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Man unintentionally teaches his Corgi sign language! 😊 Follow me for more smart puppers!

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Shop's been closed for a while now for in-person events, but it's time to reopen! Aug 23rd will see the launch of some sweet new items and some exciting updates over at featherbonestudio.com!

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I just think medieval snail ladies are neat.

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Remembering Rosa the sea otter

Hello Aquarium family. It’s with great sadness that we share that our beloved sea otter Rosa passed away today. At 24 years old, Rosa was the oldest resident otter at the Aquarium and one of our most experienced surrogate moms, having raised 15 stranded sea otter pups in her time with us. 

While Rosa spent the last few months behind the scenes getting extra special care from our staff, she was the matriarch of the Sea Otters exhibit. Beloved and cherished by millions of visitors and fans of the live Sea Otter Cam, she was instantly recognizable thanks to her blonde head (eclipsed only by Ivy as our most grizzled of kelp grizzlies) and her signature head-all-the-way-back swimming style.

“Rosa was one of our most playful sea otters, and even at 24 years old, she would still be seen frolicking and wrestling with the younger otters when she instigated it,” said Melanie Oerter, curator of mammals. “Rosa was usually found sleeping against the window while on exhibit with her chin tucked tight into her chest and her tail swishing back and forth.”

After being found stranded as a four-week-old pup in September 1999, Rosa became part of the Aquarium family before our sea otter surrogacy program even took shape. Our Sea Otter Program staff raised her by hand for nearly seven months before releasing her to the wild. 

Rosa eventually returned to the Aquarium once again in March 2002 when she didn’t take to life outside of human care, and she immediately became a fixture in the formative years of our sea otter surrogacy program as a caring adoptive mother for rescued pups destined for wild release.

She was a delight to work with, though she certainly had her expectations of our staff according to the many Sea Otter Mammalogists who trained (were trained by?) Rosa over the years. 

"Rosa was an incredibly smart otter! Generally calm and patient with the staff. However, she could be defiant at times and there would be no convincing her to do something she did not want to do," said Oerter. "She would often just look at us or swim away. I believe she was the one who was really training us all of these years. I certainly learned a lot from working with such an incredible otter. It has been a privilege and to say we will miss her is understated."

Rosa relaxed into retirement from surrogacy in 2019, acting as a companion and cornerstone in the ever-changing raft of otters in our care. 

Wild female sea otters live between 15 and 20 years, and reaching the age of 24 is a testament to the exceptional care Rosa received throughout her life from our Veterinary and Animal Care teams. In recent years, she began showing signs of age-related health concerns.  In the last few weeks, her health had been deteriorating. After an exam, the veterinary and animal care teams made the difficult choice to humanely euthanize Rosa because those health conditions were compromising her quality of life. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by her caretakers.

Rosa’s legacy lives on both at the Aquarium with our other resident sea otters Kit, Selka, Ivy, and Ruby, and in the wild, where sea otter pups she raised continue to raise pups of their own, contributing to the recovery of their species and their ecosystems along the California coast. 

Rosa was an inspiration to millions as a charismatic ambassador for her threatened species while playing a leading role in the story of sea otter recovery from near-extinction during the fur trade. Rosa will be greatly missed by all of us who got to know her over the years.

To celebrate Rosa’s long life, please feel free to share photos and stories of your encounters with Rosa at the Aquarium in the comment section on this post, in her memory and for the staff and volunteers grieving her loss. Thank you all for being such a big part of Rosa’s life. 🦦♥️

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this song just won dougdoug's rosa the sea otter memorial fundraiser art contest, benefitting the monterey bay aquarium.

rosa helped raise so many sea otter pups and bring her species back from the brink of extinction, and lived to be one of the oldest sea otters ever at 24 years old.

this is one of the best tribute songs I have ever heard in my life.

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I really love the concept of the hope chest when adapted to modern values. Putting aside nice things in a chest as you grow up so that when you move out you have things to make a home with???? like???? sign me up?????

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visitor at our museum made a comment today that made me question a lot of things so i'm making a poll about it

the scenario: it is a beautiful day outside and by beautiful i of course mean "cloudy with a chance of rain". sky is gray. smells rainy. possibly already drizzling. you don't really know How rainy it's going to get, but there will definitely be Sky Water happening for a good portion of the day.

also feel free to mention where you're from, if you think it's relevant or just want to give a shout out to your location

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i love things that come in glass jars because once its over the glass jar is mine

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i feel so out of touch with current events and the daily lives of my friends and acquaintances and estranged relatives. i should remake instagram. i should remake twitter. what am i thinking. actually i should delete everything and live in a wooden house on shore. i should keep tumblr. maybe i only really need a laptop. i should become a luddite. i should get a flip phone. but not 100% of the time maybe 50/50 cause what about the uni app. the poste apps. the qr code app. whatsapp. all the apps. everything in the world is about the apps. we are life forms based on apps. oh god i am so overwhelmed. isn't anyone else tired. maybe i should get more out of touch actually. i should burn all my electronics. but my beloved blog. but i love music. and art. I should

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fasjhghajf got a new firefox addon that lets you set themes to automatically switch to between specific times, set it to switch to Scary Red at 1am to scare me into going to bed and it works I got startled so bad when it suddenly changed to thsi fajgghasfj

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i miss science class bro. we dont put things under microscopes as much as we should

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current fan creation landscape is kinda like if you went to a party with a homemade cake and everyone takes a slice and silently thumbs up at you with no attempt to start a conversation except for occasionally some guy sits in the corner with a tape recorder critiquing the cake as though he was a restaurant critic and another guy is handing the cake to an uber driver like "yeah i need you to find a restaurant that makes cake like this so i can have more of it" and the only person that's talked to you in 30 minutes is a very sweet little guy who was like "hey i liked your cake" and then ran away apologizing for bothering you the moment you said thank you.

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im so upset that i can't invite all my mutuals over for arts and crafts . literally my ultimate favourite hanging out activity we all have so much to teach each other