#Locality Migration

[respect-the-locals]

🐠 Daily Fish Fact: 🐠

Larval Flounder are born with one eye on each side of their head, but as they grow from the larval to juvenile stage through metamorphosis, one eye migrates to the other side of the body. As a result, both eyes are then on the side which faces up. The side to which the eyes migrate is dependent on the species type. As an adult, a flounder changes its habits and camouflages itself by lying on the bottom of the ocean floor as protection against predators.

[asgardian--angels]

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time and effort to put together the long climate/environment post, especially the online resources. I've wanted to replace the neglected/dead non-native plants at my place with native plants for months, but didn't know where to start my search for species except to walk around my local nature preserve trying to find something that isn't invasive lol. I'll be able to start (re)introducing native plants this month because of you :-)

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad the post has been helpful and inspiring. If you'd like more directed guidance on native plants, I can probably point you in the right direction if you can give me a general area to work with (state would suffice!). In general, go for keystone species- those that are common in your area and support many kinds of insects- or pollinator favorites, or host plants for rare/imperiled butterflies/bees/moths.

[yellow-yarrow]

i fucking hate hungarian politics, who am i supposed to vote for, the centrist liberal party, the other centrist liberal party, or the coalition of the social democrats and center-right party that used to be full of nazis (what a joke)

[andmaybegayer]

also, if you're a regular around here and you want a free cloud based RSS reader and you're fine with zero uptime guarantees and the risk of me being able to see what feeds you read, hit me up for an account on my FreshRSS instance.

[moonshynecybin]

marc is the same height as messi

beautiful anons in my askbox trying to teach me about soccer again

[very-funny-box]

To Migration: why you such a little wawa?

Wouldn't you like to know

[doesnotloveyou]

i love newcomers to this site. they always reblog the oldest posts that i liked back in 2014 so i can unlike them instantly!

[nonamehorse]

[obsidiancreates]

The way Skyrim is literally America and the Stormcloaks are literally the alt-right

[kkoct-ik]

honestly id love to share the whole memoir its very insightful and personal and she was amazing but it would 100% doxx me

[muirneach]

r u guys ready for GAY BOY BRUNCH. in the WOODS. cause thats where i am rn

[sapphia]

honestly, fuck reddit. l ready can’t download pictures from there without making them ugly, their links are impossible to link to without linking through reddit, and now a third of their userbase and subs dropped out or lost quality because of their own shitty decisions. like, yeah i’m still there because without that the only social media i use will be tumblr, and i don’t think that’s healthy for anyone. but honestly if it dies, it deserves it.

[internet-tears]

i fucking love that reddit migration and twitter migration are actually treated like irl phenomena yes i know this might cause an ecosystem imbalance in the long run but idc refugees always welcome i love that despite everything despite weird rich losers collapsing the internet and making it uninhabitable online communities still maintain an aura of make-believe in their own little world that made social media so fun in the first place

[rebelwithoutabroom]

.

[very-funny-box]

Can I pet the scugs? I've decided they need pet

Your wish is my command

[pearls-gone-wild]

Yes, but we also need to talk about the converse, when locals genuinely don't understand how unusual their Normal Things (TM) are.

Specifically, I need to talk about the Crab Crossing.

This is in my dad's hometown, a beautiful little coral island in the Pacific. In Dad's lifetime, the tiny rural fishing village became a tourist trap destination, with funky modernist hotels, daily scooter rentals, and the kind of gastropub where locals work but never pay to eat.

Dad is a local. He left >60 years ago, but every time we visit, I am acutely aware that this is where his sense of Normal was calibrated.

On this visit, we were being driven around the loop by one of his cousins, of which he has an inexhaustible supply, when my husband noticed the sign.

Husband: That sign says “Crab Crossing”! Me: Crab Crossing? Seriously? Husband: That’s what it says. Me: Dad, can we turn around a bit? We saw a “Crab Crossing” sign. Dad: Yes, there are land crabs here. But this is the wrong time of year for crabs in the road. Me: No, Dad, there’s a sign. Dad: There’s a sign? For crab crossing? Me: Yes. Can we take a picture with it? Dad: Sure.

So my auntie turns the car around, and we take some pictures, and I can tell that she's happy to indulge us but is confused about why we care.

Auntie: What did they want to take pictures of? Dad: The “Crab Crossing” sign. Auntie: But this is the wrong time of year. There are no crabs on the road right now. Dad: They wanted to take pictures with the sign. Auntie: The sign? Dad: The “Crab Crossing” sign. Auntie: Of course there’s a sign. That’s where the crabs cross the road, when the water rises. Dad: But they wanted to take a picture with the sign. They found it interesting. Auntie: But there are no crabs right now. What are they interested in? Dad: The “Crab Crossing” sign. They have no land crabs in the United States. Auntie: Huh!

I translate for Husband, and we exchange a look of They have no idea how cool land crabs are!! Meanwhile my auntie is giving Dad a Is this how you raise your children in the United States, to know nothing of land crabs? kind of eyeball, which I hope he didn't notice.

So there are some perks to living in a tourist destination. There are a lot of detractors mostly that you cannot shoot the tourists because you rely on them for your income but you have a semi captive audience with no context for any of the bullshit you spew. You can tell these people anything and they will believe you, the trusted friendly local. Now this is a very much Spider-Man situation where Great Power begets Great Audacity and even worse Responsibility.

My buddy goes on a run and when hes done there is a bar near a creek. So he wades into the creek because the day is hot and the water is cold.

Tourists ask what hes up to, with his running stuff he didn't want wet piled on the shore and him very obviously cooling off in the water. He says he's fishing.

But now here is why I am telling you this story. The universe occasionally aligns in such a way that we get to really really fuck with people and their perception of said universe. The opportunities do not come often and when they come you must seize the day. This is what my buddy did.

So this Creek runs through town and as a result of the highway and neighborhoods and culverts and roads it does not have a great salmon run. It's a short Creek the headwaters are only a few miles from the ocean it never had a great salmon run to begin with. But there are salmon.

One such fish brushes past my buddy's leg. Immediately he knees the fish like he is juggling a soccer ball and pops it out of the water, then slaps it out of the air on to the shore.

This is dumb luck. He could not do this again if he spent years training. Noodling (catching fish with your hands) is a thing that is legal to do with salmon but it is so much harder than literally every other way to catch salmon, including grabbing them with a garbage can. What he just managed is the kind of thing that should make you want to grab the fish and swing it around your head like a stripper with her panties off.

But,

He has an audience.

This is the opportunity offered by the universe.

He plays it cool.

He puts on dead pan straight face on and wades up to shore to grab his fish and nod to the tourists. Someone asks something and he assures them this is the standard way to get a quick dinner here. The tour guide has caught up with his group. He looks at my buddy and his fish and the general lack of fishing accoutrement. Without missing a beat, the guide backs up every ounce of bullshit out of my buddys mouth because if there is one true fraternity it is locals bullshitting stupid tourists.