fun fact: if there is a ‘no dogs on the beach’ sign, please respect it, because the beach is probably a nesting site for plovers, terns, or other marine birds. their little babies are the size and shape of dandelions and your dog might eat or chase and terrify them and you wouldn’t even notice
@howdyboyhowdy,@stark-reading-mad, and anyone else who might be wondering what’s going on with these images - these all depict what’s known as “the pelican in her piety” or “a pelican vulning” (from the Latin vulno - “to wound”).
The belief at the time was that, if pelican mothers had no other food available to them, that they would pierce their own breast and allow their young to feed on their blood for sustenance. It most likely came about from misunderstanding about why the pelican may press its bill to its chest (to help emptying the pouch), and combined with the fact that at least one variety of pelican has a blood red pouch early on in the breeding season, the idea of the pelican piercing its own chest to nourish its children was born.
There’s an older version of the myth whereby the pelican mother who accidentally killed her own chicks from being too rough with them can resurrect them with her blood.
In Christian lore, it’s seen as a symbol of self-sacrifice, the image of the caring and self-sacrificing parent, and also a symbol of the Eucharist. It’s also used in the Society for Creative Anachronism [SCA] as the symbol of the Order of the Pelican, one of the few Society-wide titles reserved for people who have provided consistent, exemplary service to the Society, usually for at least 10 years.
your bulldog isn’t being quirky it’s actively trying not to die every 10 seconds
If you have a flat faced dog that is constantly trying to rest its head up or even sleep sitting up please have their airways assessed, they aren’t doing this to be cute and there’s procedures to give the airways more space and hopefully improve breathing. If you heard a German Shepherd snorting you would rush it to the vet, but a snorting pug is deemed normal despite being made of the exact same parts.
It’s depressing that so many “cute” behaviours of brachycephalics are done because they’re physically incapable of doing many normal dog things. proponents of the breed will cry about destroying the breed’s character if you outcross, when a lot of that “character” is just the dogs tying to cope with their bodies.
I often think about this quote from Dr. Skipper in the recent book on brachycephalic health:
“If ‘cuteness “in distress” is the “most affecting” cuteness, then meme-type images of brachy dogs struggling with dyspnea are popular not because their audience does not understand that the animals shown are distressed but actually because, unconsciously, they do. And if the appeal of cute dogs has such unsettling elements, then there is even more to overcome than the powerful effect of social media. The ‘cuteness’ aesthetic potentially elicits not just the obvious responses of affection and protectiveness, but also the darker ones of its, control and power; perhaps, one commentator even suggests, cuteness “almost always involves an act of sadism (Harris, 2000, Ngai, 2012).
you hear about recovery not being linear (”there are ups and downs”), but actually it’s more like a game of wack-a-mole. this is not a bad thing
to extend the metaphor: when you’re at the beginning of your recover (less kindly known as rock bottom), you have a garden full of moles. you have a mole popping up every 5 seconds, and maybe it’s the same hyperactive mole, maybe it’s a bunch of moles taking turns, but whether they all look the same, you have a garden full of the fuzzy bastards.
so you pick up a mallet and start hitting. maybe you’re bad at using the mallet, maybe you get better over time, but after a while you get tired, bc you’ve been at it for ages and a mole is still popping up every 5, 10 seconds. what you don’t realize is, you’ve actually nerfed a lot of the moles. it’s just now there’s more space for the other ones to come to the surface and start making noise. but if you keep. swinging. the mallet. eventually they’re gonna slow down.
My recovery began when I started treating my depression & moved away from an abusive environment. It took a long time for me to realize I was recovering, bc as soon as one thing improved, another popped up. As my depression improved, I became more alert and active–and discovered that my brain fog & self-isolation had inadvertently been covering up my sensory issues. I had enough energy to start school again–and bc I wasn’t sleeping & lounging all day, I was suddenly aware of my concentration issues. One mole bites the dust, another pops up.
but the secret is: there are a finite number of moles in the universe.
4 years I’ve been wacking away at these fuckers with a mallet. I’ve taken turns wacking depression and its cronies suicidal ideation & self-harm, followed in succession by previous dormant crap related to anxiety, adhd, spd, c-ptsd, and other acronyms. And behold: progress. (Atm i’ve finally convinced the furry piece of shit called Executive Dysfunction to come out of the ground, which is exciting bc wrangling this bastard means finally getting to work on longterm personal projects again.) Moles still pop up from time to time, but my life has a lot more space for me in it
the moral of this story is: if u hit a mole over the head for long and hard enough eventually it learns to mind its own beeswax. KEEP WACKING
KEEP WHACKING
Very encouraging and a good way to envision it and understand why things are particularly messy in the beginnings of recovery.
I’ve been reading the Cambridge translation of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiesfor comparison purposes and it’s providing some great quotes about birds.
General Wisdom
“No one can discover how many kinds of birds there are.”
On Owls
“This bird is not found on the island of Crete, and if it should come there from somewhere else, it immediately dies.”
“a wild bird, loaded with feathers, but always constrained by heavy sluggishness; it is active among tombs day and night, and always lingers in caves […] when it has been seen in a city, they say that it signifies desolation.”
A Problem Specific to Roosters, I Guess
“The rooster’s limbs, some people say, are consumed if they are mixed with molten gold.”
The Bravest Bird
“The hawk (accipiter) is a bird armed more with spirit than with talons.”
How Woodpeckers can Ruin a Construction Project
“People say this bird has a certain supernatural quality because of this sign: a nail, or anything else, pounded into whatever tree the woodpecker has nested in, cannot stay there long, but immediately falls out.”
Cursed Hoopoe Life Hacks
“Anyone who anoints himself with the blood of this bird and then goes to sleep will see demons suffocating him.”
& Key Issues in Theology
“It is a great sin to believe that God would entrust his counsels to crows.”
