Latest Posts by gatortavern - Page 8

hey whoa, this looks nice! Let’s see what I can cook up...

Spectober is officially ON! (Prompt 1)

WELCOME to the start of Spectober 2020, everybody! Today’s prompts are as follows:

Art prompt: Apple Bobbing! Writing Prompt: Ed is infamous for being an apple bobbing champion

Remember to tag your submission with #spectober2020 and as a reminder, you don’t necessarily have to do the prompts in order!

We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

The link between drawing and seeing in the brain

Drawing an object and naming it engages the brain in similar ways, according to research recently published in JNeurosci. The finding demonstrates the importance of the visual processing system for producing drawings of an object.

(Image caption: Brain activation patterns during object recognition and production. Credit: Fan et al., JNeurosci 2019)

In a study by Fan et al., healthy adults performed two tasks while the researchers recorded brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging: they identified pieces of furniture in pictures and produced drawings of those pieces of furniture. The researchers used machine learning to discover similar patterns of brain activity across both tasks within the occipital cortex, an area of the brain important for visual processing. This means people recruit the same neural representation of an object whether they are drawing it or seeing it.

As the participants drew each object multiple times, the activity patterns in occipital cortex remained unchanged, but the connection between occipital cortex and parietal cortex, an area involved in motor planning, grew more distinct. This suggests that drawing practice enhances how the brain shares information about an object between different regions over time.

Please reblog, this is so important.

I mean sure, I’m really terrible at actually getting stuff out but questions/ critique are always welcome!

Reblog if you write fanfic and would be totally down with your followers coming into you askbox and talking to you about your fic

And some writing prompts are out! Seeing what people make of these is going to be a blast!

Here is the Spectober writing prompt list! Again, don’t feel pressured to do every prompt, but you’re welcome to plan ahead for the month. 

The prompts are also rewritten beneath the cut

Keep reading

Here’s some prompts for Spectober! I can’t wait to see all the different spins on these prompts!

Alright, the art prompt is out! Remember, the event is planned for October, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start planning ahead :) And as one last reminder, we’ll be using the #spectober2020, which I’ll be looking out for on here, twitter, and instagram.

Prompts listed again beneath the cut

Keep reading

Hopefully I’ll be able to whip up a few story responses, those are always a treat! Looking forward to it!

Welcome to the First Spectober! A writing and art prompt filled October! Think Spooktober, but Paranatural themed. 

There will be daily prompts, both for writing and art. These will be separated into two separate lists. However, if you ever want to use a ‘writing prompt’ for art, or vice versa, you are absolutely welcome to! While they are listed day to day, you can skip as many as you’d like and do them out of order if you’d prefer to. It’s creativity, no need to restrict it. :D

We’ll be using the #spectober2020 for the event and be reblogging them to this blog. Word of advice: make sure the tag is within the first five, or it won’t show up. If we haven’t reblogged your submission within 24 hours, feel free to message us.

Writing Prompt List (Pending)

Art Prompt List (Pending)

New Species of Ancient Giant Alligator Identified

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/deinosuchus-schwimmeri-08730.html

Hump-nosed lizard (Lyriocephalus scutatus)

The hump-nosed lizard is a species of lizard within the agamid family, the only species in the genus Lyriocephalus. It is the largest agamid endemic to Sri Lanka and lives in dense wet zone forests. The hump-nosed lizard inhabits forests with high canopy and dense undergrowth, but it occasionally also enters home gardens. It is active during the day, when it dwells low on trees as well as on the ground. It goes higher up on trees to sleep at night. The typical threat posture is open-mouth gape, revealing the bright red lining of the oral cavity. This species is also known to feign death when picked up. Its diet comprises essentially of earthworms and also arthropods, including termites, butterflies, and moths. It is also known to feed on young shoots and buds.

photo credits: Kalyanvarma

#aww yeah another jackbox night

#this will be fun

Paranatural Jackbox Night 2!!!

Hey guys! I’m going to be hosting another Quiplash 2/Drawful 2 game night with custom Paranatural prompts!

It will be on SATURDAY NIGHT AUGUST 22, at 8:00 PM EASTERN TIME. We will be using Zoom, which I will give a link to when the game night starts.

If you’re not familiar with how Jackbox works, a game is put on the screen, and all the players answer prompts on their phone, which then appear on the game screen. We are using Zoom ONLY to see the game screen, so you DO NOT need to have your camera or sound on for the game night!

Quiplash works like Cards Against Humanity, and Drawful works sort of like drawing charades. If you don’t know how to play, that’s ok! You can watch a few rounds and then hop in. You can jump onto the Zoom meeting at any time, and even if you’re not a player in one of the games, you can play as an audience member.

If you can RSVP by sending us an ask or reply, etc., I’d appreciate it just to get a general head count, but you don’t need to by any means. Heck, if you find out 5 minutes before the game starts that you can play? Come on in!

Any questions can be directed at this blog or message @blairdiggory if you want to ask something more privately.

Oh!  Yeah, that was me! I’m so pleased that you enjoyed it! There should be an epilogue chapter coming eventually, I kind of let time slip away from me there and got buried in other WIPs, haha.

hi. Just wanted to let you know I like your stories and AU's. It's fun to read potential Johnny/Isabel interactions. Keep up the good work.

AW... thanks so much <:0!! i’m glad you like my stuff!! and if u like what ive made so far well trust me i’ve got izjo interactions planned for Things

#crocodiles #cool shit!

New Evidence Suggests Ancient Crocodiles Swam From Africa to America

https://sciencespies.com/news/new-evidence-suggests-ancient-crocodiles-swam-from-africa-to-america/

New Evidence Suggests Ancient Crocodiles Swam From Africa to America

Most American crocodiles don’t need to look far to find the feature that sets them apart from Nile crocodiles. The difference lies right between their eyes and their nostrils. Of crocodiles living today, only the four crocodile species that live in the Americas have a small bump in the middle of their snouts.

But about seven million years ago, a ten-foot-long crocodile living in what’s now Libya had the same tell-tale lump, according to research published in Scientific Reports last week. A fossil skull of the extinct Crocodylus checchiai provides more evidence that crocodiles spread across the world by migrating from Australia, through Africa and finally to South America.

The fossil “fills a gap between the Nile crocodile in Africa and the four extant American species,” University of Turin paleoherpetologist Massimo Delfino says to Science News’ Carolyn Wilke.

The fact that crocodiles live on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean has long puzzled biologists trying to figure out which direction the giant reptiles migrated. Genetic research in 2011 provided molecular evidence that crocodiles migrated from Africa to the Americas, but fossil evidence was scant.

“The main problem for palaeobiologists is the rarity and fragmentary nature of fossil remains,” Delfino and co-author David Iurino told the Agence France-Presse by email.

The seven million-year-old Crocodylus checchiai skull was first collected in 1939.

(Image by Bruno Mercurio)

The fossil described in the new paper is one of four that were first described in the 1930s. Three that were stored in the Natural History Museum in Tripoli, Libya, were lost or destroyed during World War II, according to the Scientific Reports paper. But the researchers found the fourth skull, originally collected in 1939, stored in the Sapienza University of Rome.

“This fossil is twice-old,” Delfino tells Nina Pullano at Inverse, referencing the fact that the skull is millions of years old and had then been forgotten for decades.The researchers used CT scanning to create a 3D model of the inside and outside of the skull for closer study and confirmed the presence of the American crocodile-like snout bump.

At seven million years old, the C. checchiai skull predates all known crocodile fossils in America, the oldest of which are about five million years old, Lucy Hicks reports for Science magazine. That means that the timeline checks out: it’s possible that C. checchiai may have made their way from Libya to the western coast of Africa, swam across the Atlantic and landed on the shores of South America.

The continents were about the same distance apart seven million years ago as they are today, making the journey across the ocean quite a feat—but not impossible. The researchers point out in a statement that the Australian marine crocodile has been recorded travelling more than 300 miles in a day. The prehistoric croc may have also bobbed along on one of the ocean’s surface currents that travel west from Africa to the Americas.

Crocodiles are also not the only flightless animal thought to have reached the New World by crossing the Atlantic. As the Inverse reports, a study published in April suggests that on two instances, monkeys made their way across the ocean on floating vegetation.

“If you think that the monkey can cross the Atlantic Ocean, very probably it’s much easier to accept that the crocodile can do it,” Delfino tells Inverse. Ancient crocodiles had the specialized glands necessary to swim and survive in saltwater and may have snacked on sea turtles along the way.

As a changing climate wiped out local species, crocodiles were well adapted to the late-Miocene environment and replaced them, the researchers write in the paper. The original crew of ocean-crossing crocs may have included many individuals or at least one pregnant female, Science News reports.

And after situating themselves in South America, they evolved and diversified into the four species found in the Americas today. (Only the American crocodile and American alligator are found in the United States.)

But whether or not the crocodilians mourn their C. checchiai ancestors is hard to tell—they might just be crocodile tears, after all.

#News

#crocodiles #this is so cool #evolution #American Crocodile

Miocene Fossil from Africa Provides New Evidence for Origin of American Crocodiles

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/crocodylus-checchiai-origin-american-crocodiles-08679.html

#reptiles #snakes #adder

(Vipera berus)  common European adder

14 known fatalities since 1876. Systemic symptoms resulting from anaphylaxis can be dramatic. These may appear within 5 minutes post bite, or can be delayed for many hours. In severe cases, cardiovascular failure may occur.

#crocodiles #science #cool stuff! #some crocs will totally still eat fruit #it’s rather fun to see them chomp down on a mango

Ancient crocodiles may have preferred chomping plants, not meat

Fossil teeth of ancient crocodilians suggest that some ate plants and that such green diets evolved in crocs at least three times more than 60 million years ago.

Some extinct crocs may have been salad eaters.

Studies of fossil teeth suggest some ancient kin of modern crocodiles ate plants. These ancient plant-eating crocs evolved at least three times during the Mesozoic Era. This era stretched from about 252 million to 66 million years ago. Researchers reported their findings June 27, 2019 in Current Biology.

Today’s crocodiles eat mostly meat. Their simple, cone-shaped teeth are typical of meat eaters. Those teeth were different in certain of their ancient relatives. There was “tremendous diversity [in tooth shape] that we don’t see today,” says Keegan Melstrom. This paleontologist is a coauthor on the study. He works at the University of Utah and Natural History Museum of Utah. Both are in Salt Lake City.

#lizard #Komodo Dragon

Komodo Dragon. Indonesian Islands of Komodo,Rinca,Flores and Gili Motang.1 of 3 venomous lizards on Earth.

#fossil #crocodile #yeah baby give me more croc ancestors #that’s my jam

These crocodile ancestors lived a two-legged life

A set of 106-million year old footprints show a crocodile relative appears to have walked on two legs.

Modern day crocodiles are pretty impressive. Some even climb trees. But 106 million years ago, a crocodile ancestor had another trick: It walked on two legs.

That’s what scientists now think, based on fossil footprints in South Korea. They are the first footprint evidence that some ancient ancestors of modern crocodiles walked on two legs. The size and spacing of the tracks suggest the reptile’s length spanned 2 to 3 meters (6 to 12 feet). That would make it about the size of modern crocs.  

Explainer: Understanding geologic time

The ancient tracks appear in the Jinju Formation, a South Korean site full of fossils. Most of its fossils date to the Mesozoic, between 252 and 66 million years ago. The Mesozoic is sometimes called the Age of Dinosaurs, but plenty of other animals lived at that time, too.

Now scientists have found a set of footprints there. It’s tough to identify what species made them, says Martin Lockley. As a paleontologist, he studies ancient organisms. He works at the University of Colorado in Denver. “Short of finding the animal dead in its tracks, there’s always a little bit of uncertainty,” he explains.

Explainer: How a fossil forms

But footprints, like animals, can be classified by type. The scientists couldn’t tell what animal left the beautifully preserved prints. For that, they’d need fossils of its tissues. Instead, they sorted the ancient prints into a “footprint genus.” So while they couldn’t say what animal genus the prints belonged to, they were able to determine that they were in the footprint genus Batrachopus.

All prints in this group were made by crocodylomorphs (Krok-oh-DY-loh-morfs). The name means “crocodile-shaped.” This group includes modern crocodiles, alligators and their ancestors.

The tracks’ most surprising feature is that they only show hind feet. There’s no evidence of “hand” prints at all. That’s strong evidence that this creature was bipedal — walking on only its hind legs, Lockley says. “We have dozens of these things, and not one sign of a front footprint,” he says. “So we’re pretty convinced.”

Paranatural and JoJo are a great blend, honestly.

i have proper pnat fanart in the works i promise. heres my jojo redraws for now to tide you over

read paranatural or perish and also get hype for chapter 7!!!!!

Key to Learning and Forgetting Identified in Sleeping Brain

Distinct patterns of electrical activity in the sleeping brain may influence whether we remember or forget what we learned the previous day, according to a new study by UC San Francisco researchers. The scientists were able to influence how well rats learned a new skill by tweaking these brainwaves while animals slept, suggesting potential future applications in boosting human memory or forgetting traumatic experiences, the researchers say. 

In the new UCSF study, published online Oct. 3 in the journal Cell, a research team led by Karunesh Ganguly, MD, PhD, an associate professor of neurology and member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, used a technique called optogenetics to dampen specific types of brain activity in sleeping rats at will.

This allowed the researchers to determine that two distinct types of slow brain waves seen during sleep, called slow oscillations and delta waves, respectively strengthened or weakened the firing of specific brain cells involved in a newly learned skill – in this case how to operate a water spout that the rats could control with their brains via a neural implant.

“We were astonished to find that we could make learning better or worse by dampening these distinct types of brain waves during sleep,” Ganguly said. “In particular, delta waves are big part of sleep, but they have been less studied, and nobody had ascribed a role to them. We believe these two types of slow waves compete during sleep to determine whether new information is consolidated and stored, or else forgotten.”

“Linking a specific type of brain wave to forgetting is a new concept,” Ganguly added. “More studies have been done on strengthening of memories, fewer on forgetting, and they tend to be studied in isolation from one another. What our data indicate is that there is a constant competition between the two – it’s the balance between them that determines what we remember.”

Some Sleep to Remember, Others to Forget

Over the past two decades the centuries-old human hunch that sleep plays a role in the formation of memories has been increasingly supported by scientific studies. Animal studies show that the same neurons involved in forming the initial memory of a new task or experience are reactivated during sleep to consolidate these memory traces in the brain. Many scientists believe that forgetting is also an important function of sleep – perhaps as a way of uncluttering the mind by eliminating unimportant information.

Slow oscillations and delta waves are hallmarks of so-called non-REM sleep, which – in humans, at least – makes up half or more of a night’s sleep. There is evidence that these non-REM sleep stages play a role in consolidating various kinds of memory, including the learning of motor skills. In humans, researchers have found that time spent in the early stages of non-REM sleep is associated with better learning of a simple piano riff, for instance.

Ganguly’s team began studying the role of sleep in learning as part of their ongoing efforts to develop neural implants that would allow people with paralysis to more reliably control robotic limbs with their brain. In early experiments in laboratory animals, he had noted that the biggest improvements in the animals’ ability to operate these brain-computer interfaces occurred when they slept between training sessions.

“We realized that we needed to understand how learning and forgetting occur during sleep to understand how to truly integrate artificial systems into the brain,” Ganguly said.

Brain Waves Compete to Determine Learning During Sleep

In the new study, a dozen rats were implanted with electrodes that monitor firing among a small group of selected neurons in their brains’ motor cortex, which is involved in conceiving and executing voluntary movements. Producing a particular pattern of neural firing allowed the rats to control a water-dispensing tube in their cages. In essence, the rats were performing a kind of biofeedback – each rat learned how to fire a small ensemble of neurons together in a unique new pattern in order to move the spigot and get the water.

Ganguly’s team observed the same unique new firing pattern replaying in animals’ brains as they slept. The strength of this reactivation during sleep determined how well rats were able to control the water spout the next day. But the researchers wanted to go further – to understand how the brain controls whether rats learn or forget while they slumber.

To manipulate the effect of brain waves during non-REM sleep, the researchers genetically modified rat neurons to express a light-sensitive optogenetic control switch, allowing the team to use lasers and fiber optics to instantaneously dampen brain activity associated with the transmission of specific brain waves. With precise, millisecond timing of the laser, the scientists in separate experiments specifically dampened either slow oscillating waves or delta waves in a tiny patch of the brain around the new memory circuit.

Disruption of delta waves strengthened reactivation of the task-associated neural activity during sleep and was associated with better performance upon waking. Conversely, disruption of slow oscillations resulted in poor performance upon waking. “Slow oscillations seem to be protecting new patterns of neural firing after learning, while delta waves tend to erase them and promote forgetting,” Ganguly said.

Further analysis showed that in order to protect learning, slow oscillations had to occur at the same time as a third, well-studied brain wave phenomenon, called sleep spindles. A sleep spindle is a high-frequency, short-duration burst of activity that originates in a region called the thalamus and then propagates to other parts of the brain. They have been linked to memory consolidation, and a lack of normal sleep spindles is associated with brain maladies including schizophrenia and developmental delay, and also with aging.

“Our work shows that there is a strong drive to forget during sleep,” Ganguly said. “Very brief pairings of sleep spindles and slow oscillations can overcome delta wave-driven forgetting and preserve learning, but the balance is very delicate. Even small disturbances in these events lead to forgetting.”

It’s not yet known what tips the scales between delta wave–driven forgetting and slow oscillation–driven learning, but it’s clear that better understanding the process could have profound impacts on the study of human learning and memory, Ganguly said. “Sleep is truly driving profound changes in the brain. Understanding these changes will be critical for brain integration of artificial interfaces and may one day allow us to modify neural circuits to aid in movement rehabilitation, such as after stroke, where previous studies have shown that sleep plays an important role in successful recovery.”

#pretty sweet #snakes #gliding snakes #look at em go

Here’s how flying snakes stay aloft

High-speed cameras show that paradise tree snakes keep from tumbling as they glide through the sky by undulating their bodies.

The movie Snakes on a Plane had it wrong. That’s not how snakes fly.

Certain species of tree snakes can glide through the air, undulating their bodies as they soar from tree to tree. That wriggling isn’t an attempt to replicate how the reptiles slither across land or swim through water. The contortions are essential for stable gliding, mechanical engineer Isaac Yeaton and colleagues report June 29 in Nature Physics.

“They have evolved this ability to glide, and it’s pretty spectacular,” says Yeaton, of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. Paradise tree snakes (Chrysopelea paradisi) fling themselves from branches, leaping distances of 10 meters or more (SN: 8/7/02). To record the snakes’ twists and turns, Yeaton, then at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and colleagues affixed reflective tape on the snakes’ backs and used high-speed cameras to capture the motion.

Physicists had previously discovered that the tree snakes flatten their bodies as they leap, generating lift (SN: 1/29/14). The new experiment reveals that the snakes also exert a complex combination of movements as they soar. Gliding snakes undulate their bodies both side to side and up and down, the researchers found, and move their tails above and below the level of their heads.

Scientists captured the undulating motion of paradise tree snakes as they glide through the sky. A computer simulation based on high-speed video shows that the undulation is necessary for stable flight.

Once the researchers had mapped out the snakes’ acrobatics, they created a computer simulation of gliding snakes. In the simulation, snakes that undulated flew similarly to the real-life snakes. But those that didn’t wriggle failed spectacularly, rotating to the side or falling head over tail, rather than maintaining a graceful, stable glide.

If confined to a single plane instead of wriggling in three dimensions, the snakes would tumble. So snakes on a plane won’t fly.

Zack could use some help! The link to their Gumroad will be reblogged.

All of their stuff in Gumroad is GREAT! I recommend The Activity Club and The Final Hole and Everlasting!

I adore all of this! Thank you so much!

Finally, my VERY LATE @pnatsecretsanta for @gatortavern !!! I’m so sorry for how long this took. Main frames + A bonus for taking so long under the cut!! 

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Johnny Jhonny in: A Christmas Calamity

A STORY/IT’S DONE!/ FOR @pjmaxsson ! Happy holidays from your @pnatsecretsanta, and apologies that this was sent out so late! (also as a PS, PJ gets his own gift in an epilogue, which will be coming soon!)

Johnny Jhonny In: A Christmas Calamity

“ARGH!”

Johnny Jhonny kicked one of the small snow piles haphazardly placed along the sidewalk. The holiday season, as with most things in Mayview, had been bizarre so far, with a mild snowstorm being followed by a mild warm front. Only a thin layer of snow remained, save for the large dirty piles left by the snowplows.

“Out of anyone I coulda gotten, I had ta’ get Isabel Guerra? That chick’s impossible to get information on!”

“Well if it’s any consolation, she probably won’t murder you if you get it messed up. Pretty sure Lisa knows I got Violet ‘cause she’s been giving me that creepy smile for the past three days. Plus, I don’t think RJ even got someone from our grade,” Ollie chimed in.

RJ nodded in agreement, their furrowed brow hidden by their hood.

“None of this would even be a PROBLEM if Mr. Garcia had handed out these assignments earlier!” Stephen cried out, waving his hands in an exaggerated motion. “THREE DAYS to deliver a Secret Santa present?! We’re gonna have to do our investigations separately!”

              The group, sans RJ, groaned at that. Gift giving for them was nothing to be taken lightly; each member of Johnny’s Gang would meticulously search for, or more often create, something for their target that would have some kind of personal connection for them, a tactic that extended to any poor fool that they got saddled with for a Secret Santa. This, of course, could take a bit of time to gather enough information to make such a gift, which the boys (and RJ) preferred doing together. That plan was now ruined thanks to Mr. Garcia sleeping through the day he was supposed to hand the slips out, on top of his continued forgetting.

              There was a nudge on Johnny’s arm, and he swerved to see where RJ was pointing. At the base of the hill they were slowly traversing down was his target, a maroon sweater barely peeking out under a stone grey jacket, mahogany hair lightly nestled at the shoulders. There’s no way Guerra wouldn’t suspect an ambush if the four of them went down, a thought Johnny saw reflected in his compadres’ eyes.

              “Go get ‘em, slugger!” whispered Stephen with a shove that was anything but soft, sending Johnny stumbling nearly a quarter of the way down the slope before he caught his footing. Halfway down the hill, Johnny stopped and gave a quick glance at his pals, who gave waves of encouragement and thumbs up as a response.

---

About three feet in, Johnny was able to gather one bit of information on Isabel Guerra:

She had really weird ideas for recreational activities.

After a few close calls, he had managed to tail her into a weird-looking cave mound. The damp walls seemed to eat up any light, as Johnny had soon found it hard to see even a foot in front of him, and the soft ground obscured any sounds he could have used to follow her. The paths were wide (he surmised that Ollie could easily walk beside him) and winding ever downward, and the bully soon realized that there were multiple sprawling paths. Johnny silently cursed himself for not charging his phone the day before. At least there would have been a small light source if he had.

The small, uneven muttering up ahead caught his attention.

“Oh geez. Oh man. D-did I go the right way? How are there so many paths? What if Mr. Max is hurt? What if that thing comes back? Ohhh…”

Slowly, Johnny crept up to the voice, hearing it fret over many things. He squinched up his eyes, trying to think. This definitely wasn’t Isabel-her voice could command the room, confidence would ooze from every sound she made.

“I can’t stay here worrying about this! Mr. Max needs me! But…”

“Who the heck’re you?”

              “WAAAUGH!”

Johnny could just barely make out the hazy shape of a boy about his age in front of him, quaking intensely. He wouldn’t have enough time to ruffle this one up, he figured. Got too far away from Guerra already. He’d have to make this quick in order to catch up to her and hopefully hear her let something slip.

“A’ight fella, this is the way it’s gonna work here. I’m feeling pretty generous t’day. Gotta make sure I get the deets on somebody real fast n’ stuff. I’m not even gonna stop ta’ beat ya’ up right now, my mood’s that good. Just tell me where the Guerra chick went.”

“Uhhh…I…don’t know who…that is..?” came the hasty reply.

“Er.. Isabel Guerra? Brown eyes, long brown hair, gray jacket? ”

“…Oh. OH!” The boy seemed to perk up a little upon hearing that. “That’s the scary girl’s name? The one from that weird dodgeball game, right?”

“Hitball, yeah, she was t’ other captain. Besides me.”

“O-oh, okay. I, uh, wasn’t paying too much attention to the game…mostly just watching Max. Ah! Are you the guy Max blocked that ball for?”

That one stung a little. If there was anything that made Johnny Jhonny uncomfortable, it’s someone taking a punishment that should’ve rightfully been his.

“Yeah…that’s me,” he said, the agitation creeping into his voice. “You gonna tell me where the girl went now, or are ya gonna stand here and waste my freakin’ time?”

“Well…I dunno where…Isabel, right? Went exactly…but if she’s in here, that means she’s going to help Max too! Which is good, because this place kinda scares me..”

Great. This kid wasn’t any help at all, Johnny thought to himself as he began to storm off. Well, as best as he could storm in this place, anyway, as the ground muffled all his footsteps.

“Uh, mister sir, you’re heading into a wall,” the boy provided helpfully right as Johnny smashed his face into a bed of dirt. “Are you able to see in here? Because it looks like you’re squinting pretty hard…”

“Oh, so you can see where yer’ goin’ in this pitch black mess?”

“A-a little, mister sir. This place has a lot of weird turns and forks and dead ends. If you can’t tell where you’re going, you could get pretty lost.”

Johnny suddenly had an idea.

“Right then, it’s settled! I can’t see a foot in fronta’ me, and yer’ too scared to fight…whatever it is you came in here fer’, so you get ta’ do the lookin’ and I’ll do the fightin’! I’ll let ya’ pay me back for it later.”

“Uh…ah…oh…kay”, came the uneasy reply. “There’s a path to your left. It’s straight for a while after that, from what I can see.”

And with that, the two set off.

---

Johnny couldn’t tell how long he’d been walking in silence for. At least with the Ed ambush a few days prior, he’d been able to gauge some method of progress by seeing just where Ed was and what he was up to. But here there wasn’t anything to see ahead of him. He could barely hear his own footsteps on the ground if he paid enough attention, but he couldn’t hear the other kid’s at all, even though with a glance he could see the kid steadily at his side.

He wasn’t scared, of course. It was just a dark silent cave, that’s all. Nothing that pathetic could scare Johnny Jhonny.

He was, admittedly, just a little creeped out. He needed something to keep his mind off of this. Besides Guerra, of course. No sense chasing Guerra with some hyped up senses that’d give him away.

“So what’s your deal, anyway? If yer’ so scared of everything, whatcha even come to a spooky cave for?” he asked.

The sad little laugh’s proximity made him jump.

“I was trying to go around with Max a little bit, to see the town again. I thought maybe I could become a little braver, maybe even help in a fight...but then a big spirit came up and grabbed him! I followed it here, but then Max dropped his bat trying to get out of its arms, and I rushed in to help and give it back to him. He can’t fight real good without it… but this is a big cave, and I can’t get the bat to him without going through it, and it’s dark and I got scared…”

Johnny stared at the kid with only the slightest expression of disbelief. “You wanna learn how to fight?”               “I have to be able to help out when he gets attacked! So I can have his back! Because that’s what friends do!”

There was a sense of conviction in the kid’s voice that wasn’t there before. A conviction immediately lost when the floor shook and a deep rumble emanated from below, if the higher pitched wailing that came from his position was anything to go by.

Once the rumbling stopped and Johnny confirmed that he could not beat the earthquake into submission, he turned and gently slapped his hand over the general area of his partner’s head. Although he missed his mouth entirely, it still worked wonders in stopping the kid’s terrified babbling.

“Tell ya what, ya picked a good day ta run into me. I’ll whip ya up into ship-shop shape so you can wallop all yer problems while I’m out nerd hunting. A’course, you’ll have to pay me back with interest…”, he said, cracking his knuckles for effect, but secretly impressed that the kid was trying to take initiative.

He was not expecting a shaky, uncertain “thank you” as a response, but it filled him with a weird sense of pride, and soon an exchange of stories began.

----

To the timid kid’s credit, he had kept his end of the bargain.

Johnny soon realized the kid was a good eavesdropper, since he mentioned that he only knew the girl for a few days. He would’ve quicker taken Isabel to be a dog person afraid of spiders than the other way around. Apparently she was close to her spider too, the one that she’d lost recently. Called it a friend. Johnny could relate; the loss of his boxer four years ago still hurt to think about somewhat. She was also Max’s friend, so of course she’d be into the freaky flipping and jumping around he did constantly. Between her and that spiky nerd dude, freaky movements seemed to be something of a requirement for being that kid’s buddy. He made a mental note to himself to practice some moves with his pals later to show him up.

Some of the facts were a bit harder to make sense of. According to him, she had come with some “scary guy with glasses” to help sort out a…evil whale frog the other day? Riding a paper horse? With the kid’s luck he probably found that weirdo history teacher that’s always wearing shades, but with the kid’s track record of jumping at the smacking sounds of Johnny’s hands, he could’ve been scared of pretty much anyone.

And if what the kid was saying was true, he had somehow managed to punch a teacher in the face for “being evil”. Not a bad start to a fighting career, even if he said that he ran and hid behind Max immediately after.

On his own side, Johnny had launched into relaying many of his and his gang’s bouts over the years, placing emphasis on each blow, duck and dodge. What started out as giving advice on which attacks are what, when people are giving them and how to take/sidestep them quickly derailed into making as great a story as possible. Johnny was just too used to framing these stories for his pals. His partner didn’t seem to mind it too much, though, and every hushed “wow” and question of what happened next only served to hype him up further. He told of turf wars and stakeouts, of the gang catching up to a group of cyclists that had bought the last of the candy that RJ had been looking forward to all week, even his battle with Ed and the Great Starch Hunt.

“’An then he gave us stars from his own pocket for beatin’ him, and Ed took off for greater quarry. Gotta meet up with him later to get RJ’s stuff back…an’ mine too, come ta think of it. Then we got thrown inta’ detention.”

“Wow, mister sir, you sure do get into a lot of adventures.”

“Whoa whoa, knock it off with the ‘mister sir’ crap, yer makin’ me feel old.”

“I don’t think you’ve told me your name though.”

“Wha-you don’t know my name? After everything I just told you?”

“S-sorry…”

“The name’s Johnny. Johnny Jhonny. Forget it and I whack ya.”

“Ah, okay mister Johnny.”

There was a small back and forth about not using “mister” and the kid’s inability to get it through his head, followed by a weird silence, until a small question piped up from the compatriot:

“So you were always good at fighting the bad guys and…other guys, huh? I hope I can be that fearless someday.”

Johnny paused. The image of an angry Jeff from a few days before surfaced in his head, mocking him for protecting his buddies and promising a permanent scar. He remembered how that ball came sailing towards his pals and how much it’d hurt them if he moved. How people kept taking shots for him that weren’t meant for them: Dimitri, Max…

…and how readily RJ and Ollie were to take them, too.

“…That ain’t it. Listen, it’s not about never bein’ scared. That Hitball game where everythin’ went nuts? I acted all brave to calm down my buds, but…I was shakin’ inside. But I took that fear and threw it right back at that little punk. You just gotta take all that terror that’s buildin’ in your chest and put it in your fists instead. Pick up all that fear those jerks put in ya and make ‘em take it back tenfold.”

“How do you do that, Johnny sir?”

The “sir” wasn’t much better, but Johnny brushed it aside for now. “Well, you know how you keep screamin’ whenever somethin’ spooks ya? Make it louder. Make it a war cry! Bellow and yell in their face and make em’ pay for makin’ that sound come outta’ your mouth! And when you think maybe you should book it, or get worried that you can’t take the fight, you think of how your friends would be in the same spot as you, and how they’d get hurt instead, and then you beat up that foe for daring to put that image in your head!”

There was a pause before he spoke again with as much mentorly conviction as he could muster.

“Ya’ don’t let those punks hurt your friends. Ya gotta stand by your pals, fight by their side, so they don’t take blows that ain’t their due.”

“Because that’s what friends do.”

“Exactly.”

A few seconds passed without any words. Johnny then piped up again.

“Y’know, I don’t think you ever told me your name neither.”

“Oh. Uhm..it’s PJ. I’m PJ.”

Johnny couldn’t really see the kid’s face at all, but he could feel the smile from where he was standing. Or maybe that was just the small smile creeping up on his own face. He wasn’t sure, but the area felt calmer, the silence almost welcoming.

That didn’t last.

Another rumble cut through the air, and the quakes nearly threw the bully to the ground. Then another noise, just loud enough for Johnny to make out, bellowed from below.

“KKKKKKKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

“That’s the spirit that got mister Max! It’s close!” shouted PJ before a third rumble sounded. Johnny felt loose soil fall into his hair and vigorously ran his hands through his ‘do. He wasn’t exactly sure what a “spirit” meant, or what could’ve possibly made that noise, but it wasn’t going to stop him from following Guerra. He charged ahead.

Straight into a wall of dirt.

“Ahh! The path is blocked off! It must have touched the soil again!”

“Wha..?” came the muffled reply.

“The spirit can touch things! It moved the soil around earlier when I was making my way in!”

Johnny felt hands on his shoulders for a brief moment before he was catapulted backwards. His hands quickly found soft fabric and the two sped away back up the hallway, swerving and curving to avoid pieces of the ceiling falling down around them. The tremors intensified, and Johnny swung back, bracing himself to punch an enemy he couldn’t see.

KLANG!!

It took a minute for his ears to stop screaming at him, but the vibrations underneath him seemed to halt. His foot slipped for half a second over a pit that he didn’t think was there before. As the ringing subsided, his head pieced together what that noise could have been.

“Hehey, that sounded like a solid hit! Looks like ya got more punch than ya thought, lil slugger!”

“Uh…I didn’t actually swing at it…it came up from underneath me and hit the bat with its face…”

“A solid hold then. You held the bat steady while it came at ya.”

“I was more frozen in fear…”

“Dude, take the compliment before I shove it down your throat hole.”

“OK, Johnny sir.”

“NO, it’s just—you don’t have ta—ah, forget it.”

Johnny turned back and felt around the edges of the hole with his shoe. Whatever came up from the ground was huge, as it took him a while to find a part of the soft earth that wasn’t sloping into the pit. He had half a mind to try throwing something in it to hear how deep it went, but the way the ground was, he wouldn’t be able to hear how far something went anyway.

With no other options, the two started backtracking farther up the cave.

---

“Hey, come ta think of it…PJ, are you in your pajamas?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess so.”

“Why’d you come down here in your pajamas when it’s this cold out? You lookin’ to catch a flu or something?”

“I can’t really…touch anything unless it’s possessed. …or a spirit… …or Max…or people with special powers.”

“Whaddya mean you can’t touch things? You’re holding Max’s bat. You just touched me like five minutes ago!”

“This is Max’s special weapon with special powers! I can touch it because it’s full of magic.”

“Yeah, well I ain’t no freaky jumpin’ wizard with wizard tools, and ya touched me, so there. What the heck are you talking about with ‘spirits’ anyway? You saying this cave is full of ghosts or something?”

“I don’t think spirits are the same thing as ghosts… they’re weird. They can be really big, or small, and they all have powers, and they can have legs.”

“Ha! Now I know yer’ bluffin’! Stephen told me that ghosts look like super see-through people with a faint bluish tint on ‘em. Only the ones from other places don’t got feet.”

There was an awkward silence. Johnny couldn’t see the face of his partner beside him, but he could tell that the look on his face was one of confusion.

“…You’re new to this, aren’t you?”

Before Johnny could ask him what the heck that was supposed to mean, the rumbling returned. The large, soft chunks of dirt rained down on Johnny’s shoulders, and the ground beneath him quickly lost stability. Small hills of soil quickly piled up near his feet.

The place was caving in.

Johnny quickly found PJ’s arms (though there was little need, as his hands had already found Johnny’s wrists as soon as the rumbles had begun again) and booked it back up the path. He soon found it hard to block out the burning running up his side, or his lungs crying out for air, or the urge to remove all the dirt from his hair, but the twists and turns the path soon divulged helped distract him ever so slightly.

There was only one brief stop, when two other shadows crossed their path, one yanking the other forward in a similar manner. The long hair fluttering into the other shadow’s face was a dead giveaway for Guerra, but when Johnny tried to follow her, he ran into another wall. The place must be coming down fast if he was blocked off that quickly, he thought, and scrambled back as fast as he could to get the heck out of Chrysler.

After more twists and turns and dodges, a blinding light made its presence known. Johnny raced forward, the screaming in his sides unmatched by the crumbling walls becoming more evident from the light. As the exit loomed nearer and the snowy woods came into focus, he noticed the archway begin to buckle. He forced himself forward as fast as he could muster as the shiny white window to the outside became polluted with fallen sediment. He could feel the cool air on his skin and in his lungs, soothing his aching….well, everything. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the roof give entirely. He threw both of his arms forward in desperation, only dimly realizing that the grip he’d felt on his arm had vanished.

Suddenly he felt a hard shove from behind, and everything went white.

---

Johnny lied on the ground for a few seconds, allowing the small layer of snow to soothe his burning limbs. Each inhale brought both pain and relief. Slowly, he got back up to his feet, rubbing tiny patches of nearby snow underneath his pant legs to numb them ever so slightly and surveying the ground.

For the most part, the woods looked about the same as when he had entered, though he hadn’t been paying much attention to the ground at the time. Every track in the snow looked fresh, so it hadn’t snowed any further after he had entered the cave. A massive gouge in the frozen fluff confirmed that someone had been dragged into the mound, and he could see his shoeprints from his stalking mission, his wavy treads trailing just behind a far smoother and slightly smaller boot print.

He paused, then looked around the marks again. There were only two types of prints in the snow. Unless the kid had trod over the haphazard gouge, that was one type too few.

A small gleam caught his eye, and as he registered what was giving off such a glare, his eyes widened.

Lying three or four steps away from his position was an aluminum bat.

His head quickly snapped up to the cave’s entrance. The once great gaping maw that had lead down to the damp dark underneath had been entirely filled with moist brown soil.

There was no sign of life nearby.

He tried to scream for his cave companion, but his voice flickered in and out like a match refusing to light. Within seconds he was at the cave’s entrance, frantically clawing out bits of earth, searching for an opening, his trembling legs and pinwheeling arms providing the howling his throat could not produce.

As he opened his mouth to attempt crying out a fifth time, another scream filled the area for him.

“KKKKKKKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Johnny stumbled over onto his back, scrambling back into the snow while keeping eye contact with the thing. It was a gigantic mantis, about a few heads taller than a bus, with glowing white eyes the size of the globe Mr. Garcia had in his room. A viscous purple permeated its form and gleamed in the light as if it was made of Jello, and it shimmered like some form of mirage.

It noticed him instantly. Quicker than he’d ever expect a mantis to move, it raised a violet-tinged talon and swung its biological guillotine towards him. The light streaming through the bug caused Johnny’s eyes to water, and he braced himself.

Another familiar sound struck through the air, and his ears cried out in protest.

Johnny blinked away the tears to see another purple shape floating just a few feet in front of him. While the consistency still looked around the same, this one took the form of what looked like a twelve year old kid. A squint revealed what looked to be some form of shirt with a collar and wrist cuffs. There were no sign of legs; instead, the torso tapered off to a wispy serpentine tail. As Johnny stared at the apparition with a quivering mouth and eyes wide as saucers, the purple boy struggled to retain his position. The redhead mentally shook himself and peered beyond the kid; the mantis’s front claws had locked on to the bat the kid was holding and was attempting to push it out from underneath him.

“Aaah! The spirit’s too strong! I can’t keep this up!” the ghost exclaimed as the mantis lowered its head to his eye level, chattering large mandibles that would look less out of place on an ant. Its voice sounded familiar, Johnny thought, and oh sweet merciful Punch why did it sound so familiar, it couldn’t be--

“Please, mister Johnny! Heeelp!”

Johnny glanced from the purple boy to the purple bug and back a few times, his breathing becoming more erratic. It was then that his voice finally burst through in full force.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

For a brief second, the boy turned his head just a bit to look at Johnny. He had the same glowing eyes the bug did, as well as a small curl of hair sticking from his top. A look of panic and confusion soon snapped into realization, and the boy turned back and joined in the din.

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!”

It was barely audible above the combined noise of Johnny’s and the bug’s screams, but it was a valiant war cry nonetheless.

Through the wails, Johnny noticed the ghost slowly pushing back upwards against the mantis. The redheaded rogue shot himself to a sitting position and shoved the ghost forward, and the insidious insect buckled. The cold metal of the bat reunited with the behemoth’s face, and as it reeled backward, PJ raised his volume just a little bit, pitched his arms back, and swung the bat right into the creature’s eye. After another round of shrieking, the mantis waved one arm in front of them, and with a tepid “peh”, it retreated back into the earth.

Johnny stared at the spot the mantis had been a second ago in shock, only turning back to the ghost as it floated back in his direction.

“We did it! We beat the bad guy with …uh…violence! And friendship! And violent friendship!” PJ exclaimed as he neared Johnny, his grin somehow resting on the verge of just off-looking enough to be intimidating.

The bully tried to get up, or scramble away, or anything, but his body betrayed him. A fist slowly and haltingly tried to meet the ghost, but even that only made it halfway to its destination before stopping, the limb quaking uselessly in the air. The seconds passed as the ghost stared at the shaking fist until finally he clasped his hand around it.

Johnny’s voice failed him once again, only letting out a small squeak. He could only stare.

After a few minutes, the pajama-clad lad let out an “Oh!”

“I think that’s Isabel and Max over there!”, he exclaimed. Johnny barely managed to turn his head to see a large smoky red arrow a few yards away. “I have to hurry home too, I sort of didn’t tell Lefty where I was going again and he’s probably going to be real mad if he finds out I left.”

“Bye Johnny! Thanks for everythiiiing!” the ghost cried as he flew away.

Johnny just stared forward for a few minutes, his body completely spent. His head tried to come up with reasons for what just happened, but to no avail.

It took about ten minutes for his legs to finally work again, and as he made his way back home to complete his mission, the thoughts nagged at his mind.

He fought…something. With a ghost. He had Friendship Fused with a ghost.

He had befriended a ghost.

He shook his head back and forth to try to clear his head. He got what he needed out of the…ghost…and now it was time to put his newfound knowledge to good use.

Operation Season’s Beatings was a go.

---

All things considered, the Activity Club had a rather uneventful morning. Early patrol had consisted of dealing with one minor spirit with a compulsion to spread gift wrap everywhere, and Isaac’s small kicks of wind made quick work of the litter.

The lunch bell rang, and Isabel hurried to her locker to put away her books. The four of them had promised to eat lunch together outside and possibly share what they had gotten with the others. She thought about how Isaac would try to play it off as if he hadn’t looked at his gift yet when he had been keeping the plush ninja bunny really badly hidden in his jeans pocket all morning and grinned.

Upon kicking the locker door open, she was greeted with what looked like a shoebox with red Santa wrapping paper awkwardly balancing above her books. The spectral quickly glanced around to see if she was being watched and just barely caught a glimpse of red retreating. Shrugging it off, she grabbed her prize and headed to the schoolyard.

Unsurprisingly, Isaac was gushing about the bunny, his eyes reminding her of those “canine eye inflation disease” posters her grandfather had put up in her room. It was a well-crafted rabbit, from what she could see, and the black ninja garb combined with a small metal headband was a nice touch.

“Oh man Izzy, you’re gonna love what Max got,” Ed chirped as she plopped down beside the three.

“I’m serious, whoever told my Secret Santa about this is dead,” Max groaned as he revealed a model train set from his box. Isabel laughed heartily. “My dad is never going to stop running this thing! It’ll be puffing around upstairs until Halloween!”

“How long did it take Stephen to figure it out, by the way?” she asked Ed, who mirrored her devious grin.

“Two periods and I’m pretty sure Ollie was in on it.”

“Do I even want to know what awful fate you brought upon that fool?”

“Hey, when I told him the alien was right behind him, I wasn’t lying. And the Velcro stuck pretty well, all things considered.”

After hearing Isaac gush about the bunny some more (she recalled a scant few times where his voice reached that high of a pitch) and watching Ed reveal his gift of some art supplies and an Optimus Prime robot, the kids turned their attention to Isabel’s red box.

“The tag just says ‘Guerra!’ on it with no sender, so we’re off to a good start already”, Max said dryly as she carefully tore at the paper.

Isaac complained that he wanted to use that paper for later, so Isabel removed it carefully as to make it as whole as possible. Soon the box was bare, and the kids shot each other gleeful looks. Isabel ripped the box open.

Everyone paused. The boys shot uncertain glances at their friend, who stared at the contents with the blankest look on her face any of them had ever seen.

The box was filled with spiders of various sizes, colors and materials. Felt spiders with pom-pom bodies and googly eyes stared innocently upwards, a drawing of a spider eating a dog was taped to the side of the box, and spiders crafted with pebbles and glue stubbornly stuck to the bottom.

There were three origami spiders scattered throughout the box, each done in a different style. One of them had red eyes, saw-tooth fangs and an oddly misshapen head.

There was a handwritten note taped to the lid.

“Guerra,

I heard you lost your spider pal. Having somebody you love leave you stings something awful. So I made you a bunch of spiders that will never die on you ever. Plus to give you something to remember your friend by.

-

PS. They eat dogs”

“They didn’t even write their name on it?” Isaac murmured as Isabel picked up the red-eyed origami spider, slowly turning it in her palm.

“Izzy?” Ed asked gently as his friend traced an hourglass shape into the spider’s body. She stole a glance behind her of the red-haired idiot she’d seen earlier, propped up against a tree just within her line of sight, doing what looked like his best not to fall asleep. “You OK?”

She turned to her friends with a small smile, tucking the odd spider into the deep pocket of her jacket.

“Yeah. I’m just fine.”

Arboreal or Mexican Alligator Lizard, Abronia graminea

Photos by Matthieu Berroneau on Flickr

This photographer on Instagram // Facebook

These photos have been posted with permission; do not remove credit or repost!

The Mexican alligator lizard is an endangered species of arboreal lizard native to the states of Veracruz and adjacent Puebla, Mexico. They grow to around 12 inches in length, are mainly insectivorous, and give birth to live young.

The species is threatened by illegal collection for the pet trade, deforestation, and degradation of habitat, largely through the conversion of land to agricultural use.

What Is This Terrifying Giant Sea Creature?

Hello.

This is mainly an account to use for @pnatsecretsanta. I don’t really use Tumblr all that much unless I’m lurking. It’s easier to find me on Discord or Reddit (pm me if you want that info, I guess.), but I might stick around if I feel like doing so later on.