I was confused because I was not that close to the animal but it was standing fairly near to the people who were photographing it and looked pretty tame. So now it's a family joke that I can't identify animals, and even when we see animals like giraffes someone will say: "Ooh, look at the funny-looking donkey!" I can in fact now identify a moose (and a giraffe) quite easily, but I do occasionally have difficulty with other animals. The first time I saw a coyote, I was sure it was a long-legged fox. I knew that coyotes live around here, (I've even heard them howling at night,) but it still seemed wrong that they should. The word 'coyote' always sounds, well, foreign and exotic to me and evokes an image of animals silhouetted on a ridge at sunset somewhere in the wilderness. Maybe I'm just confusing them with wolves. I'm sure (I think) that we don't have any of those around here!
(BTW, the picture above is NOT the moose I saw that day.)
4 comments:
Well,there aren't to many moose in the UK so I reckoon you can be forgiven for a lack of instant recognition.
I have never been able to identify birds because as a shortsighted child I could never get close enough to differentiate. The only ones I can recognise now are magpies, robins, seagulls and pigeons.
No magpies over here to the best of my knowledge, and no robins either - just the American robin, which (of course, are you surprised?) is much bigger than than the English robin. I think the European colonists showed a singular lack of imagination when they named it.
Well, it would have been a very long-legged donkey - and a very big one at that!
It is a funny looking donkey! I have yet to see one of these - need to travel further afield, I think...
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