Gracie and Jane

I don't know how many are familiar with the show Talk Stoop.  Apparently it is a full 15 or 30 minute show in New York with interviews of celebrities who happen to pass by the front steps of hostess Cat Greenleaf for a brief chat.  Out here on the West Coast we don't get the show, but we get like a 5 minute (or less) snippet of the show in between programming on the USA network.

My favorite part of the show was always "Gracie Greenleaf," Cat's bulldog, who sat, or usually slept, on the top step...

...occasionally sniffing the guest.  Gracie made the show for me.

I hadn't seen Talk Stoop in awhile but it popped up the other day and...there was no Gracie!  Instead, Cat had a new dog who looked like a terrier -- not nearly a good substitute for Gracie.  Apparently Gracie died back in April.  I looked and looked but can't find either a photo of the new dog or what his/her name is.  However, I did find a web page "In Memory of Gracie," where people can post photos or videos of Gracie.  There are no entries!  But I guess I'll have to get used to the new dog...and maybe eventually learn his/her name.

In the afternoon we went to a movie!  Alert the media!  This is the second movie we have seen this year, the first was Beauty and the Beast when Caroline was here in March.

Several movies came and went that I missed (like Victoria and Abdul, which I really wanted to see.  I'm assuming it will eventually make it to Netflix).  But tonight we actually went to see Jane, the story of Jane Goodall in a theater.

Jane Goodall is one of my heroes and I have followed her story since the National Geographic aired the very first special on her in the early 1960s.  I still remember that before Jane, I was taught that humans were the only intelligent creatures because only humans knew how to use tools.  Jane proved that theory wrong, showing chimpanzees taking twigs and sticking them into ant holes to get ants to eat.  It has since been shown that many animals know how to use tools.

The movie was very special but as much as I enjoyed all the chimpanzees, I was most impressed with a scene where a male and female lion attacked a wildebeest during the great migration.  The female had the wildebeest by the nose and the female had him by the tail, while all the other wildebeest ran by.  Then the whole herd stopped, turned around, came back and started threatening the lions, who dropped their catch and slunk off.  Lemme tell you, the last thing you want is to be threatened by hundreds of angry wildebeest!