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True Love and Tarantulas (Part II)

Friday, November 25, 2011

This is a continuation from True Love and Tarantulas (Part 1)

A friend of mine, Michelle, from the glass studio had a problem. She was scared of spiders. Luckily for me I had, apparently, already earned a reputation as some kind of fearless-warrior-arthropod-whisperer and she asked if I could help her with an assignment that was based on facing her fears. We needed to find a tarantula. Seeing as I hadn’t too many contacts with tarantulas available I tried my best to find one but ultimately failed. We eventually had to go and get one at a pet store (not the best solution ever, I admit, but without this I wouldn’t be the lover of them that I am now) and picked up a 4-5″ Grammostola rosea that I promptly named wobbles. The guy working there was terrified of the tarantula and while guiding it into a small container with the lid he closed it on Wobbles’ foot. This was upsetting. The worker didn’t notice. We took action.
“DUDE.”
“Huh?”
“LOOK!” (Insert emphatic pointing here)
“Huh?”
“RIGHT THERE.” We pointedly pointed out.
“wot?”
“YOU CLOSED IT ON HER FOOT!”
“Oh… Youuuu want me to fix that?”
“…..”
“…”
“YES!!!” (There were actually that many exclamation points when it happened. I swear.)

We got the spider and picked up everthing else we needed to take care of a tarantula. I wish now that we complained about that guy’s behavior. It wasn’t appropriate but I didn’t feel certain enough of everything to be comfortable calling him out on it. If it happened to me now, I would.
Once we got back to the car and prepared to head back to the studio I turned to Michelle:
“Iiinnnnn the interest of full disclosure I’ve neveractuallydonethisbefore.”
“WHAT?!” She slammed on the brakes. (I assume this was for dramatic effect because the car hadn’t been turned on yet.)
“Well, in my defense, I didn’t ever say that I had specific tarantula experience, and I’m determined to do it.”
“Oh god, oh god. You have no idea what you’re doing!”
“I’ve read a lot about it! There’s a certain point where you just have to do something and I think this is it. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take responsibility for anything and will make sure you don’t get hurt.” I felt fairly confident about this. As long as I am presented with a situation I can usually do whatever needs to be done to accomplish it.
“It’s not ME that I’m worried about being injured…”

We did the video shoot. Getting over a phobia is challenging and there may have been tears (not mine). But at the end of the day Michelle held a tarantula and our friend Charlie did a great job with filming. Everything went reasonably well. We all learned a good lesson about urticating hairs and when to stop poking a tarantula.
In a slightly joking manner as we were cleaning up and figuring out what to do with Wobbles I asked Charlie if he wanted a pet spider. He surprised me with his answer.

Wobbles still lives with Charlie and is rather cranky, but I fully intend to handle her more now that I have a better understanding of tarantulas.

When Charlie was on tour I got to be the official caretaker of Wobbles. She completely charmed me (and my mother!) and I had a feeling that I might want one down the line.

Continued in Part III

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True love and Tarantulas.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

As it seems to have happened, I apparently have grown rather affectionate about tarantulas.
It started with me not being afraid of spiders anymore. This happened around a year ago. I had always been scared of them because I thought they wanted to bite me. As it turns out, I was being a moron. As I became more and more educated about critters I realized that I was accepting of/speaking out for venomous snakes and still afraid of spiders. I would explain that snakes don’t want to use their venom on you. It’s a waste for them. They don’t get much out of it and venom production is energetically expensive. Therefore the snakes do everything they can to try and not have to bite you. Some are, of course, touchier and more defensive than others, but they still aren’t ‘out to get you’.
And then I read Dr. Richard Bradley’s Common Spiders of Ohio Field Guide that is given out for free by ODNR. You can find all the free Ohio guides and they are extremely well-put-together booklets. I read over it and realized that I had been being, for lack of a better term, a totally hypocrite. If there were a guide to a wild hypocrite my picture would be under there. And it would be a very unflattering picture, too. Spiders are just like venomous snakes! They don’t want to bite you! This realization hit me like a brick and somehow that was enough to jostle me out of a lifelong phobia. I started looking at jumping spiders. I realized how intelligent they are and how they watch you carefully because they’re such visual hunters. I watched them plan attacks and catch prey. I finally prepared myself to hold one and put my hand close enough that it could investigate me. It was quite endearing how it walked around and examined my finger and then jumped onOFF and shifted perspectives and then onOFF and shifted perspectives and then onFASTJUMPFORWARD-OMG-FLEE-OFF. It was fascinating to watch how it tested this new surface and exhibited actual curiosity about it. The cutest part was how it dropped a little safety-line every time it jumped on me. I hadn’t seen it doing it until I moved my head too close when it had just leaped onto me and it made an instant panicked jump off the side of my finger and the arm of the porch swing where this interaction had been taking place.

“IT’S A TRAP!!!!” it said as it plummeted downward.

I was alarmed until I saw it stop in mid-air with a sort of plink* motion. I watched as it paused for a moment, suspended above the ground, as if waiting for me to pursue it in my vicious mammalian manner. I held my breath (carbon dioxide is something that comes from large mammal/predator mouths and I didn’t want him to think I was one of those) and waited. The little Salticid looked back up at me and, apparently convinced that it was a false alarm, skittered back up the string to the unknown territory that was my finger.
I fell a little bit in love with jumping spiders that day.
And fell even more in love the next day.
And the next spider.
Until I met my first tarantula.
(TO BE CONTINUED)

* I wouldn’t ask me what a plink motion is, exactly, because I don’t know how else to explain it. If it were to make a sound it would have been plink. Plink, for the uninitiated, clearly is the sound it makes when you pluck a thread that has been pulled taught. Plink plink plink.

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As far as I know, I have not died.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

I am away.

I am staying on an island in Lake Erie.

I spent a day fleeing violent projectile cormorant puke on an abandoned island.

Best. Day. Ever.

I collected so many things! There’s a particularly rank dead baby Great Blue Heron sitting outside by a tree in a tray of alcohol. I keep hoping that it will magically take care of itself, but this wish has not been fulfilled.

I have field journals to do.

(Continued)

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KEEP CALM and CARRION

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Oh yeah. That’s totally the vulture from my shoulder. I freaking love vultures.

No. I REALLY love vultures.

This actually took way too much effort. I worked VERY hard to have the accurate font from the original poster. I recognize that I'm the only one who can possibly notice, but it matters. I couldn't stand seeing how wrong the C and M looked on the similar fonts.

 

How cool is that

I was going to show you this gorgeous postcard from sueshane.com that I have, but sadly she only allows the worlds tiniest previews on her site and I’m too lazy to take it out of its frame and scan it. (Someone should tell her that she’s more likely to sell cards if people can actually see them…)

 

So… Turkey Vultures are awesome. They lack something called a syrinx so they only make endearing grunting and hissing sounds. They hunt by SMELL! This is awesome, by the way, because very few birds do this.

I feel like Turkey Vultures are really easy to think of as modern dinosaurs with that cherry naked head.

They pee on their legs to kill the bacteria from the carrion.

 

“Move away, primate, for my uncle is a Deinonychus.”

EDIT: So that picture above I apparently forgot to link to its original source. That’s what I get for not directly linking from it and using up their bandwidth. I feel rather bad about that. It’s from Samuel Blanc at http://www.sblanc.com and the site is worth taking a look at as this is, obviously, a nice image. Ooops.
 

 

KAY. THX WIKIPEDIA

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shorecollections.com

Saturday, April 23, 2011

shorecollections.com.

 

A day at the beach

 

I never know how to feel when I come across things like this. I appreciate that he is doing something to get the word out and actively cleaning up the beach… but the beauty in the color saturation is somewhat nauseating. The idea that pretty things can come out of this bothers me. I don’t want people to feel like this is being solved, because it isn’t.

 

 

 

 

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Chemistry… buffered solutions and pa- HOLYTREEWALRUS… A LABEL MAKER!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

I FOUND A LABEL-MAKER.

This is not good. I’ve labeled everything… including the label maker (“BEST TOY EVER!!“)

Water bottle with a silly label saying that it is quite unlikely that this is (a) gnu

This pun doesn't deserve to live.

My water bottle, instead of a logo, now says “I’m a noun!”

It is also quite beat up, and says that “It is quite unlikely that this is (a) gnu.”
…My iPhone says “Fuck you, it’s magic.”

My laptop now loudly declares that “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.”

M…MU…MUST LABEL MORE THINGS IN AN IRREVERENT MANNER.

STOP ME NOW LEST I BEGIN MAKING ASSEMBLAGE ART. ASSEMBLAGE ART I SAY.

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Have a Very Vampire Valentines Day

Monday, February 14, 2011

This is just one of my ongoing Annoying Artist Alliteration: Holidays series.

And remember to always wear a bite guard!

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Why I don’t understand Uromastyx & why Sara shouldn’t be allowed near paper-shredders.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

My lizard is a primitive thing. Not particularly intelligent, and not something to which one can prescribe human emotion.

But I swear…. I swear that he gets bored. I know that to perceive ennui coming from a lizard is anthropomorphizing him, but…

He has been a lump for the past week. A complete and utter lizard-lump sitting in the corner of his cage and glaring out at the world. His coloration has been dull, and he has been notably unresponsive to me annoying him. I figured he was too cold. I went through my yearly winter-prep and insulated his cage.

Next day that I see him he is still in the exact same spot, all lump-like and glarity.

I open up his cage and start cleaning as I check his body temp with my tempgun. His body temp is completely okay.

I leave the cage open and clean up a bit, eventually spreading out some fresh paper towels (which is his substrate until I figure out something significantly better that supports digging but doesn’t have dangers of impaction associated with it). I get an idea while I’m doing this to physically insulate his hides using torn-up paper towels (unbleached, of course). I start to do that. He sits up and stares at me. I keep doing that. He tongueflicks, decides that I am a pest, and creeps in to his hide.

My idea keeps growing. I realize that I can use torn up paper towels not only to add insulation, but to potentially give him a digging substrate if the paper towels are somewhat compressed in an area (fill a hide with them and enable him to dig out his own hide).

I go downstairs and start to prepare things, coming across the paper shredder while I do so. A light bulb appears above my head. I grab the bulb and put it in as an extra light in LittleFoot’s (the uromastyx) cage and it solves everything.

Okay, I lied. No lightbulb appeared. But I did get an idea to use the paper shredder to tear up the paper towels for me so that I don’t have to do it by hand. I silently congratulate myself for my genius.

I find a plug, turn on the shredder, put a new bag in the bottom, and start to feed the paper towels in. The paper towels do not agree with this plan and do everything in their power to prevent me from succeeding. I go and get some unbleached postal paper that I have in my studio and start to use that in conjunction with the paper towels to help feed them in. I get one sheet in and wait for the shredder’s motor to stop before I prepare the next couple sheets.

And wait…

Shredder: “VrrrrreeeeVrrreeeeVrrreee“

And wait some more…

Shredder: “VrrreeeeVeeeeVVEEEEEVEEEEEVEEEE”

Sara: “ohfuck“

The shredder begins making that unpleasant empty-shredder-that-is-not-stopping sound.

Shredder: “vEEEEEEEvEEEEEEEvEEEEEEE“

The shredder, noting that I am apparently not getting the point, starts putting out little plumes of smoke.

I turn off the shredder, but am still slightly convinced that if I keep going, I can get all the paper towels done and it will resolve itself. If it doesn’t then I can tend to the problem with The-Shredder-That-Wouldn’t-Stop after I finish my job.

This does not exactly go as planned. I make it through all the postal paper and the shredder problem still isn’t resolving itself.

Shredder: “vEEEEEEEEvEEEEEEE(click)vEEEEEEEE(click)”

I manually shut it off again, unplug it, and begin to inspect what is wrong. Upon turning the shredder over I see something that is best described as cloud vomit.

Needless to say, one should not try and shred paper towels. I spend the next hour cleaning out the shredder before mom notices what I’ve done.

Finally, shredder cleaned up and lots of brown postal paper hacked to oblivion, I return upstairs triumphant to tend to the decoration of the cage and find Littlefoot back in his Corner of Resentment.

I begin spreading the substrate around the cage, filling hides with it and cutting up extra paper-towels. Littlefoot sits up and watches me closely. I keep spreading stuff around and observe as Littlefoot (who is not at all interested in the food that I’ve given him) creeps closer and closer to the new things in his cage.

Eventually I finish, close everything up, and watch as Littlefoot dons his bright black and yellow colors that he has been developing over the past year and starts out on a mission to lick everything in the cage. Everything. Ev-er-y-thing. He’s been at it this whole time I’ve been typing. The dull lump of the lizard is gone and has been replaced with a vibrant little monster exploring every inch of his cage.

I’ve seen this happen a few times, and scientifically I know that it can’t possibly be the case… but I am starting to become more and more convinced that he gets bored. If his surroundings are stagnant for too long, he just becomes a lizard lump until something changes. Each time this has happened, I’ve come in and dramatically changed something (small shifts apparently don’t count as being interesting enough to warrant a behavior change) and he immediately returns to his normal self.

I’m not going to pretend to understand…

Filed in Bad writing, bad!, Creature Compendium, New Zoo, Reptiles, You Don't Care | | Comments (2)

Plastic from Plants: Is It an Environmental Boon or Bane?: Scientific American

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

It takes 77 million years to make fossil fuels and 45 minutes to use it as a coffee cup.

via Plastic from Plants: Is It an Environmental Boon or Bane?: Scientific American.

This new bioplastic stuff is ONLY reducing fossil fuel use as plastic. It is notable that it is not safer when it ends up in the ocean, not more compressable when it ends up in a landfill, and is directly removing food and supporting destruction of Brazilian rain-forest. It’s not exactly worse than current PETE plastics, but it sure isn’t better.

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No one ever suspects right angles of being sneaky…

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Firstly, do not walk around on your tippy toes with a hunched back. This is a dead give­away that some­one is being sneaky. Walk with your back straight like a light­house and your feet flat like the ocean. No one ever sus­pects right angles of being sneaky. Also, don’t smile while you’re sneak­ing. Smil­ing is for peo­ple who have some­thing to hide. And for happy peo­ple. But mostly for those hid­ing something.

via Andrew McDonald » Blog Archive » On Sneakiness: Reclaiming the art of being sneaky for good, not evil.

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