We had a big rainstorm roll in this past weekend, and as is often the case, the wind arrived before the rain. I was walking back from closing the windows in the cat house when I saw Bailey, our Doxie with the bad back, looking like he was about to go airborne. I went to my office to get the camera.
Bailey was sitting facing directly into the wind, which was coming from the southwest. He was perched between the corners of two animal cottages, which magnified the wind and turned his spot into a bit of a wind tunnel. I realized watching his ears go up and down with the varying wind speeds that this Dachshund could be a perfect wind meter, so I kept shooting photos. For instance, his ears at this angle represent a wind speed of about 5 miles per hour.
In this one, the wind is really picking up, and now we’re probably at 10 mph. Bailey has to be careful because if we have a wind vortex come through sideways at this speed, it could set his ears to spinning and he could go straight up like a small helicopter. I liked this shot the most, so that’s why I used it as the lead photo at the top of the post.
And at this point the wind is howling. Here Bailey is at max wind speed, now about 15 mph. There’s a certain resemblance to a slant-wing jet aircraft, say an F-14 Tomcat, preparing to take off. I’m not sure what would happen to those ears above 15 mph, since I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. The rain was starting to move in so I scooped up Bailey to bring him inside. But I imagine at 20 mph the ears are going to go straight back and wrap around his little head, with the ear tips touching. I’ll guess we’ll have to wait till the next storm to test our ear-o-meter at higher speeds.
(Click on photos for larger image.)
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