Colton the fish squeezer🐟🪴📚🏕️🐝

Yellowstone National Park’s first grizzly bear sighting of 2026 - Yellowstone National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

Bear spray season in the Rockies has officially begun. 🦊

www.nps.gov/yell/learn/n...

That was a great article with new information for even the incorrigible fish nerds.

I love that squid only wear crocs on the two longer tentacles, not the arms...but apparently don't walk with them, haha.

A chapstick message written in backwards capital letters on the passenger window of a car that says "LEARN TO PARK".

I had to chapstick vandalize someone's window at the pediatrician yesterday when the only vacant parking spot in the whole lot was occupied by this main character who took two spots. The only thing more embarrassing than having to back out and re-park within the lines is NOT doing it.

7 of the World’s Little-Known Fish Migrations Most readers will know of the epic salmon migrations. But have you head of these other fascinating freshwater fish migrations?

Move over salmon. Here are some lesser-known but no less spectacular fish migrations, including redhorse, sharptooth catfish & Nopili rock-climbing goby.

Plus gar with @solomonrdavid.bsky.social.

Elective war, not elective abortions!

-Republicans

Yeah, this is clearly only a political attempt to paper over the harm of facilitating and participating in global warfare that will not only condone killing more people, but add national debt. Yuck.

Oh, they made a website, that's cool. I didn't want to drive any traffic to the hellsite.

I'm amazed at both your craftsmanship and your ability to find shed scorpion exoskeletons on the detritus, that's incredible. Wait, do they still glow under UV light?

A view of the great snowy mountain Tahoma, with another snowy volcano visible in the distance.

Whenever I fly in or out of SeaTac during daylight hours I always try and get a seat that will afford me a view of the Mountain (also, anybody else remember the account "is The Mountain out?").

Oh man, consistent 100 degree temperatures starting in March this year, that is insane.

Eastern Idaho is lousy with swans from late fall through early spring.

+ a tiny drop of Sriracha

A few pairs of white swans around a central flotilla of more swans. Not pictured: even more swans. Snowy mountains rise in the background.

I found 100 swans for you, I hope you like them. 🪶

Yeah, I'm cool with foisting the irrigation responsibilities onto them (cool Mediterranean climate with abysmally dry summers) and giving them some more shade in exchange for sharing the chestnuts someday (if they live that long).

I have some pure American chestnut trees coming in the mail this spring but my lot is already so full that I'm giving everything the side eye trying to decide where I'm going to plant this little grove, haha. They will probably end up at my parents' house.

Is this in Oregon? I forgot they made it that far north. We only have the bumbling yeti monster pelicans in the Inland NW.

I have never wrapped the trunks, but I have pretty bad sunscald on one of my plums (that I don't really care for) and one of my cherries (that I do really like). So I at least propped a board up on the southwest side of the cherry tree to keep the trunk in the shade hoping it won't freeze overnight.

Yeah late frosts are definitely the most dangerous thing to orchards around here. Our usual last frost is around Mother's Day, but these plants' buds are already swelling and I just...I'm very anxious and I hope we keep seeing a couple overnight frosts per week until at least May.

It's a good show for a metro of only 750k people. We get vendors from Asia and South America in addition to local and regional folks, and the flower display is quite nice. We don't have astronomical numbers/diversity of plants like big shows, but in my experience that quickly becomes oversaturated.

I don't remember subscribing, but that was lovely to read in my RSS this morning.

Your search for the tomatoes of your youth resonates. I can't help but wonder if the very taste buds we used as children are long gone, along with the capacity to have formative experiences in an uncluttered mind.

Yeah, that's pretty much the asymptote I could feel I was approaching. But it is the first real painting I've ever done so it was hard to know that I'd reached that point.

Beautiful! I'm so excited about the show this weekend, although the timing is pretty bad for all my plants, who are mostly not quite blooming yet or just past peak bloom.

It's acrylic.

Thanks for the praise, but I just updated the story a bit so you can see how I cheated, haha.

I think I might have enjoyed it more if they just sent me the acrylic paints and a list of the general areas where each color applied, and I could have sketched & mixed/blended paints on my own. Or even better, I would have loved a colored pencils version! But that is not the model they follow.

Full disclosure: I'm not a gifted painter - I'm actually colorblind. So I sent an orchid photo to one of those companies that creates a custom paint-by-number canvas. They mailed back a mapped outline & some paint vials (hooray, no color anxiety!). This is what it looked like when it was "done".

A NOAA forecast page for my city in North Idaho where the weather shows several days of snow and sub-freezing overnight temperatures.

This warm winter has made me such a whingebag. If we weren't destroying the climate I would be like "wow, 40s F in March, this is almost tee shirt weather" but instead I'm like...it was this warm in January, what is this bullshit? Glad that this will slow down the fruit buds, though. #wx #climate

A purple slipper orchid flower with raised petals and sepals in front of some fuzzy greenery.

I finished the painting that I'm gonna exhibit at the Spokane Orchid Society's annual show and sale this weekend. Is it common to know that a painting is done because you can't stand to look at it anymore? Also, did you know that Calypso orchids are deceptive pollinators? #nativeplants #SciArt 🌱

I can't see the context because apparently I already blocked that guy (or since you quote skeeted them, they got added to some list of blockable asshats). As a former and aspiring country bumpkin, it doesn't appear that I'm missing out on anything.