The Urban Pantheist

I tend to wear hiking sandals in warm months and hiking boots in cold months (with a few weeks of wearing snow boots when the weather is truly insufferable). Suppose I wanted to look nice but wanted to wear shoes that would allow for an off-road excursion if one was necessary. What kind of shoes should I wear?

I can't see the number of this snapshot without thinking of the Cambridge coffeehouse of the same name.
That out of the way, is this snapshot spooky enough to add to our collection of zoo horror movie stills? I kind of think it's not--that guy sweeping doesn't seem like he's going to kill or get killed. It looks like a statement about the dignified loneliness of sweeping a floor. I dunno, what do you think?



And what to make of a greater angle-winged katydid with a damaged wing, found deep in a basement zookeeper's lounge in the Tropical Forest exhibit?

Hey everyone! Since I've used up my LJ scrapbook storage, and lost my photo manipulating software, I have less control over the size of my photos. I could make an effort to ensmallen them somehow, if it's annoying to see giant pictures on your friends' page. I'm not even sure if they aren't so big that they throw off the dimensions of the page for you.

What say you? Big pictures okay, or should I find a way to squink them down a little?

Or since we're only on the one island is it a lesser antille?


One of the neighboring houses has the worst/best driveway I've ever seen.

( Read more... )

Landscape with melted snowman.

( Let the festivities begin! )

Well the good news is that the Species of Least Concern website is up! The bad news is that the reason we created it--to be able to submit the podcast to iTunes--is moot, since the hosting company will not make it possible. I don't understand the technical jargon, but it boils down to me needing to give somebody more money for something I though I already paid for. I'm fine with the podcast eating up more of my time and energy, but I draw the line at it eating up my money (except that I'm on the verge of buying a microphone). If anyone knows a free and easy workaround to get my podcast up on iTunes I'd be grateful.

Depending on how you measure the seasons, it is the beginning of Summer or the end of Spring. Here in the Boston area it means an explosion of living things into people's lives. All winter long people who are afraid of or vexed by insects and spiders and slimy things can rest easy, but now there are things flying, crawling, and oozing into prominence.

A coworker brought me a red beetle in a ziplock bag. "I found this on our lily plants. What is it and why does it scream?" I answered: it's a lily leaf beetle, and you are imagining the screaming. I assume that she's imagining the screaming, anyway. Alexis has been picking tons of these things off the tiger lilies and hasn't heard any screaming yet. I'll pay close attention when I find them. Interestingly (to me) they've only been in the US since 1992, and they were first found in Massachusetts. So far the best way I know to control them is to pick them off the plants (and drop them into soapy water or some other household doom). Their eggs are red things attached to the underside of the lily leaves, and the larvae are disguised by their own droppings as misshapen clumps of bug poo.

A friend on facebook posted a picture of some spiky yellow growth swarming over a plant (and tagged it with my name, forever on my timeline). I told him it was early stage Fuligo septica, or dog vomit slime mold. He was familiar with the species, but hadn't seen it in that stage before. I've seen it once or twice before crawling on a live plant, rather than along dead wood, and it does seem strange.

Also on facebook this week: a giant leopard moth, an ectobius cockroach (a European native that lives outdoors but occasionally gets inside and scares the crap out of people who think they have an infestation) and a badly mutilated luna moth. I am honored to be the person that people come to with creature questions.

Via twitter a friend described "a cross between a silverfish and a pillbug." I struggled with this until the friend, a graphic designer by trade, sent this very accurate rendering of a common striped (or "fast") woodlouse.

Now my question to you is: if I made this kind of content available in podcast form, would you bother to listen to it?

I grew up in the Desert, in Fort Collins, Colorado. We only get 10 inches of rain per year and there's no bodies of water near our house. There's a wetland about five miles away.

Every year we'd set up a kiddie pool and every year within a couple of days there'd be a water boatman or three in the pool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_water_bug They are neat but they inflict painful bites.

Have you gotten any? Do you know how they travel from one body of water to another? I've always wondered if they hitchhike on ducks or something.


The short, forehead-slapping answer is: they fly.

I was wondering about this when I was a boy--water bugs would mysteriously end up in my neighbor's swimming pool--so I caught one, chucked it out of the water where it flopped for a few moments then buzzed off. By the way, if you look closely at the tree on your wikipedia link, you'll see that water boatmen are family Corixidae, they are harmless eaters of detritus and whatnot; backswimmers are family Notonectidae, and they are the bastards that can jab your hand with their rostrum. I wasn't really sure of the difference until I looked it up just now.

I asked Twitter and Facebook and got nothin.' I don't know why I didn't ask you guys first, here's where the brains is.

My dad and I have an 8 hour layover in Chicago. WE ARE NOT CHECKING OUR BAGS so we'll be carrying some luggage around. What might our options be for a quick trip into the city? There are no public lockers any more, certainly not in airports, and probably not even in bus stations. Any bright ideas? Have you done such a thing, and if so, how did you pull it off?

Thanks!

Freshly mopped hallway, horse anatomy poster.

Apropos of not this photo, I have an idea and the desire to make some art. I'm picturing full sized human/animal/fungus figures made out of an imaginary material that works like clay but sets without firing, like concrete. I will encourage moss and other life forms to grow on these sculptures. Any ideas what material comes close to the medium I'm imagining?