IT to falconry

At the FT (site registration required), Emma Jacobs on the work of an urban falconer. (Link courtesy of I.H.D.)

Cat and mouse

Cat employees of the Hermitage!  This would make an amazing children's book...

(Via Dan Weiss.)

The crocodile room

The primal feeling of hunting with a hawk (FT site registration required).

Also at the FT, a fabulous piece by William Leith on the 200 million animals that pass through Heathrow every year:

Bradfield hands me a face mask. “To filter out fecal dust,” he says. We walk into a rank-smelling room containing several black-throated monitors – lizards the size of terriers. Their feet are like the wizened hands of Egyptian mummies. They have crinkly necks with dry, shedding skin, like Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective. Tongues shoot out of their mouths like party tricks. When Bradfield gets too close to one of these lizards, the tail, which is getting on for a yard long, whips against a crate.