what is it that makes sea snakes so difficult to keep? is it an issue of needing enough space, or something about their needs, or what? (dw just curious, certainly not planning on trying to get one or anything)
Haha no worries, they’re often so difficult for even aquariums to find that I’m not really worried about anyone reading this and taking it as a challenge!
The biggest thing with them is they need a lot of space. They like warm coastal water and really need miles of space to swim, hunt, and dive in to stay happy and healthy!
Their diet can be very difficult to replicate, as well. Sea snakes eat almost exclusively eels, and aquariums who keep them can get them on f/t fish but it’s not an easy task and requires careful nutritional balancing to make sure they stay healthy. That’s not even mentioning the genus Emydocephalus - they eat exclusively fish eggs, which is…difficult to replicate in captivity, to say the least!
They’re also finicky and fragile, so their perimeters need to be on lock. Water salinity, the temperature gradient, everything needs to be just perfect. They have a lot of tricky little behaviors - such as evolving to drink fresh water from rainfall on the surface of the seawater - that you need to account for.
They’re just all-around tricky to manage! It’s a shame, because by all accounts, they’re supposedly very mild-mannered and lovely. I’d love to work with one someday, but I’d be happy if I even got to see one in person.
today a first grader walked up to me, set a piece of paper down on the table in front of me, and said “homework time! it’s your homework.” and i said “alright, what do i have to do for homework?” and he said “hmmm… draw the best dinosaur you can do.” and so now i have that on my plate for the evening
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one thing about tumblr users isthat they love to disagree with posts. another thing is that they love to do is disagree with things that were not even in the post as if they were
this is just absolutely not true. people do not normally drink printer ink.
Last week I accidentally took an edible at 10x my usual dose. I say “accidentally” but it was really more of a “my friend held it out to my face and I impulsively swallowed it like a python”, which was technically on purpose but still an accident in that my squamate instincts acted faster than my ability to assess the situation and ask myself if I really wanted to get Atreides high or not.
Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.
Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.
You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.
As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.
Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.
This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.
A blender is roughly the size and shape of a human baby. Cradling one in your arms satisfies a primal need. A month ago I was permitted to hold an infant for the first time in my life, an experience which was physically and psychologically healing. I felt an echo of that satisfaction holding my friend the blender, and the thought of parting with it felt even more ridiculous than bringing it with me to hang out on my friend’s bed.
