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Alan's avatar

Ha! I'm with you. Maruaroa o Raumati

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Dr Sea's avatar

So glad you’re still a unicorn!! And waaah, immediate bawling at Eliza’s beautiful voice. And the weasel dad joke cracked me up cause I have no idea what the diff is except one (stoat we think) is eating our fertilized chicken eggs - hence, only one Christhendl was born. It may be Jesus Cock (pretty sure it’s a lil rooster just to add to the woe). Finally, der Wasserbär - best cult since Cthulhu 🦑 Absolutely LOVE that Christmas ornament. We decorated our tree with a mummified rat, seahorse, pipefish, starfish skeletons, and a shrunken head. I don’t do Christmas, I do Krakenmess (terrific ugly Kraken Christmas jumper arrived just in time)! Miss you still my Wizard friend. Want to lure you to Krakenburn on the equinox!

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Rosie Whinray's avatar

When I was young I knew that ferrets, stoats, and weasels were different-sized mustelids. I knew stoats because I'd seen them in the wild, and ferrets because people used to keep them as stinky pets; so for some reason I vaguely had it in my mind that weasels were the next size up from ferrets. A genuinely terrifying prospect! Then I found out that weasels are more like mouse-sized, tiny weasels. Reckon it's probably stoats stealing your eggs. The Capital Kiwi Project has to trap all the stoats out of Te Kopahou because a stoat is the one predator a kiwi can't fight off. They're like furry snakes

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Rosie Whinray's avatar

After I got all that off my chest, I went and baked some pre-Hogmanay shortbread.

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Jack Barron's avatar

I love the footnotes. They are essential tangents.

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Rosie Whinray's avatar

This morning I watched the British Library talk The Realms of Ursula K. Le Guin. Julie Phillips, Le Guin's biographer, told the following story: Ursula was looking through a microscope (she was thinking about writing a children's book about microbes). Suddenly a huge creature swam into view. It was faceless, and seemed to reach for her with its claws. On one level she knew it was a tardigrade, but she felt primal horror of the beast: thus was the Shadow (of Earthsea) born.

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kieran monaghan's avatar

Maybe life is always one third current of your a tardigrade...

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rebecca hooper's avatar

tardigrades!!! I love them. I had not heard that song - thank you for bringing it into my life. Also, this quote of yours is phenomenal - " I speak about myself because that is my authoritative voice. Truth is not narcissism, it is nakedness. Only by radical honesty can I hope to effect change in the world. "

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