Friday, April 04, 2008

Rocky Mountain Highs

The Spectacled Bear (Tremarctos ornatus), also known as the Andean Bear and locally as ukuko, jukumari or ucumari, is the last of the lineage of short-faced bears of the Middle Pleistocene to Late Pleistocene age.[1][2]

The Spectacled Bear is a relatively small species of bear native to South America. It has black fur with a distinctive beige-coloured marking across its face and upper chest. Males are 33% larger than females.[3] Males can weigh 130 – 200 kilograms (286 – 440 lb), and females 35 – 60 kilograms (77 – 132 lb). They are found in several areas of northern and western South America, including western Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, western Bolivia, northwestern Argentina, and eastern Panama.[4] Spectacled bears are the only surviving species of bear native to South America, and the only surviving member of the subfamily Tremarctinae. Their survival has depended mostly on their ability to climb even the highest trees of the Andes.
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Ever wonder at the see-through cities, their citizens scurried, sly but nothing-eyed and nowhere-bound? Ever wonder about that Carolinian beach, the forms cameos on the sand, the wind wishing them scattered, the scattered grains that braille words for the blind tyrrants and their teacup poodles--what little yippings! what messages slip out, slip by, slip inside other envelopes and how many must be hired to decipher them? A mountain cradles the valley and no hand-blindfolds, no amount of closed-eye chantings make the mass of it lessen.

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