I’m suddenly laughing at the idea of a cliche noir detective story written in the brutally concise style of Hemingway.
A woman walked into my office. She had legs. I noticed her legs. “I have a problem. I need your help,” she said. They always said that. I knew her legs weren’t the problem. I hoped she might want my help with them anyhow.
“Can you pay?” I asked. Of course she could. Her shoes were worth more than my rent. She could pay. “I can pay,” she said. Her eyes were wet. I wondered if anything else was wet. Probably not. I am not handsome. Not since the war. She was looking at my scar. Lots of people do. Most look away. Not her. She did not look away. She looked at my scar and I looked at her legs. There were two of them. I liked that about her. I liked that a whole lot. “Will there be danger?” I asked. There always is. This city bleeds danger, then drinks it right back up again.
“I’m afraid there might be danger,” she said. She had the voice of a beautiful woman. She also had the face and body of a beautiful woman. She was beautiful.
The light from the window was striped. It made stripes on my cigarette smoke. The end of my cigarette crumbled into ash. My marriage had also crumbled into ash.
“I can handle danger,” I said. I patted the butt of my gun. My gun was a Colt. My gun and my scar were all that was left from my time as a soldier. My gun, my scar, and the nightmares. I looked her up and down. “I am good at handling things.”
“It’s about my husband. He’s gone missing.”
She was not wearing a ring. It means something when a woman does not wear a wedding ring. Usually, it means that she is not married. “Seems your ring has also gone missing,” I said. I hoped her dress would join it.
Her red mouth curved upwards. She was smiling a little. “I don’t wear it outside. A diamond that large would only invite trouble.”
“In my experience, trouble doesn’t wait for an invitation.” I looked at her legs again. They were both still there. “When did you last see your husband?”
See those feathers? The skeleton they found was so well-preserved that scientists were able to examine the pigment cells in the feathers and compare them to those of modern day birds.
And they were able to do this with such accuracy that they know the coloration of this dinosaur. In life it looked something like this.
It just baffles me that we know the color patterns of an animal that has been dead for 161 million years
They found a prehistoric chicken that wears adidas swear pants my god
slav energies have resonated for millions of years, and this is proof
Photographer Tarek Mawad and animator Friedrich van Schoor just spent six weeks embedded in nature to create Bioluminescent Forest. The filmmakers state that everything you see was created live, without any effects added in post-production.
Sure is nice having a bunch of scrap wood lying around! Gonna make building a new enclosure for the king quail easy, I hope. What they’re currently in is a lot more than the minimum recommended but those lil suckers use EVERY inch of it. I wanna make something really nice for them, so nice they’ll totally forget about the conditions they were kept in before I got them!
Here is their current enclosure for reference:
I’ll update when I’ve made some progress. Hoping to take up that whole wall space. Wish me luck!
Update: found some old rabbit hutches! More than doubled the space 😁
No idea what kind of bug these nymphs turn into but I do know that they made a beautiful display that I was not about to mess with. #arthropods #hemiptera #nymphs #insects #insectsofinstagram #arthropodsanonymous #CostaRica #CentralAmerica #rainforest #jungle #biodiversity #forest #ecology #evolution #bugs #truebugs #insectagram #gang #nature #travel #critters
Again, After Far more time than I feel comfortable listing, Here is my (Mostly) completed Necroficer Class. It’s a crafting Based Necromancer that focuses on creating unique Undead monsters rather than summoning your basic array of skeletons and zombies. I’m sure in it’s current state it still has some balance issues, but that’s what Playtesting is for.
THE JPGs POSTED HERE ARE OUTDATED/INCOMPLETE. Please PM me for the PDF if you are interested in playtesting!
Today the Department of Awesome Camouflage is wondering if there’s any creature more impressive than the Lichen Katydid(Markia hystrix), an insect that looks like it’s actually made out of delicate lichen. It looks more like something out of a fairytale than a real-life insect, but that’s simply because the natural world is so freaking awesome!
Lichen Katydids are native to Central and South America. Wildlife photographer David Weller captured this mesmerizing footage of a Lichen Katydid somewhere in the Cartago Province of Costa Rica carefully making its way across some vegetation that looks like it might’ve grown from its own body :
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 