Meet Eclyse

What's your favorite wild animal? Mine is the zebra. There's something about those stripes that can only be described as "wow". During my last year in high school I decided to do my bedroom in zebra-striped wallpaper. Everything in the room was red, black and white. I spent the entire spring and summer working on the project only to make my first visit home from college (I think it was for Thanksgiving) to find the room changed into soft blue walls and a flowery bedspread. Guess that's why an online article caught my eye.

The clipping was about Eclyse - an animal that looks like it was assembled in one of those dodgy garages where they weld halves of two stolen cars together.

But Eclyse isn't the result of some crazed Doctor Dolittle with a god complex. It's a zorse – a zebra/horse hybrid, born on a ranch in Germany. And she's the product of a holiday romance.

The first zorses go back to the 19th century. But up until now, they have all had stripes across their whole body. Eclyse only has two blocks of stripes – on her face and her rear.

The pure white areas she gets from her mother, a horse called Eclipse. Eclipse's owners sent her to a ranch in Italy for a while – where she met a rugged, handsome zebra called Ulysses.

One thing led to another – and when she got back home to Germany, Eclipse surprised her keepers by producing a little half-horse, half-zebra with highly unusual markings.

Ranch spokesman Udo Richter commented: 'You can tell she is a mix just by looking at her. But in temperament she can also exhibit characteristics from each parent. 'She is usually relatively tame like a horse but occasionally shows the fiery temperament of a zebra, leaping around like one.' Eclyse is celebrating its first birthday at Safariepark Zoo in the city of Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock, Germany where she has her own enclosure. To find out more about the history of zebra/horse hybirds go to: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/zorse

Research info provided by: The Daily Mail


Now, see if you can find the stripes in this poem:


Being Dramatic, Of Course

Far better than you understand yourself:

or perhaps a piece of raging elgegance
inlaid with diamond studs then etched in
the real ivory of self-erasure

or each soul worn within relying
on the hems of ragged garments lit-up
by a handful of fluent confetti

or a veil of the sanctuary that covers our
faces from the brazen night collasping under
the weight of the completely anonymous

or perhaps the single arrow od some absure
faith that has somehow learned to heal
itself using a set of voluptuous prayers.


This poem first appeared online at: www.angelfire.com/journal/wordsaresir
Visit my e-zine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/