likely position for takeoff, I think.
This represents probably over 100 hour of work and is entirely hand-painted in Photoshop CS4. As always, a huge thanks to Jon for endless support, critiques and suggestions. Be sure to buy the book if you want to see this in high-res! ;) This will be my last upload for 2012 (perhaps my last ever, if the Mayans are right :p). May 2013 be full of many featheries!
Check out this amazing painting!!
Snow leopard tail nomming compilation, because tails are just awesome.
Photos are from: tanidareal, leopatra-lionfur, denisesoden, rheazblaze, bledsoevball30, and eisenmann87 from DeviantART and barrybaskin from Flickr.
Because everyone in the world needs to see this today :|
