Eli @whataweirdiwoe - Tumblr Blog

On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.

This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.

Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.

great-and-small

Have you commented yet? If not make sure to go make your voice heard

alonesomes

“[after a half-hearted suicide attempt at age 13] When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all? All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don’t know. Further north, I’d guess. The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly. Damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says. Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy. Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do. It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin. And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.”

— Mary Karr, “Cherry” (via lifeinpoetry)

ranger52enroute-deactivated2023

The alphabetized files at my ranger station lead to some interesting mental pictures

yellow-cat

i agree! here u go!

ouroborosblue

Two years ago I had a colony of bald-faced hornets (Dolichovespula maculata) discover the hummingbird feeder in the corner of my deck. I do a big container garden on my deck every summer, with tomatoes and herbs and lots of flowers.

One afternoon in probably July, I’m out in the corner of my deck between a row of enormous tomato plants and some smaller pots full of zinnias and thyme, getting ready to fill this hummingbird feeder. I notice that in addition to the ruby-throated hummingbirds impatiently beeping and occasionally buzzing me from the tree line, there is also… other… buzzing. Which is when a big ol’ bald-faced hornet breezes past my head, makes a hard left, and lands directly on the left lens of my glasses. I freeze, of course. D. maculata are pretty big - about an inch long - and can give multiple painful stings in rapid succession. I don’t want to startle her, especially since she’s already on the defensive. I can see her stinger moving at the end of her abdomen as she wanders off my glasses and onto my forehead and then down my nose. She decides to take off and rush me a few more times, buzzing loudly, and is joined by a sister, who does the same thing.

I was definitely cautious at this point and I would be lying if I said my heart rate wasn’t way up, but I proceeded to very slowly take the feeder off its hook, upend it, remove the bottom cap, and start pouring fresh sugar water into its vessel. Of course, I dribbled a little sugar water onto the deck railing. One of the hornets landed on the deck railing and investigated the puddle and immediately started eating. Then the other one landed and did the same thing. I (still very slowly) put the feeder back together and hung it back up, and picked up the now-empty measuring cup to go back inside. The hornets decided to yell at (buzz) me again as I departed, but I got the feeling it was kind of a formality. They didn’t chase me.

The next day when I went out to harvest tomatoes, there were hornets all over the hummingbird feeder and waiting on the railing to either side of it, taking turns with the hummingbirds (and also chasing them - if you’ve never seen an aerial dogfight between a territorial hummingbird and a hornet nearly half its size, let me tell you, it is as exciting and comical as you might expect). Several of these hornets decided to rush at me, trying to drive me away from their food source. I didn’t retreat, but I did freeze and let them land on me and explore, again. This time they mostly landed on my clothes and my arms. As with the previous day, nobody stung me, because I was respectful and calm. Once they took off, I carefully went about my business harvesting, making sure I didn’t bump into anybody in the tomato plants accidentally.

During the height of the summer I was filling that hummingbird feeder every 48 hours and harvesting tomatoes at roughly the same interval. Those hornets got to know me. I’m not sure what they thought I was, beyond BIG and MOVES FUNNY and BRINGS FOOD, but they stopped feinting at me after a while and would just hang out, hovering nearby or landing on my clothes (or my glasses) while I did my thing. Their yelling buzz changed to a sort of … conversational buzz? Sort of stutter-stop, instead of one long, loud drone. They got used to me, and I got used to them. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that I would always leave a few teaspoons of sugar water on the railing when I filled the feeder so they could snack.

One day as I was harvesting tomatoes, one of them wandered into my pocket where I was stashing the harvest (cherry tomatoes are usually all I grow) and was buzzing conversationally in there. It reminded me of my cat helping me make the bed and making little purr-trills when I cover him with the blankets. I didn’t want to trap or hurt it, so I stopped moving around. After a minute or two, it wandered back out of my pocket, climbed up my shirt, and flew off.

I looked them up after that and discovered that D. maculata can recognize human faces. They will remember people who have fucked with them, and they have been observed to fly past people they see as harmless in order to attack someone they recognize as having fucked with them in the past.

This little colony recognized me as at least a food source, if not a friend, and despite my being in their territory every 24 hours for about 2 months, I was never stung. More than that, they would come out and greet me even if it wasn’t a sugar water day. The most I had sitting on me at once was four, but I usually had at least one sitting on me or tooling around my head or hands at any given time. They seemed interested in what I was doing. It was pretty neat.

The colony was either destroyed or moved on, so I didn’t have any this past summer. Hopefully I’ll get some more next year, because they were fun to have around. Little spicy air kittens.

pastperfectcontinuous

Julia Alvarez, “Gaining My Self Back”

i think we have to hope that things will change

even if we know nothing really does

i think we have to believe we can be better

otherwise why would we try

even though we fail

even though we are held back

even though nothing and no-one and nowhere will ever be perfect

we have to hope and believe and try

because maybe imagining hard enough that things are gonna be better

will make things better

#happy new year #writing #poetry

litcrarum

Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

sitting-on-me-bum

Servion, Switzerland

The first ever recorded albino Galápagos tortoise makes its public debut at a Swiss zoo following its hatching last month

Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Images

natureisthegreatestartist

ikemoths

A very famous moth, the African death's head hawkmoth :) Named after the skull shape on their back, though honestly i dont care about the skull, i care about the fact that they can SQUEEK!!!