They are Bob.

Very.

I have not seen taji in Bali for years & years, and after they were banned, any that did appear for sale changed hands at absolutely ridiculous prices.

Really enjoyed reading this. I dont own cock fighting spurs but used to own and raise fighting cocks many years ago. The birds that are fought with these spurs are very very different to those fought using their natural spurs. They are lighter and more feathered so they can fly higher and strike much faster. The natural spurred fighters have a pedigree going back to around 2500 years in India. They are heavy hitters like heavyweight boxers and have the gameness bred into them so they will never run away and will fight to the death. There are different rules too to these different fights but the former ends in a very short time. Luck plays a huge role too. In the natural spurs the fight goes on for a while and only rarely ends in a birds death with the owner usually conceding defeat before this happens and the bird living to fight another day. Birds use various strategies like coming up under the wings to strike etc and are bred for such attributes. I could go on. But it's nice to see these spurs. It's triggered memories from long ago. I dont condone animal cruelty though. I raised these to play my part in preserving an ancient breed of fighting fowl that is sadly quite vulnerable to being lost forever.

My Father-in-law in Alabama had a few apparently very expensive fighting chickens, hens, and a couple roosters. They hunted bugs in the fields behind the house (where the outhouse was) and flew up into the surrounding trees to roost at night. I don't think Melvin (My FIL) was fighting them tho. Probably used to, when he was younger.

Anyway, he used to occasionally put his plowin' mule in that field to trim down the grass. Mules are cantankerous, ornery critters. If you had to use the outdoor facility when the mule was there, you had to watch out, or he'd go for you. He only liked Melvin.

One day the mule got into an argument with the roosters, and he killed and ate them, and started on the hens. (Mules get put in field with sheep/goats to protect them from wolves/coyotes/puma, much cheaper than dogs, and self-feeding - usually on veg tho).

The mule disappeared, and my in-law's freezer had some large hunks of meat in it a few days later. Didn't taste much like beef - I expect it was the missing mule. Melvin liked the chickens more than the mule. The rest of us didn't miss the mule either. Nasty beast.

Well, since we have diverged from spurs into the birds that wear them & the mules that eat the birds that wear them, we might be able to diverge a little more into the what one can face in the way of fighting birds in Australia.

In my generation we were brought up on the bush ballads of people like Banjo Patterson & Henry Lawson. I knew, and still know a lot of this verse by heart, and have in fact contributed to it in a very minor way.

This one from The Banjo might raise a smile:-

https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poe...mecock-0004008

Man walks into a bar and says his moulting fighting cock on a leash, and asks for a beer. The bar bully saunters over and says, that's an ugly old bird you got there, but can it fight, mine has beaten all challengers? Man says yes, and he doesn't even need spurs. Bets made, A ring is hastily arranged and the bully puts his huge bird with it's taped on fighting spurs in the ring with the skinny blue patchily feathered bird. The bully's rooster gives a tremendous war-cry and charges the poor spur-less thing, and in one quick move the blue grabs the bullies bird with it's wing claws, bites it on the neck, and shakes it once, breaking its neck, and proceeds to eat the bully's chicken, tearing it apart with razor sharp teeth. The bully pays up and says what kind of bird is that anyway with teeth? Man says, I found him in the Amazon rain forest, people said they were supposed to be extinct, but they called him a 'velociraptor'.

So --- this is the famous "Blue Bird of Happiness" ?

Perhaps so...at least for the lucky owner of the rare bird, upon whom Fortune certainly has smiled... If memory serves, they also thought the coelocanth, forest reindeer, and the Pseudoryx nghetinhensis (sometimes called the Asian unicorn, a misnomer, since it has two horns. The Asian unicorn was actually the Elasmotherium; see "The Mythic Chinese Unicorn: 2nd Edition" by Jeannie Thomas Parker) were extinct...

Apparently he was a Norwegian Blue Velociraptor, and was pining for the fjords...Last I heard, he'd headed that way. Any Norwegians best be careful out in the woods. 'He' may have been a parthenogenic female looking for a place to nest.


"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Act 1 Sc 5, 187-188: Hamlet

Little Ham said that to Horatio Nelson, or maybe Horatio Hornblower. I disremember which. (A hamlet is a little ham, isn't it?)

Re: little ham, perhaps you're thinking of Mickey Rooney? Actors are the only little hams with speaking parts.

Hamlets are little villages; while they are said to speak with one voice regarding the characteristics of the villagers, it would be more a Greek Chorus than a singular voice.

I wouldn't Pooh-pooh your little ham, though. Possibly you were thinking of a piglet?

It would never do, to go into the mathematics of Horatios in a genteel forum, of course.

A Ham-let was a Danish prince, that means a full Ham was a Danish King.

Not to be confused with English Hamlets, which are small Hamms, full Hamms, like Peckham, Cheltenham, Birmingham, Tottenham, West/East Ham, Streatham, Eltham, take up more room. We have a Ham near me that is just named 'Ham'. Not far from Berkeey Castle on the river Severn*. There is another full Hamm named, er, Fulham'.

Piglets are Danish Bacon Seeds.

Hope that clarifies things.


p.s. - Horatios are higher in dedicated areas like the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. Best not to go there though.


*- I'm still looking for the River Eightn. We have a River Avon not too far away. Silly, Avon means river, so it's really the River River. The river Styx is, i think somewhere in Grease.

Styx were not in Grease, it was Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta

Didn't Olivia Newton-John discover gravity when a koala fell out of its tree and landed on John Travolta?

Time for a break, Gentlemen.

Noted: We now return you to our regularly scheduled subject - assuming the others do likewise.:D

I liked the digressions very much: they were not only funny, but full of useful additions to the noble game of cockfighting.
And I never knew that Shakespeare hailed from Stratford-on- River:-)
What language is the word "Avon" from?

BTW, are animal-loving Australians and Indonesians going to ban human cagefighting?
Or ice hockey, that is a charming mix of cagefighting and figure skating?

Don't ban me, please!!!

Just don't get close to such 'noble' action ;).

[QUOTE=ariel;267507...
What language is the word "Avon" from?...[/QUOTE]


Etymology. The name "Avon" is a cognate of the Welsh word afon [ˈavɔn] "river", both being derived from the Common Brittonic abona, "river". "River Avon", therefore, literally means "river river"; several other English and Scottish rivers share the name.

Thanks!

Having been alerted to the scarcity of these chicken swords, when another set became available I jumped on it, so to speak. See below . . .

Having just been apprised of a Japanese tradition of animal fighting for sport, Kumo Gassen, I'll append a link to more information on dueling spiders:
https://sakuraculture.blogspot.com/2...-fighting.html