Category Archives: Animals

In Search Of An ‘Ear Linguist’

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Several years ago, I came up with an idea for an “Earlingo Headband.” You can see my original post via this link: Earlingo – The Animal Assisted Therapy Headband.

Earlingo is a headband with controllable canid (wolf/dog) ears on it. It can be used in human-animal assisted interactions, as well as to signal captive wild canids (wolves, foxes, etc.) in zoos or other such environments. This can aid in bio-behavioral studies.

I was really excited to build this project, but it was outside my scope of expertise. I quickly learned to really make this idea happen, I needed a university bioengineering student. A student who could become not only a designer, but a wild canid ‘ear linguist’ as well.

I decided that I needed to place an ad in a university setting and student newspaper. I chose Cal Berkeley as my first target, as they have superior engineering programs.

I asked my techie friend Larry what he might suggest. As typical he had a great idea; use a QR code, something that I would never have thought of doing.

I wrote up some text and gave him suggestions for a graphic. He used his AI expertise to come up with this ad design, which included the QR code.

Check out the QR code to read the ad. If you are not familiar with using QR codes, one way to access it is to focus your phone’s camera on the QR graphic. Your browser will detect the link. Just click on the displayed link to access the ad. Really cool!

Hopefully, I will find an engineering student who likes the Earlingo project as much as I do!

Tribal Fence Frog

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A couple of years ago, I built a tribal Orca fence sculpture (Killer Whale Fence Sculpture), based upon a design that I saw while traveling in the Pacific Northwest.

The build went over so well, that I was asked to build a Tlingit native tribal Frog fence sculpture. I was given a couple of preferred images from the web, and went to work. Here is the chosen design.

I needed a canvas to paint the frog on, and as I like to use scrap lumber whenever I can, I decided to piece together some redwood fence boards. As usual, I used my biscuit joiner to do so, then glued and clamped the boards. The wooden canvas measured approximately 19″ H x 18″ W.

Once the glue was set, I sanded the top, creating a smooth wooden canvas on which to draw and paint.

Now, to get the image drawn. I decided the best way was to use a projector. While I do not own one, I was able to check one out from the local library. I set up the projector in the garage, adjusted the image to fit the board, and began tracing. You can see below, that I have the left side of the image traced out.

Once the tracing was complete, I used a jigsaw to cut around the basic shape of the frog.

A few days later, I began painting. A rather tedious job that was done over several days. Lastly, I put a clear coat on top, preserving the paint from the weather.

Here is the tribal Frog hanging on the fence. It turned out much better than expected.

These two were meant to be together!