Season 218: Wildlife songs

This being the first time I have hosted a Season, I would like to make this an opportunity to introduce myself, and to learn a bit more about each of you. I am now retired and trying hard to learn the “Aloha Spirit” of the ukulele, but most of my life has centered around wildlife. I have had careers as both a wildlife biologist and a wildlife artist. The natural world of animals has always been very special and meaningful to me.

MY THEME for this week's Season was originally Option 1 below. But, after a little field testing I found it often too narrow in scope for offering you many song choices. Consequently, I've broadened the theme with two additional options. Hopefully, having three options will make it “more funner!” After all, we are here to have fun aren't we?

OPTION 1. SING OF YOUR TOTEM: Cover or write a song about your totem or animal spirit.

Like many of this planet's indigenous cultures, I am intrigued by the concept of having a kindred spirit animal or totem. With what animal do you identify most? Which one has strengths or weaknesses similar to those you feel you possess? If you are not familiar with the concept of a personal or family totem or animal spirit, you may find it helpful to take one of the web-page quizzes available on the topic.

OPTION 2. CRITTERS YOU FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT: Cover or write a song about an animal species or group that you love, admire, hate or fear.

OPTION 3: ANIMALS, MANKIND & EARTH: Cover or write a song about any inter-relationships that exist between animals, man, and the environment.

WITH ALL THREE OPTIONS TELL ME WHY: Please elaborate on the reasons for your selections or compositions. Your elaborations will be as meaningful to me as how well you play or sing your selections. I would prefer that longer elaborations be addressed in your written forum posting rather than in your video. That will make it easier for repeated viewings. But please, place them wherever you prefer and find easiest.

HOW TO WIN: No winners - No losers! However, I would like to give thank-you gifts to those whose songs best fulfill any of the options of my theme and help to make my first Season's hosting an enriching experience.

THANK-YOU'S: I still have some of my wildlife art and sculpture related items that I plan to use as gifts, but I will not know which items to select until I discover the nature and spirit of those that I would especially like to thank. I guess I will work that out at the close of the Season, but I may post some relevant comments or images throughout the week, so stay tuned!

RULE SUMMARY:
The ukulele needs to be prominent, but other accompanying instruments are welcome.
No previously recorded videos, but re-do's of any earlier videos you've made are welcome.
Video and audio multi-tracking are fine.
The Season runs from 00:00 Sunday to 24:00 the following Sunday, Hawaii Time.
Please limit your entries to 3 songs or less. (Additional songs can be used as exotic wildlife introductions to the Island Of Misfit Seasonistas.)
And, the Game Warden has imposed a one species bag limit on Option 1.

THE SEASON 218 PLAYLIST:

SOTU 218 – Wildlife Songs – Man Walks Among Us

(I am taking the liberty as this Season's Host to post this video a few hours before the regular starting time. Please consider it as an accompaniment to the Announcement Post and do not submit your entries until after midnight, Sunday morning, April 17 Hawaii Time. Thanks! The Game Warden)

The coyote is the animal with which I most strongly identify. I did my graduate studies on the coyote in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert of the Southwestern U.S., and you might say I bonded in spirit with the species. They aren't always pretty to look at, but they are extremely resourceful and clever, form a strong family social unit, and are adept at overcoming most of life's difficulties to survive.

I first tried looking for songs specifically about the coyote, my totem or kindred spirt. I found one that was a fairly nice fit, but it required yodeling. Not there yet with my singing!

One song I came across on my search was, “Man Walks Among Us” sung by Marty Robbins. The video for it has a slide show containing pictures of the coyote and several other animals in the Sonoran Desert. I'm confident that most of these pictures were taken in Arizona near areas where I did my graduate work.

The lyrics and mood of the song completely captured my feelings for the coyote and brought back many memories from nights I spent under the stars pondering the desert, the coyote, and man.

With some great help from my wife, Evelyn and one of our Star City Ukulele Circle friends, David Brunstetter, here is my “Wildlife Song” for Season #218:

Right now I relate to the raccoon because neither one of us have enough saliva to eat our food without water.

Cool theme. Some of us ukulele players here are animals...... lol

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh what an interesting theme!

Very nice theme.

Very cool. I look forward to see what totem people identify with.

Jazzbanjorex said:

Right now I relate to the raccoon because neither one of us have enough saliva to eat our food without water.

Cool theme. Some of us ukulele players here are animals...... lol

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Ukulele Wombat!

Dennis, what a cool and interesting theme this will be.

I've only known you post-retirement ... I had no idea that's what you did! What wonderful work to make a life on. And what a lovely sweet song you've brought us to kick it off. Your band sounds fabulous. Love Evelyn on the harmonica ... I don't think I've heard her do that before. Looking forward to seeing you both at UWC soon, yes?

Lynda, that cat did a terrible job playing "4'33". It was purring the entire time!

The birds arrive and we plant seeds, the birds depart and we harvest seeds.
I asked a Finnish farmer when does he know the right time to plant seeds
and he said when the black male woodcocks begin to fight. Birds are not foolish,
they mate when the temperature is high enough so there will be no danger to
the eggs they are incubating. One swallow does not make a summer.
The arrival of certain birds indicates the time of the seasons. Is the weather going
to be good or bad... observe the birds. If the swallows fly high then the weather will
be good if they fly low it will be bad. It is all about high and low atmospheric pressure
in good weather the insects ascend and the swallows have to fly high to catch them.
When the swans leave it is time to turn the soil over and leave it fallow for the winter.
If the birds never return or never depart them most likely were are in serious ecological trouble.
I love the birds.

"Crocodile Rock" - Elton John ... for my totem animal, a crocodile I met on a rock

I don't think I've ever had this easy of a time choosing a Seasons song! The theme pretty much chose it for me.

My totem animal is a crocodile I met on a rock ... so of course there is only one choice possible:



Some years back, I went to a "journeying" gathering. For anyone unfamiliar with journeying, it's a kind of meditative experience, usually with drumming (this one had a live drummer), where you go inside your imagination and go on a kind of visualized quest of one sort or another. I was pretty skeptical and a bit dismissive of the whole thing, but a friend invited me and I figured it'd be at least an interesting evening.

We did several different journey exercises during the evening. In the first we were instructed to meet a totem animal who would guide us. I found myself floating on a swim raft down a river gorge in northern Australia ... an actual trip I had taken some years before when I lived in the Northern Territory there.

In the actual trip, we had come face to face with a freshwater crocodile (the kind that doesn't eat people) looking down at us from a large rock rising from the water in the center of the gorge. In my journey, I relived that moment of meeting the crocodile.

Immediately as I visualized this, my conscious mind leapt to doubting this could be my "correct" totem animal. After all journeying is a Native American thing, and this was an Australian animal. Plus it was a real live animal I'd actually met. Couldn't be! (In retrospect, of course, those are some of the reasons it's a perfect totem animal for me ... the subconscious always knows better than the naysaying inner critic.)

In the second exercise, we each wrote a question we wanted answered on a slip of paper, folded them up and put them on a plate in the center, then went on another journey and saw whatever we saw.

After the second journey finished, we each pulled someone else's question from the center, read it out loud and shared what we'd seen in our journey. Our journey was the answer to the other person's question.

Not wanting to be so publicly self-centered as to ask the question most on my mind at the time, which was something about where and when I'd find my soul mate, I had written down, "Where is love?" The person who picked my question shared that in her journey she'd seen a mean scary-looking (and possibly fire-breathing?) crocodile ... and then the crocodile opened its dangerous mouth full of sharp teeth ... and inside it was a beautiful pure beating heart. Well, could there have been a more perfect answer to my question possible? I interpreted it as saying that love was inside me, once I let my defenses down and let it out.

And it was a freakin' CROCODILE!

I wish I could remember what the question was that my journey was in answer to, and what I saw ... but I remember that a crocodile figured in that one too ... and that that person said it was the perfect answer for her question as well.

That was quite an amazing night.

And of course I left 100% clear that that crocodile smiling down at me from the rock in the Australian river gorge is unquestionably my totem animal.


PS, after I recorded the song "Crocodile Rock", it occurred to me that even the song references my time in Australia. Elton John sings, "Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own". My Australian car in the early '90's when I was there was a gold 1975 Holden Kingswood, Goldie the Golden Holden. Holden is the Australian GM car manufacturer, so my car was essentially an Australian "old gold Chevy". (I remember once figuring out which '70's Chevy the Kingswood most resembled ... Impala, maybe? Which might be someone else's totem. )

Your spirit quest was most interesting Wendy. i have experienced several spiritual encounters with various critters from bulls to mountain lions. Spider to bats. They were all transformative. But a Freakin' Crocodile! And rocking out it would seem. Wow!

I LOVE this theme and I think I now what I'm going to try to do! I've always loved wildlife.... this is going to be a wonderful Season!

I have already sang my perfect song for this week in a previous season so I am reviving it here - as a bonus. This is a song I wrote for Friends of the Earth back when my then girlfriend worked for them.

Here is "Endangered Species" - I don't think it needs much explanation, the lyrics speak for themselves.



Lyrics & Chords in the YouTube description

Great opportunity for some Flanders & Swann!!



1. The Warthog
2. The Sea Horse
3. The Chameleon
4. The Whale (Mopy Dick)
5. The Sloth
6. The Rhinoceros
7. Twosome - Kang & Jag
8. Dead Ducks
9. The Elephant
10. The Armadillo
11. The Spider
12. Threesome - Duck-Billed Platypus/The Humming Bird/The Portugese Man-O'-War
13. The Wild Boar
14. The Ostrich
15. The Wompom


I guess 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park' wouldn't express quite the 'Aloha spirit', would it? ;-)

I guess this is option 3. Japan's scientific whaling is a ruse for commercial whaling and the return of same. I am a meat eater so I don't know why I believe whales shouldn't be eaten but I do sympathise more with them. Why? I don't know.
BTW Australia leads the world in extinction of mammals. The Brits brought their foxes, rabbits and cats and they have played havoc with the native species.
The thylacine was actively hunted to extinction in Tasmania although sightings are still claimed. There was a one pound bounty on their heads when one pound was a lot of money. Hope to bring a song about the thylacine later.

a Pete Seeger song

UkeCan1 said:

....we had come face to face with a saltwater crocodile (the kind that doesn't eat people)....

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A saltwater or estuarine crocodile is one of the few animals in the world that will actively hunt, kill and eat humans. They are the largest reptile.
The freshwater crocodile also known as Johnstone’s River Crocodile or Johnstone’s Crocodile is considered relatively harmless. If you are bitten by one you've probably been annoying it.

UkeCan1 said:

Ukulele Wombat!

Love Evelyn on the harmonica ... I don't think I've heard her do that before. Looking forward to seeing you both at UWC soon, yes?

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E only recently took to playing the harmonica - primarily from Harmonica Bruce's workshop at the last Ohio Ukulele Campout (OUC). She had not had a chance to see or hear him at the Ukulele World Congress (UWC). She's having a blast with it and picking it up quickly.

Jazzbanjorex said:

Right now I relate to the raccoon because neither one of us have enough saliva to eat our food without water.

Cool theme. Some of us ukulele players here are animals...... lol

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I know that has not been a fun reason to relate to raccoons, Rex. Hope that sense of taste (and saliva!) are coming back quickly!

Yes! The Seasons is definitely prime habitat for some beastly ukulele players!

bird's eye view of my ukelele said:

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh what an interesting theme!

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Really Lynda! I know the silence between the notes is every bit as important as the notes themselves, but I confess I had to speed jump ahead quite a few times on this video! Cute cat! Yours?

redpaul1 said:

Great opportunity for some Flanders & Swann!!



1. The Warthog
2. The Sea Horse
3. The Chameleon
4. The Whale (Mopy Dick)
5. The Sloth
6. The Rhinoceros
7. Twosome - Kang & Jag
8. Dead Ducks
9. The Elephant
10. The Armadillo
11. The Spider
12. Threesome - Duck-Billed Platypus/The Humming Bird/The Portugese Man-O'-War
13. The Wild Boar
14. The Ostrich
15. The Wompom


I guess 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park' wouldn't express quite the 'Aloha spirit', would it? ;-)

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New (ish -- have lurked) here so please forgive peremptory and presumptuous addition.
The list of the bestiary forgets ,I'm a Gnu. No,nonono not I'm a Gnu , "I'm A Gnu" so Gnu you know should be in the list of gnown animals dontya gnow ??
Even not if on the Bestiary LP.
How's you and your legs ?


Prog rockers and ELP fans will note the tank and Armadillo in the bottom right corner. Now who cribbed off whom ? Tarkus LP cover features an armadillo morphed as a tank. Or is it just the age old pun on "armoured" ?