Strange things happen. I had a nondescript piece of limestone that had been lying around for years, not that I’d ever noticed it make misrepresentations, accidental or otherwise. This is generally true of stones. Anyway, it was soft for a stone and seemed to suggest that it was quite carve-able. Why not? I’ve carved several creatures of stone over the years, amateurishly, and they always come out chimerical, cat-pigs, dog-bears, Beethoven sphinxes, such that I really no longer much try to steer the thing tightly into a vision so much as I discover – not what it was meant to be, for such would be far above my pay grade – but rather what it seems to be. This endeavor was no different.

Poor thing, before eyes, seeming to be some sort of alligator pig, perhaps even a razorback alligator pig. Why struggle? It’s almost likely that evolution has already tried most possibilities. Roll with them.

but of course there’s a right amount of primitivism (there’s a conceit for sure). I favor the look of something that might have been found on an archeological dig. What did this creature mean to those who carved it?

Could a baby one be a pet? I get a sense, as a chimera-critic might, of a creature possessing both scary and a funny aspects.

Funnier yet, after carving it and then doing a little bit of web searching (not soul-searching, mind you, though a very wise soul thoroughly searched might be the lens through which any truth might be divined – or not), I stumbled upon the Andrewsarchus, albeit mammalian, about as close to an alligator pig as our earth has produced (ok, maybe some hippo cousin could be closer but I’ve not seen it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrewsarchus

While we’re busy with Jurassic Park and recycling mega-fauna perhaps this creature deserves a chance. You know it would do a great job helping control the global problem of feral swine. OK, maybe at too great a price.

Thank you dear reader.

And another time I will take the ‘not my continent’ exception against travel logging, not that I suppose there is anything so awful about a few pictures and thoughts, regardless of where they come from, but nonetheless.

Because I was in Brasil on business for a long time, and because my company would fly me home periodically, it was also true that they would fly me anywhere else closer than home if I so desired.  Tierra Del Fuego is closer to Sao Paulo than Boston is, so I took the freebie.

I landed at Ushuaia, right on the Beagle Channel, near sunset.  I want to say Ushuaia in such a manner that it rhymes with “Wish you were here”, a la Pink Floyd, but I don’t think that really it gets said that way.  Gritty little town at the end of the world.  Perfect.

There’s a nice wrecked tug in the small harbor.  Once was a US Navy vessel.  I collected shells and seeds that morning – lupines and limpets.  A few other bits that seemed interesting, even some sheep’s teeth, though I have to admit it took me a while to figure what they were, and there were a surprising number of them on the shore of the channel, makes one wonder if Cthulhu is snacking down there or something.

Normally I will never let any tour guide take me anywhere – it’s just not my thing – but here they had an eight hour cruise that got one to an island with a penguin rookery, where you could literally walk with the penguins.  On the way there were whales, elephant seals,

just some awful pretty places.  And that’s where these little devils choose to live

they were very confident, neither brash nor evasive.  One I spoke with a little but stopped as soon as I realized that he would talk back and that I should not socialize him in any way.

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There were albatrosses too

a few days later after I went to the National Park that they call at the end of the world.  I guess it is as far as you can drive.

it was calm and beautiful.