Preppers and Pets

By: | July 8, 2016

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I’ve recently added a bit to my awkward beginning-of-interview spiel. I do the standard “here’s what my story is about, here’s why I wanted to talk to you” thing. But I also now usually say something like “oh, and if you hear any weird sounds, there are squirrels fighting in my back yard and my dog would really like me to let her out there to go investigate.” It’s not a lie, there has been a squirrel war raging in my yard for the past few weeks (a post for another time) but it also tends to serve as a nice ice breaker. “Oh! What kind of dog?” they often ask. I tell them, I ask if they have any pets, we banter. I hear great dog stories. Rapport is built. Then we actually start the interview. Continue reading →

The Appeal of Crackpot Television

By: | July 7, 2016

lionLast summer, my husband and I began watching what we believed to be one of the worst shows on television. The series, Zoo, is based on a novel by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Here’s the premise: The world’s animal population has turned against humanity. Lions are killing tourists, wolves are murdering prison inmates, even bats are flinging their tiny bodies against planes to bring them crashing down. An intrepid team — a zoologist, a veterinary pathologist, an intelligence analyst, a journalist, and a safari guide — must figure out why all the animals have gone crazy and how to stop them.

On Tuesday night, my husband and I were channel surfing when we stumbled across some familiar faces. “Dear god! It’s that show,” my husband said. “Zoo!” I screeched. “It’s back!” Continue reading →

Milkweed In Summer

By: | July 6, 2016

bare groundBack in April, somebody at the community garden got ambitious.

Weeds usually grow pretty profusely around the edges of the garden. But on one Thursday in April, when I walked by on my way to work, the weeds in the corner I pass every day had been completely turned over, in preparation for vegetables.

I was sad. That was the corner with the milkweed. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | July 2, 2016

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It was everyone’s favorite week of the year here at LWON. Yay, Snark Week! We, the People of LWON, absolutely love to snark about nature’s weirdest, silliest, tallest, most evil, or most benign creatures, and we think we do it pretty well. Read for yourself if you haven’t already:

Start with a guest post from Mitchell Leslie warning us to stop embracing sloths, with their funky fur and disemboweling claws. Seriously, if you encounter one, just turn and walk away at your leisure.

Then, warns LWON’s Sarah G., you better duck and swat or risk a rather intimate interaction with a very affectionate owl. Who knew that’s what the bird namers meant by “horned”?

Continue Snark Week by hating on Chihuahuas with Jenny. Jenny has issues with these non-dogs and their stupid little heads.

Next comes Eric and the ball-attacking monkeys. Long-tailed macaques are little monsters that will steal your pancakes and grab your privates. Oh, and sometimes monkeys kill people. Yikes.

And we ended the week with a warning from Cameron: Don’t get too close to giraffes. You’ll be horrified by all the reasons why.

 

Snark Week: The Tallest Terror

By: | July 1, 2016

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I did not know this when I moved here, but Santa Barbara is the giraffe equivalent of a rabbit nest. In the last four years, five giraffes have been born at the small zoo here. One more is due this summer.

At one point, I thought this was adorable. I rallied my children to the zoo to ooh and ahh over the latest six-foot-tall newborn. But this summer, Betty Lou will receive no baby shower gifts from me, even though she’s been pregnant for nearly 15 months.  Now that I know what I know about giraffes, I will knit no more blue or pink hats for young giraffes, with little holes for the ossicones they’re born with. (They’re one of the few animals that comes out of the womb with horns. Maybe that should have been a clue to their nefarious ways.) Continue reading →

Snark Week: A Lurking Threat That Wants To Eat Your Testicles

By: | June 30, 2016

shutterstock_386883514It was a sunny morning in Ton Sai Beach, Krabi, Thailand, 2003. The birds sang, the Andaman breeze blew its gentle perfumed air through the trees as I sat down to my morning banana pancake. Oblivious to the danger lurking above me. Watching. Waiting.

My girlfriend and I were on a yearlong rock climbing trip and, as I took my first few bites, we discussed our plans that day for climbing the sheer limestone walls lining the peninsula. Without a care in the world. Oh, to be so blissfully naive again.

On my third bite, it struck – moving silently along a nearby power line. With lust and hatred in its beady little eyes, it leapt from the line to the table and dove into the pancakes with those sweet, perfectly grilled banana slices nestled within.

It was the dreaded long-tailed macaque. That’s right. A monkey was stealing my pancakes.

It’s said that how we act in moments of crisis define us. I don’t know if that’s true. Some might call my actions that balmy morning heroic, but I’d like to think I did what any red-blooded, banana-loving tourist would do. I grabbed the butter knife and made several ferocious swings toward the monstrous hell-demon with naught but malice and bloodlust in its tiny heart.

Continue reading →

Snark Week: Get Your F^#*ing Chihuahua Out of My Sight

By: | June 29, 2016

 

shutterstock_282639842Guys, this isn’t easy for me—please know that I’m quite conflicted over what I’m about to write. It goes against a big part of who I am. But judge me as you will. After years of hiding behind a gentle loves-all-animals exterior, it’s time for me to expose this personal inner truth.

I hate Chihuahuas.

There. I wrote it. I put it down on a public page and there’s no taking it back.

I’m a person who chats amicably with the spider living above my shower, who puts worms caught on my trowel back into the soil, who brakes for toads and braves highway traffic to move crossing turtles (even the snapping kind) to safety. If I had the brutal choice to save either a mutt or a man, I’d have to think on it—and I can’t promise that man would make it home for dinner. That’s how much I love the world’s non-human creatures.

Continue reading →

Snark Week: The Great Horny Owl

By: | June 28, 2016

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Owls. Little downy Ewoks. Fat and fusiform with big round eyes, legs feathered like miniature pilot pants in a stiff wind, perhaps a pair of droopy tuft ears. What is more trustworthy than droopy tuft ears? They appear as if they will take your deepest secrets to the grave. Perhaps this is why owls decorate a wide variety of hipster girl paraphernalia.

But beware, because owl tufts are not really ears. And this is where the treachery begins. Instead, owl ears are clandestine, twisted caverns, buried out of sight on either side of the bird’s sinisterly rounded skull. Worse, one is high, and one, low – an asymmetry that allows owls to triangulate on the exact location of sounds. Sounds made by things they will snab with their razor sharp talons and eviscerate with weird, hooked little nose-job beaks. Things like…YOU. Continue reading →