Reader’s wildlife videos

June 26, 2018 • 7:30 am

We have two videos today from Tara Tanaka (Vimeo page here, Flickr page here), one shot in Florida and the other in New Mexico. Be sure to enlarge both. The first is from Florida, and Tara’s explanation is indented.

About two months ago I thought I saw a Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus) in our swamp – the first one I’d seen in years. Since then we’ve had two Common Gallinule pairs with chicks, and I convinced myself that that must have been what I’d seen. I’ve been going out in my steamy blind on a lot of afternoons to photograph Wood Ducks [Aix sponsa], and many nights I hear and see something moving in the tall maidencane to my right, and I’ve even videoed the moving grass for ten minutes at a time, hoping I’ll see what it is. Last night, just as I got in the blind, I saw a Purple Gallinule land in a clump of vegetation far away, and I managed to get short video of glimpses of the bird – but enough to be sure what it was. Later the bird teased me even more by feeding in the grass behind our duck log – but never giving me any more than a flash of its head. Later, as I was shooting video of Wood Ducks on the log, the Gallinule ambushed the relaxing Wood Ducks, clearing the log like he’d done it many times before. I hope there are chicks hidden somewhere, and they stay around this time.

Look at the sexual dimorphism in those wood ducks! The males look as if they were designed by Picasso. The male gallinule is also very showy.

When I asked Tara why the Gallinule went after the wood ducks, she replied, “I think the Gallinule was just asserting its dominance, because he could. They get into violent fights with one another – each wrapping those long toes around the neck of the other – I think they may fight to the death. I hope it’s got a nest.”

Bosque del Apache is a National Wildlife Reserve in New Mexico, where Tara visited—and shot a bunch of video—last year. Here’s her first issue:

I’ve been culling the video I shot at Bosque del Apache NWR last November, and I saw this “footage” for the first time this afternoon. It was one of my favorite bird photography afternoons, with hundreds and hundreds of Sandhill Cranes [Antigone canadensis] and Snow Geese [Anser caerulescens] filling the sky. Families and larger groups of cranes were coming in continuously, and I shot everything in this video as one clip – I just cut out the parts I didn’t want to include. As soon as one family would land I’d look up and choose the next group to follow in. There was still fall color, and it was a gorgeous afternoon.

This was shot with my GH5 mounted on a Nikon 300mm f2.8 ai-s manual focus lens in 4K 60fps, output at 30p (half of normal speed).

I love the gentle way the cranes touch down. Note how they lower their landing gear well before they land.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

June 26, 2018 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a cool but clear Tuesday, June 26, 2018: National Chocolate Pudding Day. In Hamelin, Germany it’s Ratcatcher’s Day, the day on which, according to the Brothers Grimm, the Pied Piper led the children out of Hamelin (he’d previously led out the rats).

All the ducks are fine, but we’re going into a heat wave with highs of about 34°C (93°F) near the end of the week.

On this day in 4 AD, Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, adopted his stepson Tiberius, who was to succeed him.  On June 26, 1483, Richard III became King of England.  He would have traded his kingdom for a horse, but it was not to be; he was ignominiously buried under a carpark, where the cars of his subjects despoiled his grave.  On June 26, 1886, Henri Moissan isolated the element fluorine for the first time, ultimately leading to Teflon.  On this day in 1945, 50 Allied nations signed the United Nations Charter in San Francisco. Exactly three years later, William Shockley filed the patent for the first bipolar junction transistor (whatever that is; I presume it has two poles).  On this day in 1953, the odious head of the Soviet Secret Police (and rapist) Lavrentiy Beria was arrested on the orders of Khrushchev. He was ultimately shot in prison. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but if I did Beria would be the first to get it. On June 26, 1959, the Swedish boxer Ingemar Johansson defeated American Floyd Patterson by a technical knockout, becoming the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. That was a HUGE fight, and I do remember when it happened.

On this day in 1960, Madagascar became independent from France. Three years later, John F. Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech supporting West Germany after the Wall was built.  Here’s the famous words, although he says “ish” instead of the “ich” with a gutteral.

On June 26, 1977, Elvis gave his final concert—in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was found dead on August 16 of that year.  On this day in 2000, the federally funded Human Genome Project announced that it had completed a first “rough draft” sequence.  And today marks two landmarks in gay rights. On June 26, 2013, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That Act had allowed states to ban same-sex marriage and defined marriage, for federal purposes, as the union of one man and one woman. Exactly two years later, by a narrow vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled that, under the 14th Amendment (equal protection of citizens), same-sex couples had the constitutional right to marry.

Notables born on this day include Abner Doubleday (1819; once thought to have invented the game of baseball, a claim now debunked), Pearl S. Buck (1892), Marine General Chesty Puller (1898), Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911), Derek Jeter (1974), and Dave Rubin (yes, that one; 1976).  Those who expired on June 26 include balloonist Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1810), Malcolm Lowry (1957), Roy Campanella (1993), Strom Thurmond (2003), Nora Ephron (2012) and Howard Baker (2014).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Cyrus are discussing spiders. I asked Malgorzata for an explanation, and this is what she said:

Your post that we translated today is about ballooning spiders and Hili, who read it, is especially attuned to spiders today. She is a bit afraid of spiders and she is hiding behind Cyrus. Cyrus wants to reassure her and he says that it’s spider who is afraid of Cyrus which means she has nothing to be afraid of.

Hili: Do you see this spider?
Cyrus: Don’t frighten him. He is afraid of me.
In Polish:
Hili: Widzisz tego pająka?
Cyrus: Nie strasz go, on się mnie boi.

Some tweets from Matthew. This first one is hilarious, even if it’s an old joke:

https://twitter.com/Mr_DrinksOnMe/status/1010831902624878592

Rothera Point is a British station in Antarctica.

As Matthew noted of this video, “A cat wouldn’t even blink!” D*gs!!

https://twitter.com/netgeek_0915/status/1010726138715361281

A roo on the pitch!

These are blood-engorged TICKS! OMG!

Live and learn:

This tweet has disappeared, but Matthew sent me a screenshot. It’s Cygnus, the cat with the world’s longest tail. Cygnus Regulus Powers, the cat with a tail that’s 44.66 cm long (17.58 inches), happens to live with the world’s tallest cat, Arcturus, who is 48.4 cm tall (19.1 inches) and still growing. Cygnus is a Maine Coon, but Arcturus, a savannah cat, has genes from a tall wild felid and so his record shouldn’t really be vaid. See the video below the tweet to observe these cats:

Cygnus and Arcturus:

 

Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who I think is an atheist, is also Professor of Biblical and Ancient Studies at the University of Exeter. She’s got a great sense of humor.

And remember A. N. Wilson, whose Darwin-bashing biography I raked over the coals? Well, here’s a tweet from yesterday that singles out an article Wilson wrote in The Spectator. I can’t be arsed to read it.

As for Prime Minister May, here’s a picture of her curtseying to her future King. Seriously, those of you who like the royalty—is this seemly? Does any human being, including one who’s not even King yet, deserves this kind of obsequious behavior?  (h/t: Grania)

Monday: Duck report

June 25, 2018 • 2:30 pm

All is well in Botany Pond: the turtles are thriving and getting lots of sun, and the ducklings are HUGE (and still eight in number):

They’re not as big as Honey, but they’re getting there:

They’ve lost all of their down, and are now filling in their feathers. I still can’t sex them, but with the help of Tara Tanaka I learned that juveniles can sometimes be distinguished because the upper tail coverts of males are tipped with green, while those of females are brown. At this point I can’t see a difference, but the chance that all eight ducks are of one sex is  2 X (½ to the eighth power) or 0.008 (.8%).

It’s hard to feed them and take photos at the same time, but here I’ve just tossed them corn, which is hitting the water. The ducklings are good at dabbling now, and can easily get corn before it sinks to the bottom. As always, Honey is behind the brood and watching attentively.

BATHTIME! As usual, they use one of the cement rings as a bathtub:

And the obligatory picture of Duck of the Year:

The downfall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes

June 25, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Many of you will know about the downfall of Theranos, the Silicon Valley company started by Elizabeth Holmes, who claimed to have devised a machine that could do multiple physiological tests on just a single drop of blood. It never really worked, even though investors (including Rupert Murdoch) pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Holmes’s startup. At one time Theranos was worth over 9 billion dollars on paper.  Then her chicanery was uncovered and published by The Wall Street Journal.

Now Theranos, and Holmes, are bankrupt. And ten days ago, both Holmes and Theranos’s former president, Ramesh Balwani, were indicted for wire fraud: for deliberately lying to investors and the public. (For a brief period Theranos partnered with the pharmacy chain Walgreen’s in a blood-testing collaboration.)

This 31-minute video is an interview of John Carreyrou by Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV; Carreyrou was the Wall Street Journal reporter who unmasked Holmes through dogged reporting.  It is an absolutely fascinating conversation, and Carreyrou is eloquent and thorough.

Based on this interview, I went to the library to get Carreyrou’s new book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, and am reading it now. It’s a page-turner. Holmes was a sociopath but was so charismatic that she managed to dupe lots of investors and persuade famous people like Henry Kissinger to join her board of directors (big names lure big money). Meanwhile, the company was totally dysfunctional, with Holmes firing people right and left and lying to everyone about the ability of her “Edison” machine to test blood (it never worked, and she knew it).

You won’t be wasting your time if you watch this video. If you like it, get hold of Careyrou’s book.

If you don’t have the time, there’s a similar but shorter interview (6 minutes) here.

Harvard tries to reduce the number of Asian-American students by systematically downgrading the ratings of their personalities on applications

June 25, 2018 • 11:32 am

The U.S. Supreme court has ruled, and sustained, the use of race as an admissions criterion for colleges and universities as a tool for increasing ethnic diversity.  The stipulation, though, is that there cannot be racial quotas, and that there cannot be policies that “consciously aim at racial balancing.” This summary comes from today’s New York Times op-ed below (click on screenshot), and it confuses me.  There’s also a related article in last August’s New Yorker by Jeannie Suk Gersen, an Asian-American professor at Harvard’s Law School (click on screenshot). Both take up the issue of Harvard’s historical discrimination against Asian-American applicants, which of course is related to racial balancing.

 

I am in favor of affirmative action to rectify the historical discrimination against underrepresented and oppressed minorities, though the ultimate goal should be to eliminate affirmative action, accepting people solely on the basis of their achievements, interests, and other things that make for a good student body.  That, however, would require everyone to be given equal educational opportunity from the outset, so that nobody is disadvantaged by historical circumstances or poor life situations. And we’re ages away from that in America. And even then I’m not 100% sure that race or gender should be ignored, for even under equal opportunity there may be advantages of diversity that would outweigh a purely meritocratic approach.

What I don’t understand about the New York Times characterization of the law is that it seems to forbid “conscious aims at racial balancing”—yet that is exactly what colleges are doing. To try to keep student bodies diverse, Hispanic and African-American applicants are admitted with lower grade-point averages and test scores than are whites and Asians, with Asians facing the highest bar since they excel in qualifications on paper. Yang’s article gives the data:

The Asian-American population has more than doubled over the last 20 years, yet the Asian-American share in the student populations at Harvard has remained frozen. Harvard has maintained since the 1980s, when claims of anti-Asian discrimination in Ivy League admissions first surfaced, that there is no racial bias against Asian-Americans once you control the preferences offered to athletes and alumni.

The discovery process in this case has demonstrated that this claim is no longer supportable.

Mr. Arcidiacono found that an otherwise identical applicant bearing an Asian-American male identity with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 32 percent chance of admission if he were white, a 77 percent chance of admission if he were Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance of admission if he were black. A report from Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research found that even after alumni and athletic preferences were factored in, Asians would be accepted at a rate of 26 percent, versus the 19 percent at which they were actually accepted. That report, commissioned back in 2013, was summarily filed away, with no further investigation or action taken.

Were Asian-Americans admitted on the basis of academic achievement and extracurricular activities alone, regardless of ethnicity, Harvard would have a near-majority Asian student body (43%), something that Gersen says is undesirable. Rather, she says, “we should not want the composition of our elite universities to be wildly out of proportion to the racial composition of our country.” Readers can weigh in on that sentiment below, but in general I agree with it—diversity is a good thing. But not just diversity of race, but also diversity of thought, social class, ideology, and personality and interests.

But to keep the proportion of Asians down, since they are high achievers and also consciously engage in those crucial extracurricular activities that make one look “well rounded,” Harvard has engaged in an odious charade—one that they try to keep secret.

It can no longer be kept secret, though, since a lawsuit was filed against Harvard claiming that it discriminates against Americans of Asian descent. Harvard fought hard to avoid giving information on its admissions policies, but it finally had to as part of the discovery process. And what was revealed was a systematic downgrading of Asian’s personality scores compared to whites, blacks, and Hispanics. This of course plays into the stereotype of Asians as robotic grade-grinders who don’t have distinctive personalities. Yang says this:

. . . the Harvard admissions office consistently gave Asian-American applicants low personality ratings — the lowest assigned collectively to any racial group. She did not know that Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research had found that if the university selected its students on academic criteria alone, the Asian share of the Harvard student body would leap from 19 percent to 43 percent. She did not know that though Asians were consistently the highest academically performing group among Harvard applicants, they earned admission at a rate lower than any other racial group between 2000 and 2019.

All she knew was what she had witnessed as an assistant principal and the single fact that she was shown by her deposers. But perhaps she intuited the rest.

Earlier this month, we learned that a review of more than 160,000 individual student files contained in six years of Harvard’s admissions data found that Asians outperformed all other racial groups on every measure of academic achievement: grades, SAT scores and the most AP exams passed. They had more extracurricular activities than their white counterparts. They were rated by interviewers who had met them as virtually on par with their white counterparts in their personal qualities. Yet Harvard admissions officers, many of whom had never met these applicants, scored them collectively as the worst of all groups in the one area — personality — that was subjective enough to be readily manipulable toThe report by the plaintiff’s expert witness, the Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono, revealed that Harvard evaluated applicants on the extent to which they possessed the following traits: likability, helpfulness, courage, kindness, positive personality, people like to be around them, the person is widely respected. Asian-Americans, who had the highest scores in both the academic and extracurricular ratings, lagged far behind all other racial groups in the degree to which they received high ratings on the personality score.

“Asian-American applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time only in the top academic index decile. By contrast, white applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time in the top six deciles,” wrote Mr. Arcidiacono. “Hispanics receive such personal scores more than 20% of the time in the top seven deciles, and African Americans receive such scores more than 20% of the time in the top eight deciles.”

This sounds like a conscious decision by Harvard as a way to keep the number of Asian-American students down. Note that some of the students didn’t even get to show their personalities, via a personal interview, with admissions officers. It’s no surprise, then, that Harvard fought tooth and nail to avoid disclosing it. In fact, as Yang notes, the exact same tactic was used in the past to keep the number of Jewish students down:

Harvard has been here before. “To prevent a dangerous increase in the proportion of Jews, I know at present only one way, which is at the same time straightforward and effective,” wrote A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the 1920s, “and that is a selection by a personal estimate of character on the part of the Admission authorities, based upon the probable value to the candidate, to the College and to the community of his admissions.” The opacity of its admissions procedure could veil what Lowell’s written correspondence would later disclose to be a fully intended policy of discrimination.

I’ll add one other thing: Harvard gives preferential admission to “legacies” (relatives of those who attended previously, and of donors) and to rich people, preferences that can outweigh test scores. This is done so Harvard can keep building up its multibillion-dollar endowment. I object to that vehemently, but that’s the way they roll.

This raises a number of questions—not just about Asians, but about racial balancing in general. As I said, I am in favor of affirmative action, but we should be more honest about it: not using “personality denigration” as a way to effect it.  But are quotas the answer? I don’t know many people who are comfortable with explicit quotas.

So here are the questions, and readers can weigh in:

1.)  Do you favor affirmative action by ethnicity so that college student bodies mirror to some extent the composition of the country as a whole? Or do you think admission should be genetics-blind, based on criteria like scores, grades, and other achievements and activities?

2.) If you favor affirmative action to increase diversity of gender or ethnicity, do you favor increasing diversity of other traits, like social class, ideology, politics, and so on?

3.) If you favor affirmative action, should the goals be in the form of quotas?

4.)  Do you agree with Dr. Gersen that we should strive to keep Asian students from dominating the composition of the student body?

5.) If your answer to #4 is “yes”, and Asians score the highest in all criteria save personality, is it ethical to downgrade Asians on personality scores to keep their numbers down? (I myself can’t see this as ethical at all, nor do I believe that Asians are uniform, robotic, and without distinctive personalities. That simply  hasn’t been my experience with Asian students here.) Do we then practice anti-affirmative action with Asians?

There are other questions as well, but I’ll stop here. All I know is that the situation is a mess, and difficult to tackle. The only way it would be easy is if you believe in a pure meritocracy—in fact, one in which ethnicity is not even specified in the application. Once you start bringing in diversity as a desirable situation, then you run into trouble, especially in view of the Supreme Court’s ambiguous stand. Those of us who think diversity of multiple traits is a good thing to have in college—after all, what good is a college where you don’t confront different people with different views?—will have to face up to this mess.

Readers’ wildlife photos and videos

June 25, 2018 • 8:00 am

Reader Bruce Lyon, you may recall, is a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He provides not just photos but illustrated scientific tales, and here’s a good one about owls, which includes two of his videos. Bruce’s comments are indented.

Here are some images of Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) that your readers might enjoy, given that owls are honorary cats on WEIT.  This pair of owls nests in a park in Santa Cruz California. They normally use a eucalyptus grove away from areas that are heavily visited by people. However, early this year they moved to a very heavily used area, roosting right beside a deck area that is used for viewing monarch butterflies. This deck is often visited by hundreds of people each day, including large and noisy groups of school kids, and the owls seemed completely indifferent to all of this.

My guess is that the owls moved to this location because they had their eyes on a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) nest—owls do not build their own nests but rely on cavies or old nests from other birds like hawks and ravens. The owls visited the nest several times and I thought they were going to use it but the crows had other ideas. Crows eventually discovered the owls and began to mob the pair intensively in the evening and the owls gave up on using this area and went back to their traditional area. They nested there and recently fledged two chicks.

Before the crows came on the scene, the owls were very fun to watch. They would come off their roost while it was still light and then perch, hoot and greet each other a mere 20 feet from the viewing platform, often at eye level. I have not seen such cooperative and tame great horned owls before.

Below. Last November the students in my ornithology class and I watched red-shouldered hawks refurbishing their nest, so we knew the original owners of the nest the owls coveted. Here a hawk leaves after bringing in some branches. November seemed like an odd time of the year to be working on the nest.

Below: When the owls came off their roost site they often went to the same large branch, sometimes hiding in the ivy but sometimes staying out in the open. The male is on the left, the female on the right.
Below: This time they stayed out in the open. As with many raptors, the female (on the left) is larger than the male, but the male is a bit more colorful.

Below. The birds rarely came off the roost at the same time. Often when the second bird came off the roost it would join the other bird, and they would have a little greeting ceremony, as shown in the video below.

Below: Video of the female preening. Note how she cleans her talons—one wants to make sure that the weapons are maximally lethal! The audio is not great because the microphone (Rode) that I use for video does not work well (microphone adds a humming noise). Any suggestions from readers on a good microphone to use with a DSLR camera would be welcome.

Below: the male perches at eye level just a few feet off the ground.

Below: Hooting male—when he hooted, his white throat puffed out.

Below: More hooting:

Below: The male. As Monty Python said in their famous dead parrot skit—he’s a lovely bird, lovely plumage.
Below: Male perched on top of a snag, hooting away!

Monday: Hili dialogue

June 25, 2018 • 7:00 am

Good morning to all readers, brothers and sisters, comrades, and all the ships at sea. The work week has begun again: it’s Monday, June 25, 2018: National Strawberry Parfait Day. It’s also National Catfish Day in the U.S.

Before we begin, let us have a look at this most awesome video tweet, courtesy of Matthew:

As for what happened  on June 25, a photograph was taken on this day in 1848, during the June Days uprising, that’s said to be the first instance of photojournalism. The explanation is in the caption.

The June Days uprising was an uprising staged by the workers of France from 23 June to 26 June 1848. It was in response to plans to close the National Workshops, created by the Second Republic in order to provide work and a source of income for the unemployed, albeit with pay just enough to survive. The National Guard, led by General Louis Eugène Cavaignac, was called out to quell the protests. Things did not go peacefully and over 10,000 people were either killed or injured, while 4,000 insurgents were deported to Algeria.

On this day in 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn (“Custer’s Last Stand”) took place in Montana Territory, with four tribes of Native Americans slaughtering nearly 300 members of the U.S. Cavalry.  On June 25, 1910, the U.S. Congress passed the Mann Act, prohibiting transport of women between states “for immoral purposes”. It would be used to prosecute many whom the government didn’t like, including the black boxer Jack Johnson. On that same day, Stravinsky’s ballet “The Firebird” opened in Paris, creating his reputation as a composer.

On this day in 1944, the very last strip of the wonderful comic Krazy Kat was published, exactly two months after its author George Herriman died. Matthew and I are both huge fans of Krazy Kat, and here is the last strip. Officer Pupp saves Krazy while Ignatz the Mouse looks on, but then Krazy finds a way to navigate the water.

On June 25, 1947, Anne Frank’s Diary, called The Diary of a Young Girl, was published. Exactly one year later, the Berlin Airlift began as a way to obviate the Soviet blockade of Berlin.  On this day in 1950, the Korean War began as the North invaded the South.  On June 15, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared “The Emergency” in India.  On this day in 1984, Prince released his famous album “Purple Rain”.  Finally, or so Wikipedia says, this day in 1987 was ” the last date until June 17th 2345 when the digits in dd/mm/yyyy format are all different.” That would be 25061987.

Notables born on  June 25 include Antoni Gaudí, one of the most creative architects of our time (1852; killed by a tram), Louis Mountbatten (1900), George Orwell (1903), June Lockhart (1925), Bert Hölldobler (1936), Carly Simon (1945), Sonia Sotomayor (1954), and Ricky Gervais (1961). Those who expired on this day include Mary Tudor, Queen of France (1533), George Armstrong Custer (1876; see above), painter Thomas Eakins (1916), Michel Foucault (1984), Jacques Cousteau (1997), and Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (both 2009).

Here is Thomas Eakins, one of my favorite American painters, holding a cat (1895):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andzej is giving instruction to Hili:

A: What is the first principle of safety?
Hili: Look around.
In Polish:
Ja: Jaka jest pierwsza zasada bezpieczeństwa?
Hili: Rozglądaj się.

Tweets from Matthew. The first shows a weather microaggression:

Fake news, combined with typical Internet nastiness:

If you join the Facebook group Catspotting, you’ll see many of these:

https://twitter.com/junailenz/status/1009987168108937221

Yes, this was a real book.  “Loving correction” indeed!

This is in Cork, where Grania lives. How did this tropical mammal get there?

https://twitter.com/SeanCronin1973/status/1010437331512414209

No comment needed:

These ladies look happy to be producing the album: the second best Beatles album ever recorded:

Birds jumping the shark. Be sure to watch both videos:

And from Heather Hastie. I think I’ve posted this one before, but you can’t see it too often:

The footprints of my favorite flightless parrot (and the only flightless parrot):

Note that the donkey has a cross on its back. Heather says this:

This is a Jesus donkey. (I don’t know the proper breed name, or if all donkeys have crosses.) According to Christians, they didn’t have a cross on their backs before Jesus rode one into Jerusalem for the beginning of the events that would end in his crucifixion. Cute though.

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1010253929978814464

Avian rebuff!

https://twitter.com/CUTEFUNNYANIMAL/status/1010203040073310209

An alert kitten!

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1010327102418309120