Can I ask about the « there is a lobster somewhere »? What happened??
Some teenage boys were seen removing a lobster from a tank. Then seen walking around with it. Then walking around without the lobster. Then leaving the property without the lobster
Possibilities included:
Put lobster back (not seen)
Put lobster in backpack (not seen)
Put lobster somewhere 'funny' (possible)
Sad lobster skittering around under a shelf somewhere
I was able to find the lobster in a different tank in the seafood department, and upon the owner's deliberation over whether the lobster was still safe for consumption or if it was now inedible and as such to be 'disposed of', offered to purchase it, if only to spare a living critter the potential indignity of being thrown into a trash compactor, alive OR dead, after all the trouble of being removed from the ocean in the first place.
I don't know what my plan was. I didn't have an aquarium and was not prepared for an immortal pet OR lobstercide, and like. Releasing it into the ocean didn't seem environmentally sound, either.
In the end, it was determined that it was likely still fit for human consumption and moved to a quarantine tank.
Not sure how I feel about that. I grew admittedly a bit too attached a bit too fast
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Okay, I haven't wanted to talk much about the peafowl lately, been just kinda dealing with Stan's passing, but! I have news I don't want to keep quiet, so here we go with a little announcement.
I've been helping a friend of mine with a bunch of peafowl genetics work lately, as he's trying to prove out a really neat phenotype of speckled and white peafowl that showed up in his breeding stock, and he just spent tens of thousands of dollars importing two new morphs from Europe: European violet (aka, my dream morph) and Ultramarine (pretty and only otherwise being produced by TWO breeders in the WORLD). When Bill heard about Stan, he asked if I was going to go to a large farm auction that's a few hours from my house. I don't, normally, since it's a few hours from my house and the auctions usually make me kinda sad when it comes to peafowl (they stress out SO MUCH) even though it's cool to see how much they're going for at a wider audience auction.
Then he told me he would be going, and that if I wanted to come down the day before the auction, he'd bring me another male, to replace Stan. I had already made plans to hang onto Bismuth, at least for a few years, and to pick up babies from Indie x Arcana/Eclipse this november, including a male, so I didn't really need another male, and don't have the cash for one anyway. He said no, he meant one of the split EUV males from last year's first-USA breeding. For free. As a thank you for helping him.
To put this into perspective, importing the birds is a ~$10k affair, per bird. I had fully resigned myself to never even SEEING one of these birds in person, much less ever owning one. Even if someone else got them imported, they would remain thousands of dollars for the first few years, and quickly become mixed with other stuff, potentially even be lost by people breeding to purple. He went in on a group import with another breeder and they have both just started selling the full-color birds for over $2k apiece (alongside Ultramarine, which before their import was bred by TWO people in the WORLD, and babies from that are going for almost $7k each, but EUV is more widely spread). Splits (like the one I will be getting) are being let go for $750. This is also the color I have desperately wanted since I first saw them 8-10 years ago (though I believe they've been around slightly longer), but that I had resigned myself to never actually having.
To put it mildly, I'm probably going to burst into tears when I see Bill and this bird. It's going to be super embarrassing. And then I'm going to have to build more pens. And then I'm going to have to get as plain-blue, pure-indian blue hens as I can find, and become one of the most serious curators of plain pure EUV in the US, because I know the other two who have them currently will be outcrossing to other patterns/colors immediately and the people buying them will likely be doing the same, and everyone will be clamoring to make them into high Spaldings ASAP, or won't know not to cross them to purples and wreck the color.
Here's the sire cock, the one imported:
You will notice that this bird is purple in full sun, from the sunny side. That's the main difference between European violet and US purple- a US purple looks blue until you get the right angle on the sun vs the bird vs the camera, and you have to get the bird between you and the sun, so the purple is often in the shadow side- visible to the eye but not the camera. EUV is just purple. Even from the sunny side!!
And the Ultramarine, in case you were wondering about their color:
(pics reposted w/ permission from Bill)
The breeder is Spring Creek Peafowl, and in case anyone is secretly a peafowl breeder or knows other peafowl breeders with too much money that want in on a new color morph, he DOES have UM pairs and EUV hens (and more split males) for sale currently, for less than the only other person in the US that has them. They're still pricey, but cheaper. I WISH I had the extra to have my friend add on an EUV hen, but alas, I will have to wait to make my own in a few years. Even just the opportunity to do so is something I never expected to have!
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I'm in my feels thinking about how fucked up the TOS crew ended like
Kirk got stuck in the nexus from ~2293 to 2371 only to die again, for good, as soon as he got out? Come on. come on man.
Bones got old. like really old. and didn't get to see Kirk again??? It's been a while since I watched the TNG episode with McCoy, I don't remember what he says, but he was like 150 years old. Did he ever even see Kirk before he got stuck in the Nexus. Did he ever see Spock? (I'd hope so, Spock disappears years later, in Picard if I'm correct?)
Spock was... around doing Spock stuff. And then Kirk died and did Spock even know? did someone tell Spock that his literal soulmate died. twice. and then Spock got stuck in another universe, a reality slightly different from his own, where everyone is younger than him and Jim is not really Jim and he has his own Spock anyway and his planet is gone and he lived the rest of his days in the Kelvin timeline, alone.
And Scotty got stuck in a transporter buffer for 75 years. That's so long. They had to tell him Kirk was gone? (although, they were together when that happened, weren't they? they were on the Enterprise-B, technically Scotty knew that Kirk was "dead" didn't he? I guess spending 75 years stuck in a buffer mode will screw up your memory though.) Did he see Spock again? Did he see Bones again before either of them died?
Basically the only ones we didn't see explicitly (or implicitly) die or disappear of the OG crew are Uhura, Chekov and Sulu. Where were they? what were they doing? did they know about Kirk? about Scotty? about Spock?
Sorry but like. that is so fucked up. why does nobody talk about this!!!
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Thinking about a Cora lives AU where Law just. Doesn't get sick after Amber Lead Disease. He takes good care of himself and generally his immune system is pretty solid (and he avoids his crew members if they have smth contagious like the flu or a stomach bug). But eventually his good luck runs out and he catches a cold, just a minor one that makes him a little feverish and gives him the standard cough and runny nose. Bepo notices him swaying on his feet and immediately sends him to bed (even tho Law protests like a stubborn brat).
When Cora finds out Law is sick he flips his SHIT. Literally he falls flat on his ass and catches himself on fire. Then he rushes all around the Polar Tang grabbing medical books on how to treat colds and preparing a compress and shouting at the cook to make hot soup for Law and digging into the cabinets for medicine and then he's hauling ASS to Law's room
Law wakes up from a nap and looks over to see Cora sitting at his bedside looking at him like this
And he has to reassure him no Cora-san I'm not dying, it's just a cold, yes Cora-san I'm going to be okay. You worry too much
(But Cora's paranoid bc he's only seen Law sick once before and that was when he was dying, literally days away from succumbing to the poison eating at him, so of course there's trauma there, of course he sees Law cough one time and thinks the world is ending 😭)
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