HEAR YE, HEAR YE,

I just love the "they're more scared of you than you are of them" thing because, yeah, Earth is a Deathworld filled with very dangerous beings, but also everyone in it is scared and would rather not interact with each other unless necessary

Alien: This is a very dangerous animal!

Human: Don't worry, we'll just walk away.

Alien: But it's watching us!

Human: It's hoping we leave already, so we're leaving.

Alien: It... It is?

Human: Yeah, it is more scared of us than we are of it. Let's go before the fight instinct kicks in because then it'll become a dangerous animal

Alien:...

2015 - Here are some gifs of Donald Trump being attacked by a bald eagle named Uncle Sam, literally the least patriotic thing that can happen to an American. [video]

ITS ALIVE

Is anyone else's AO3 down it won't load and @ao3org hasn't posted anything today..... I was mid fic

best thing tumblr ever did for me is the term "rotating it in my mind". it's really true that sometimes you think about something real hard but you can't tell what the thoughts are exactly. it's revolutionary stuff, i might even say

THERE IS NO ESCAPEE!!!

TEACH YOUR KIDS

I REPEAT TEACH YOUR KIDS

It doesn't matter what you think they will or won't do. Teach them about internet safety, safe sex, what drugs can do to you, teach them that they can come to you if they are in trouble because they won't get in trouble in the moment! Help them!

ONE LAST TIME TEACH YOUR KIDS!

I want to right it but I have no clue how to start it!! ...... I hate writers block.

Okay but like, a fantasy/no capes au where Tim is a selkie, one who was fiercely protective over his pelt- but none of the Bats know that. One day, when Dick tried picking the innocuous-looking coat up from the floor, Tim “randomly” lashed out and bit him. 

The story of the Australian white ibis is hysterical in many ways.

These birds are native to Australia, yes, but they're not technically native to the cities. Or, well, kinda?

So, Australian ibises typically lived in inland wetland areas. Australia, however, is a dry-ass continent, and the swamps aren't always wet, so whenever there's a dry spell and the swamps dry up and the food dwindles, the ibis colonies will migrate to the coast for food. I suppose when their presence caused enough competition with existing coastal birds they'd fly back inland and hopefully the wetlands would be wet again.

Enter the Europeans - the ibis didn't have much contact with the white man for a hundred years or so, wetlands were too annoying to actively clear, so the white man mostly stayed out and the ibis generally doesn't leave while there's food. Or maybe they did, and the white man towns were too tiny to register for them and they just did their usual thing.

Come the 1970s, severe drought conditions once again led to ibises to flee the wetlands (and the wetlands were probably extra hurt and extra unable to recover due to water diversion for agriculture).

They went for the coasts, and there, due to the absolutely boom in Australian urban sprawl, they found....

Huh. That's new. But was there food?

The answer was yes there was, and not only that, it was almost like the food set out specifically for them!

I am of course talking about bins.

Bins have a couple of nifty features if you're an ibis. One, they contain food scraps, especially protein scraps. Two, the openings tend to be fairly far off the ground, so rats and other flightless creatures can't get to the food (the cockroaches can, which is a plus for the ibis because they eat bugs!)

Two, the bottoms are low, and ibises are wading birds so they have long legs and long beaks. Seagulls, crows and pigeons all have to wait for the bin to be fairly full - ibises can get in there at half full!

And three, natural environment for the ibis is diving into a fetid stagnant swamp with nasty bacteria to eat wriggling things. Their beaks and heads are specially adapted for that - they're bald, and the skin is specially adapted for diving into gross places. Their beaks are sharp and dextrous, so they can open packaging or simply pierce it to get at the tasty, tasty leftover fried chicken or whatever. And if the chicken's already got maggots? Fantastic, they love eating bugs.

So they don't wanna go back. Why the hell would they go back? And with every new drought, even more ibis leave the drying wetlands, find the cities, and decide to stay.

I mean, there's probably a selection effect - the birds that are scared of humans eventually return to their home wetlands, but the ones that aren't decide they're just gonna start nesting in the urban parks. Wetlands are also getting drier and drier (water use issues) so the wetland populations are crashing while the urban populations are exploding.

I think, the bin chicken has to be a symbol of luck. It is so insane to me that the human-designed environment ended up being an ibis paradise, where we've systematically murdered all their enemies and established abundant self-replenishing food sources that they and only them can access.

May you be as lucky as the Australian white ibis. May you leave your normal life for foreign shores and face not the expected adversity, but instead abundance and safety beyond your wildest dreams.

inside me there are two lungs. and one liver. one stomach. a few meters of intestine. there's a lot inside me actually