Watching my toddler figure out how to language is fascinating. Yesterday we were stumped when he kept insisting there was a “Lego winner” behind his bookshelf – it turned out to be a little Lego trophy cup. Not knowing the word for “trophy”, he’d extrapolated a word for “thing you can win”. And then, just now, he held up his empty milk container and said, “Mummy? It’s not rubbish. It’s allowed to be a bottle.” – meaning, effectively, “I want this. Don’t throw it away.” But to an adult ear, there’s something quite lovely about “it’s allowed to be a bottle,” as if we’re acknowledging that the object is entitled to keep its title even in the absence of the original function.
Another good post to read for those writing small human characters.
My son was about three when he came to me in the middle of the day and said, “Mommy, there’s a knight behind the bush.” I thought he meant a toy knight or something. So I follow him outside and he goes, “Listen. Do you hear it? It’s night behind the bush.” It was a cricket. A cricket was standing in the little patch of shade under the bush, chirping. So, my son saw this dark area with accompanying nighttime sounds and decided, okay, well, that is a night right there. Their brains are incredible.
My little bean knows she’s two, constantly saying proudly ‘I’m two!’ And the other day she saw this very frail old lady who looked one foot in the grave, pulled a face and said ‘oh shiiiit. She’s three.’ I almost screamed.
people who complain about dinosaurs “not being scary anymore” because its been discovered they have feathers and are closely related to/ancestors of birds are so bizarre like
its not about how scary they are, they are/were real life animals and what matters is learning more about them, not how well they fit into your science fiction horror film lol
can you imagine a 13 foot chicken running at you with full intent to eat you??? thats fucking terrifying holy shit
peacocks are synonymous with vain, frivolous beauty and they will attack cars. they will attack you while you try to get to your car. they’re like six feet of useless feathers and they will destroy you. imagine if they were carnivorous and had functional spurs.
a t-rex could look like a gay disco ball and i guarantee that you would fucking book it if it had a problem with you
listen
listen
have you ever met a swan
if anything the birdier they get the scarier they are
Australia literally fought a war against giant birds AND FUCKING LOST
“Oh man, I can’t deal with birds ‘cause they’re dinosaurs and sometimes it’s like they get this glint in their eyes and they remember.”
“Have you ever interacted with a goose? ‘Cause those things are dicks.”
If chickens were still the size of a T-Rex we’d all be dead. No question.
Feathered creatures that give some serious lie to the idea that feathered dinosaurs ain’t scary:
This is a bearded vulture, or lammergeier. It’s four feet long and has a nine foot wingspan and it eats bones.
This is a shoebill stork. It dropped the duck without biting down shortly after the picture was taken, but if it had decided not to-
… it could have been the end of the road for that duck.
This is the last thing a fish sees before a macaroni penguin eats it.
This is a secretary bird in the act of demonstrating to Lord Voldemort that he came to the wrong neighborhood, ese.
This is a goose.
This is a vulture.
This is a cassowary on the attack.
Be glad I couldn’t find the actual gif of a pelican swallowing a fish, because it’s freakin’ Lovecraftian in its HEADS SHOULD NOT BEND THAT WAY factor. You’ll have to settle for the idea of a feathered dinosaur suddenly going GLORP and devouring its victims whole just like this lady here.
Steven Spielberg didn’t create these. These are the feet of an emu.
And this is what happens when a swan (this one is named Asboy; his father was Mr. Asbo, the first swan in the UK to get named after an anti-social behavior order in ‘honor’ of his tendency to attack boaters) decides it doesn’t like you. I should probably note that this one attacked a cow.
Respect the feathered dinosaur, yo.
Terrifying. The last two illustrate why you did not fuck around with the Children of Lir.
I suspected that a dinosaur could have been feathered after I heard that a T-Rex is the chickens’ ancestor.
For those who think dinos aren’t cool because they’re feathered…whatever, mutherfuckers. Evolution doesn’t give two shits what you think is cool or not.
You showed a cassowary on the attack, but forgot to show what exactly it’s attacking with. Their feet are nearly identical to the Emu’s, except for one minor, teeny tiny detail: A five-inch claw for killing motherfuckers, raptor-style.
This is like the “fuck birds master post” and I love it because Honestly, Fuck. Birds.
did I ever mention that I know someone whose family owned a zombie dog because that’s some real shit that I get to delight with at parties
Tell us that story?
okay here is the story of the zombie dog
this dog’s name was John. they found him half drowned in a bag of puppies that were not so fortunate as he was, and was taken in immediately. he was a runt and not quite right (most likely from the whole half drowned thing), but a very loving dog. the problem with John was that he smelled like death, and no one knew why. vets couldn’t figure it out. it was obviously some kind of skin problem, but they had no idea what kind. all anyone knew was that if you touched him, you would smell like death too, so you couldn’t pet him, and that for some reason, the only thing that made the smell go away was being around other dogs. so they got another dog and the death smell stopped and John lived a very happy life
when he was getting old, maybe about 15 years, part of his skull caved in. just like that! suddenly had a huge dent in his head! and he was totally fine. didn’t notice it, didn’t affect him at all. just this massive dent right there in his head where his skull had collapsed in on his brain, and he was still the happiest and most loving dog. the skull cave in, for whatever reason, caused the ear on that side of his head to just fall off entirely, but again, perfectly happy dog who did not know he was down an ear and a fully formed skull. they took him to the vet, thinking maybe they should put him down. I mean, wouldn’t you think so? but the vet said that the dog was eating, and pooping, and happy, so there was no reason to put him down, so they didn’t
but that’s not even the weird part. the weird part is the area of the brain that got caved in on was apparently the area that registers pain, so this one-eared, collapsed skull dog could no longer feel any pain. he got old, his joints got stiff, his teeth rotted out of his head, his tongue hung out of his mouth and got black and hard, and he felt none of it! in fact, he was happier than he’d ever been feeling no pain, and the fact that he didn’t feel how much he was falling apart somehow made him live until he was 23. that’s right, the collapsed skull, one eared, zero teeth, smells like literal death when alone dog lived to be 23years old. they used to joke that he’d been dead for years, but was too stupid to realize it yet
and that’s the story about the literal zombie dog my friend’s family owned
I’n simultaneously delighted, alarmed, a little horrified and impressed all at once.
@ElaheIzadi:’Beauty and the Beast’ to have Disney’s first-ever ‘exclusively gay moment’ @HeatherMatarazz: I thought it was when I popped out the closet in “Princess Diaries 2”
also this
She definitely legalized same-sex marriage in Genovia
You know you grew up on Steve Irwin when you see a photo of a crocodile and think, “Wow. Just beautiful.”
And you see Stingrays as the devil themselves
nah man Steve would have forgiven that stingray and absolved it of its sins
He would have apologized for getting into the stingray’s space and making it afraid.
He actually did! Some of Steve Irwin’s last words were, “it wasn’t his fault. I startled him.”
He actually did forgive the stingray. He knew that he had scared it, and that it was only acting to protect itself.
If you put your ear up to a seashell you can hear the sound of mY HEART BREAKING INTO A THOUSAND LITTLE PIECES
This is why I get so mad whenever my folks have Animal Planet on lately and it’s all about WHAT ANIMALS ARE GOING TO MURDER YOU IN YOUR FACE?
EXOTIC PETS RIP OWNER TO SHREDS!
SNAKES! WILL THEY EAT YOU? (YES)
Steve Irwin (and at the time at least his contemporary follow-behind Jeff Corwin) ushered in such a pure unbridled LOVE of exotic, ferocious, terrifying animals. He respected the animals so much, he loved them.
Yes, crocs would charge and snakes would lunge, but he would respect when the animal deemed its boundaries well crossed and let it go back on its merry reptilian way.
This was the Tone for my childhood. My education of wild animals was Steve Irwin talking about how beautiful this deadly crocodile was, how majestic and chill and peaceful coexistence could be.
It was Jeff Corwin screaming and yelling at people at the discovery of a snake carcass, killed because of ignorant fear of it. It was harmless, and lost, and scared, and decapitated and he was livid. Why? Why would you do that? It was non-venomous, it didn’t want to be where it was any more than you wanted it to be where it was – why didn’t you call someone to release it?
And now it’s just… “Everything is murderous and animals will eat your face and everything is Ruthless Killing Machines”
and just.
I feel like I’m watching my own father’s work be tainted whenever AP is on. It’s so upsetting.
Because education and understanding don’t sell ad time.
Also why so much of Shark Week has become LET’S PISS THIS THING OFF TILL IT TRIES TO BITE US. “GREAT WHITES ARE MINDLESS KILLING MACHINES AND THEY WANT TO EAT YOU PERSONALLY, SUSAN.” is a lot more ‘exciting’ than “These things are gigantic and they feel with their very sharp mouths but they don’t actually mean anything by it they just don’t know what you are (also you taste nasty to them get over yourself.)”
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