Shiloh ✌️ // Seattle // 24 // they/them // genderqueer butch // gay as the day is long // poly! // switch friend code: 1706-4308-6990 // New Horizons Dream Address: 8978-2110-5069 // @dozensofraccoons for photography insta // pass right on by: terfs, “transmedicalists”, “gender critical”, “radfems”, “blue lives matter”, “all lives matter”, or suspicious of the Jewish people
I was going to rewatch 1931 Dracula again tonight and just as I turned it on a BAT started flying around at my window and wouldn’t go away and I’ve never seen a bat at my house before and let me tell you I’ve been so gay touched starved this quarantine I was about ready to risk letting a wild bat in my room if it meant it could possibly be one tall, Sexy vampire
Ah rabies
But what if the bat was from my secret gay vampire admirer
Imagine if people applied the “outdoor cat” logic to dogs too. We’d have a bunch of dogs running outside freely, collecting parasites and diseases, getting hit by cars, harassing/killing any smaller animals and breeding like crazy. And when you told someone that they probably shouldn’t let their dog outside without a leash because it’s not exactly safe, they’d just be like “oh well you know he’s happier that way and all that stuff is just a normal part of a dog’s life lol what can ya do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”.
Honest to God, this is what living in the rural South is like.
Our neighbors have a dog that literally roams the neighborhood. She has been hit by cars twice. She’s been infested with mange. She shits in every yard but her own. The difference is that… like, most people would agree these people are shitty, irresponsible pet owners for allowing their dog to do this. We have leash laws, etc., for dogs, and if it was anywhere but Kentucky where animal welfare laws are shit, law enforcement would probably come make them keep their dog confined to their own property. If she bites someone, they’d sure as fuck be liable. But everyone jumps up in defense if it’s a cat living the exact same life because “oh he’s got freedom, he’s happy, he’s not as ‘domesticated’ as a dog!”
Can I then apply dog logic to cats? Because something I’ve noticed is that cats don’t get socialized… like at all. The whole “Asshole cat” stigma? It’s because said cat was never socialized and desensitized to things!
When I got Holly, I socialized her the same way I would have socialized a puppy. She got to meet a bunch of new people, she got taught how harnesses and leashes work, and she got exposed to a TON of ‘uncomfortable’ situations. Car rides? Exposure. Going with me to Petshmo? Exposure. Being around a large group of people? EXPOSURE!
Wanna know the result? I now have a cat that’s perfectly comfortable going on walks, going on car rides, and actually prefers her leash to being in a carrier! She loves people, and she’s friendly and not shy or defensive even if the person approaching her is a total stranger. She likes going places, even the vets office, because those aren’t terrifying experiences to her anymore because she got used to a lot of the stimuli as a 5 month old kitten (which is how old she was when I adopted her from the shelter). Every person who meets her remarks about how friendly and confident she is. That’s directly a result of how I socialized her as a kitten.
My other two cats weren’t socialized this way and they’re skittish around other people, don’t really like going anywhere other than “home,” and would rather die than be on a leash. They fight going into their carriers (Holly sleeps in hers like it’s a bed), and going to the vet is a terrifying experience for them (I only take them places that I absolutely HAVE to).
Socialize your cats! It’s not as common as socializing dogs, but it’s really important to do, your cats will be way more confident and adaptable.
Moraine (noun) – rocky debris left behind by a glacier
Glaciers are rivers of ice, and like all rivers, they transport sediment and rocky debris. This rocky debris piles up on the margins of glaciers to form moraines. A terminal moraine is left behind at the front of the glacier as the terminus retreats, while lateral moraines form along the sides of glaciers. Can you spot these different types of moraines in this photo of Emmons Glacier? Moraines also provide evidence of where glaciers used to exist. The large steep lateral moraines on the right side of the photo were not created by the current Emmons Glacier but by a much larger ice age glacier. This ancient glacier was 40 miles long and nearly 1,000 feet thick near the location of the present-day White River Campground!
______ NPS Photo of Emmons Glacier from the Emmons Vista Trail at Sunrise, 9/27/17. Description: The lower half of a glacier partly covered in rocky debris and bordered by ridges of debris. A river leaves the terminus of the glacier and winds through a forested valley next to a blue lake. ~kl
Jacint was a people person.
Minotaur.
It couldn’t be helped, he was raised in a tavern, owned by his loving but ever presently busy parents, what else could he grow to love?
Well, besides ale, i suppose.
The tavern was filled everyday with new patrons and old, goblins and giants and orcs, that called the sprawling and odd shaped tavern their Local in the deep Verredain mountains. The tavern was warm, filled with food and flowed with drink and such things only lead to happy customers who will happily regale a tale or two of their own travels to the excitable little calf Jacint. They would sit him on their table or comfortably their lap (or on the floor if the story teller happened to be smaller than the growing boy), and tell him anything and everything.
Some very sweet elephant behaviours I read about in Carl Safina’s Beyond Words:
a young elephant kneeling down in front of their car in a playful way
and throwing zebra bones at the researchers, trying to get them to play
with him
an 8-month-old elephant trying and failing to pick up some grass with her trunk (the author: “it reminds me of someone learning to use
chopsticks”) and whose mother then pulled a sheaf of grass and ate it
while making sure her daughter was watching the demonstration
baby elephants suck their trunk for comfort (as we all know!!) but also
like to swing and whirl it around as they try to figure out what it can
do and how to use it, and sometimes accidentally step on their trunk and
trip over it
“often, babies reach with their trunks into the mouths of family members, taking a bit of what they’re eating”
all the female elephants in a family rushing over to help when someone’s baby trips and falls, while making comforting vocalisations
an enormous adult male elephant walking up to a family group and making an exaggerated display of nonchalance, with his trunk casually draped over his tusk, to show the other elephants that he’s not scary
researchers messing with an elephant family by collecting a bit of urine when the elephant walking at the back of the group stopped to pee, then driving some distance to leave the urine ahead of them. “When they encountered fresh urine from an elephant they knew was behind them, they seemed truly baffled, as though thinking, “Wait a minute—how’d she pass us? She’s back behind us!”
mothers instructing their babies to switch to the other side of their body and walk in their shade when the day is very hot
an elephant child trying to climb all over a bigger male teenager who was lying down for a nap, receiving a kick in response, and running back to its mother in alarm—then the teenager followed and lay down flat beside them as if to apologise and invite the child to climb onto him again
elephant children throwing tantrums when they are being weaned and their mother blocks them from nursing (“He got so upset, pushing her, poking her and tusking her, […] it was like, ‘Ooh, I hate you!”)
researchers followed a family that included a baby who was born disabled, with twisted forelegs that he couldn’t straighten. The entire elephant family (from the adults to the baby’s 8-year-old sister) nurtured him, patiently helping him up every time he fell over, “slowing their pace to his disabilities, continually turning to watch his progress, waiting as he caught up from behind” until (after a few days) the little one managed to straighten his legs and learn to walk normally
a researcher once saw an elephant pluck up some grass and place it in
the mouth of another elephant whose trunk was badly injured. Also adults are sometimes seen carrying sick baby elephants on their tusks
a researcher saw a baby elephant who was wary of going into the water, wrap her trunk around her mother’s tusk as her mother patiently entered the river with her, like a child nervously grabbing her mother’s arm
“little elephants show lots of concentration while working to master
such tasks as picking up sticks. A youngster might twirl and twirl its
trunk around a single blade of grass, finally grasp it, drop it and have
a hard time getting it back, then simply place the grass blade atop its
head”
