I thought a little re-cap of just how Sheldon got into this big ol’ mess in the first place would be nice. Seeing as how the scene of his flight from the shrink’s office was depicted almost two years ago.

Who knows how old that orange juice is? But I reckoned it would have to be nicely fermented by the time Sheldon guzzled it down. Hence the ginormous belch.

(I find it odd that my spell check accepted “ginormous” as a word.)

Thank you for your patience in waiting for this week’s update. Life, blah blah blah.

I am glad I am back to a weekly schedule, however.

A little late today. I’ve been catching up with everything that got put on hold during my recent road trip from Oregon to Montana. If you have not already, check the News section of this site to see Sheldon participation in the photo documentation of the event.

See you next week! Thanks for your continued patience.

The National Bison Range is about an hour north of Missoula, Montana. It protects some 400 bison, several herds of mule deer, elk, big horn sheep, as well as black bear, and several species of bird. On our visit we saw only herds of bison in the distance, as many roads were closed for the Winter Season, a pretty late event in Montana. And this is as close as we could get with a telescoping lens. Still, Sheldon got closer. Perhaps too close.

Here is a view of the Blue Mountains from U.S. 395, somewhere around the Umatilla National Forest between Long Creek and Pendleton.

Sheldon though he would enjoy it better via parachuting. He was wrong.

Click to see the full size image.

Sheldon hams it up with a fossil.

Get it? “Ham”? I slay me. Or should.

Anyhoo, this continues Sheldon’s journey with me and my family through Oregon, Washington and Montana. Stay tuned. There shall be more.

Sheldon on the John Day River as it runs parallel to US-26.

Sheldon decided to tag along with me and my family as we make our way through central Oregon, southeaster Washington, Idaho, and western Montana on our way to Great Falls. We will place him back in the whale’s belly on May 12. Meanwhile, I will post periodically pics of him enjoying the scenery on our trip.

Thanks for your patience!

I thought I’d give the whale the name of a great rescuer, and it’s hard to find one better than Tuvia Bielski.

Okay, Harriet Tubman, Oskar Schindler, Sojourner Truth … Moses … to name a few.

But a) Tuvia is a great name, b) sharks : Nazis, and c) what a story that guy (and his brother, Zus) had! So good, they made a movie about their leadership of the Jewish resistance in the Belarussian forests; Tuvia himself was played by none other than Daniel Craig.

Amazingly, WikiAnswers has the answers for those wondering, Can you survive in a whale’s stomach? And the BBC offers advice, too.

Who knew this was such a problem? Legend holds that one James Bartlely, a “Modern Jonah” survived a couple days inside a sperm whale. For the duly skeptical, there is always The Straight Dope analysis. For the most part, sperm whales prefer squid over people.

Alas, there is no mention of how a sperm whale can be wired for electricity. The idea for the various contents in our whale’s tummy (his name is Tuvia, btw; they’ll make formal greetings next week) comes from the books on marine life I read to my son at bedtime. They invariably mention strange things that marine biologists and fishermen have found in the stomachs of sharks and whales. I think my favorite is a shark with a shark in its tummy that also had a shark in its tummy, like some grotesque set of nesting dolls.