At the end of rice harvesting season, the folks of the Kagawa and Niigata Prefectures in Japan hold a straw festival to celebrate the abundance of the harvest. Dried straws cover wooden frames to form larger-than-life sculptures from animals like sharks and gorillas to vessels such as ships and tanks. The family-friendly event invites visitors of all ages to engage, interact, and play on the enormous structures.

Samburu tribesmen stand during the Maralal Camel Derby, Kenya, August 15, 2015. Maralal, a small, arid town about an eight-hour drive north of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, holds an annual camel festival, bringing together members of the Samburu, Turkana and Pokot semi-nomadic cattle-herding tribes. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

“Harry Whittier Frees (1879–1953) was an American photographer who created novelty postcards and children's books based on his photographs of animals. He dressed the animals and posed them in human situations with props, often with captions; these can be seen as progenitors of modern lolcats”. – Wikipedia. Photo: “The nurse”. Photograph shows a puppy holding a kitten, 1914. (Photo by Harry Whittier Frees/Library of Congress)

P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews).

In this January 25, 2013 photo, snake handler Saintilus Resilus holds a snake in front of his lips as he trains the snake to recognize his smell as he prepares for his street performances during the pre-Lenten Carnival season, at his home in Petionville, Haiti. Resilus sees himself as something of a performance artist, showing off with snakes and other animals that Haitians don't see every day, earning tips from impromptu audiences. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo via Matt Dayhoff)

Venezuela's acting President and presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro kisses a painting of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez during a campaign rally in the state of Vargas April 9, 2013. Venezuelans will hold presidential elections on April 14. Maduro promised on Tuesday to hike Venezuela's minimum wage by about 40 percent if he is elected in a weekend vote to replace late socialist leader Chavez. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Isabel Schmalenbach, an environmental scientist with the Helgoland Biological Institute (Biologische Anstalt Helgoland), part of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, holds a one-year old baby European lobster (Homarus gammarus) raised at the institute on August 3, 2013 on Helgoland Island, Germany. Later in the day Schmalenbach and her colleagues released a total of 415 one-year old lobsters into the North Sea as part of an effort to repopulate the lobster population around Helgoland (also called Heligoland). In the 19th century local fishermen caught up to 80,000 lobsters a year in the surrounding waters, combined with the heavy allied bombing of the island during and after World War II, as well as other environmental factors, decimated the lobster population. (Photo by Sean Gallup)

Touching and dramatic portraits and landscape shots have won prizes at Australia's prestigious photography prize. Photo: Winner of the NSW (New South Wales) prize: Peter Solness said: “I wanted to re-imagine the lost waterways, so I got my light-painting tools to work. In this image, water is being released from the top of the historic Centennial Park No. 2 Reservoir, which was built in 1925 and holds 90 megalitres of water. After 89 years of incarceration these waters now run free!”. (Photo by Peter Solness/Head On)

Seven-year-old Mimi Meade winces from the sting as Dr. Richard Mulvaney inoculates her April 26, 1954 in McClean, Va., with the new Salk polio vaccine. Mrs. John Lucas, a registered nurse, holds Mimi's arm steady as she gets one of the first injections of the countrywide test. (Photo by Harvey Georges/AP Photo)