Building on the favourite animal ask, another Very Important Question: favourite PREHISTORIC animal? And why? (I've always loved gorgonopsids and pterosaurs like anurognathus, but a new favourite is aquilolamma the eagle shark. They're just very cute).

I feel like my top favorites are pretty pedestrian, but I like prehistoric deer a lot!

Megaloceros giganteus aka Irish elk

Sinomegaceros ordosianus & Sinomegaceros yabei

Eucladoceros dicranios

Cervalces scotti

If there was one animal literacy thing I could change with a wave of a wand, it would be increasing people's understanding of how dangerous megafauna are. I think that in the US (and probably other Western countries too), we're so removed from wildlife and even large domesticated animals that people really have no perspective on how much a big animal can fuck you up. Even if they're "gentle."

This is a discussion going on on Twitter, too, the last few days: there was a thing where an Iditarod musher shot a moose to protect their team, and a lot of people are confused as to why that needed to happen. Apparently this moose had been hanging around the course for quite a while and was becoming quite dangerous to the sled dog teams. Moose are territorial and not to be fucked with. Everyone from Alaska or areas with moose are like "yup, that's just reality."

Same thing with the bison birth I watched last year. Folk really thought the staff should be in the habitat on the ground with the bison herd, helping with the birth. Sure, that's what we do with cows if we have to, but... bison are definitely not cows and, again, will squish you.

People tend to get it more with the predators. Few people will argue that a cougar or an alligator or a bear isn't dangerous. I think people kinda go both ways on wild pigs / boars depending on their experience. But herbivores or things that don't look traditionally pointy... it just kinda doesn't click.

Any large animal is probably stronger than you think and more likely to hurt you than you realize. Be it a dolphin, an elk, a sea lion, or even an emperor penguin... just don't go near them, buds.

(via "Eyes Wide Open; Abstract Buffalo Melody" Throw Pillow for Sale by Molly62)

Just to tie in my two themes this month----

Additional notes, because poll options apparently limit their characters:

Frodo finds great peace in watching the tides rise and fall throughout each day. He attends all the ranger programs on birds and seashells and fills pages with sketches and poetry.

Sam meticulously selects postcards in the gift shop for each of his friends and spends a whole morning writing and addressing them. He also buys Junior Ranger hats for his kids and a variety of Appalachian jams for Rosie.

Park rangers launch a Missing Person search for Aragorn when they realize his car's been parked at Avalanche Creek for three days. The search runs for almost a week before he comes strolling out the opposite side of the park, supporting one of the SAR techs who twisted an ankle during the search.

Legolas is first drawn to Olympic for the towering, mossy temperate rainforests, but the ground goes out from under him when he steps onto Second Beach for the first time. He spends an entire day watching the light and tides shift on the sea stacks, and he leaves feeling both full and hollow, like a bell that's just been rung.

Mammoth is only Gimli's first stop on a cavern tour, followed by Jewel and Wind Caves and Carlsbad Caverns. Wind Cave is his favorite for the unusual formations. He makes an obnoxious tween boy cry in Carlsbad for breaking off a speleothem.

Boromir is on a tour of military parks. He asks so many questions to the intern working the info station at Fort Sumter the kid has to go find the park historian. His favorite site is Vicksburg because that place was buckwild, though he silently judges one of the reenactors for his clumsy handling of a black powder rifle.

Merry also makes stops in Jurassic and Dinosaur National Monuments. He watches every park video, takes selfies in front of all the fossil exhibits, and earns his Junior Ranger badge at each one. He buys a keychain for Pippin.

Pippin actually gets four citations, mostly for trying to stick his hands in mud pots. He doesn't mean anything by it---he's just so delighted and curious about the bizarre landscape. He winds up with several thermal burns and dumps a king's ransom in the donation box on his last day.

Gandalf gets dinged by rangers for not paying the $5 fee for Trunk Bay, but he acts senile until they eventually decide to drop it. He gets postcards from everyone and responds to none of them.

Faramir and Eowyn are traveling together and do many of the same hikes and rides, but they do have some different preferences off-trail. Eowyn drags Faramir to a rodeo and the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole, and he goads her into Ranger Shelton Johnson's living history programs on the Buffalo Soldiers in Yosemite.

Eomer is bike-packing on his sport cruiser motorcycle. He goes to Roosevelt south unit for the wild horse herds but ends up spending half a day watching a prairie dog town. He takes 400 photos of them, mostly blurry, and texts them to Eowyn.

If animals, real or imaginary, feature heavily in your story, give this a read. In fiction, carnivores are frequently depicted as incredibly vicious and as attacking every other living creature on sight, whereas herbivores are depicted as gentle, benign, and typically only hurt humans on accident if they panic, such as by rearing or stampeding. This is bullshit. Firstly, many herbivores are incredibly vicious and are in fact far more likely to attack a person just for being nearby. This especially goes for large herd ungulates like rhinos, hippos, Cape buffalo, and moose. All of these are highly aggressive to humans and in general. Bison are considerably more chill than their African cousins, but they still send tourists flying (sometimes to their graves) in Yellowstone due to people trying to get too close and treat them like a petting zoo. Deer, often imagined as the pinnacle of fearful and delicate, will typically choose flight over fight. . .but should they choose to fight, especially a male in rut or a female with a fawn, they can and will kill a human being. Even a rabbit will do its best to fuck someone up if they feel they are threatened. Remember, every animal will fight for its life with all its got, and to herbivores, EVERYTHING is a potential threat. If an animal they’re not familiar with as “safe” is nearby, they will assume it’s a threat. There are some prey animals that are surprisingly docile---videos I’ve seen of people interacting with a wild potoroo and a Bosavi wooly rat show them to be incredibly chill, and the quokka is famous for its lack of fear towards humans—but these are the exception, not the rule. Wild carnivores aren’t cute pets just waiting for the right special animal-loving protagonist to take them home, but they aren’t these constantly-aggressive, constantly-angry, constantly-ravenous monsters either that so much media makes out. They most certainly will hunt when they’re hungry, and in the rare instance they decide to make a meal of a human, that human is indeed fucked (it’s hilarious to me how many people think they could fight off a lion, tiger, etc.) but unless it’s truly starving and desperate* most of them are not going to make a point of pursuing a potential meal, human or otherwise, to the exclusion of all else. Especially not if there’s other options around. Why expend all these energy chasing after the protagonists if there’s literally anything else they could catch and eat instead? And why do so many of these monster-animals seem so interested in catching and killing the protagonists, but not in actually eating them; a ridiculous number of predators in fiction will straight-up leave the body of a person they JUST killed behind in order to catch another human. Why? This makes no sense, I don’t care if it’s a fictional animal like a dragon or manticore, it’s not conducive to survival. Unless this animal is MEANT to have an actual sentient grudge (which CAN happen, a man in Russia once shot a tiger and took its kill; the tiger waited for him in his cabin when he returned) do away with the Super Persistent Predator trope. Especially when it’s an animal like a great white shark, whose preferred prey not only isn’t humans, we’re actually downright nasty to them because we don’t have the fat content of the seals and sea lions they typically eat (most great white “attacks” are just them checking us out or mistaking us for a delicious sea mammal) There are exceptions to this rant, though most are small creatures. For instance, stoats do engage in “surplus killing” and stockpile the bodies, and shrews are very aggressive little predators due to having incredibly fast metabolisms that mean they basically have to eat all the time to stay alive. And, yes, there are some large ones; the tiger shark will eat anything, bull sharks are pretty bad to be around, and the polar bear has actively hunted humans when the opportunity presents itself. But as with the “super gentle chill wild herbivore that is basically domesticated” they are the exceptions. And I’m sure you know of other exceptions; the fact they are “exceptions” in the first place means it’s NOT the norm. If there’s a reason the animals in your story are hyper-aggressive and persistent to a point they seem almost consciously evil, that’s fine---genetically engineered that way, for instance---but have there be a REASON. It’s seldom the default in nature. Think of it this way: You’d fight a lot harder to save your life than you would to get a hamburger (unless saving your life required that hamburger). Consider that when you write real animals, and when you craft fictional ones.  (* Which admittedly most real life man-eaters are; most large mammals that turn to actively hunting humans have been sick, elderly, or injured in such a way they can’t pursue their normal prey. But in fiction, the animals that are absurdly focused on eating humans alone always seem in perfect health and are seldom revealed as otherwise, or even having a reason at all. It’s just presented as their default behavior. Which it is not. That’s the point of this rant.)

It's been a long time since large herds of bison roamed what is now Treaty 7 territory in Alberta, but Clayton Whitney, manager of the Tsuut'ina Nation's buffalo paddock, can see the impact reintroduction projects are having on the bison population and the surrounding wildlife.

"It's amazing how much animals want to come on this side of the fence with the bison," he told The Current. "We get everything from cougars and bears and moose and deer, elk."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

In the absence of human influence wildlife is thriving in and around the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

Przewalski's horse herd

Common raccoon dogs, relatives of the tanuki

A black stork carrying materials for its nest. Black storks are included in Ukraine's national red list of threatened animal species

Another species on the red list: the lesser spotted eagle

The first record of wild European bison in Kyiv Polissya for over 300 years

Mother lynx with her cub

Several packs of wolves have established themselves in the area

Another family; this time wild moose

A couple of deer saying hello to the camera

These pictures were made using "camera traps" set up by Ukrainian zoologist Serhiy Hashchak who has been observing and monitoring wildlife in Chornobyl for years. Currently this was made impossible by the ongoing invasion and war threatening both human and animal life.

For any Polish or Belarussian people out there...

I got me a small herd of zubr/wisent/European bison in Planet Zoo. :) Four cows and a bull. They live in a habitat with a small sounder of wild boar and three bachelor red deer bucks whose job description is "Stand around and look majestic."

(Never mind the bare habitat. Eventually, hopefully, it'll be terraced and forested with a big waterfall and a stream running through it if I can make it all work like I want it to. I'm still a noob with building in this game...)

 The Wisent, also known as the european bison, European wood bison, the wisen, the zubr, or the European buffalo, is a Eurasian species of bison and one of two extant species of bison, alongside the American bison. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, wisent became extinct in much of Europe and Asia, surviving into the 20th century only in northern-central Europe and the northern Caucasus Mountains. During the early years of the 20th century, these wisent were hunted to extinction in the wild and only 48 individuals surviving in zoos and museums. Thankfully extensive captive breeding programs where started in the 1920s and today wisents number in the thousands and have been reintroduced throughout Poland, Austria, Azerbajin, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Scotland, and England. They can be found throughout open woodlands and montane steppes where they live in mixed sex herds of around a dozen individuals and feed upon grasses, sedges, leaves, shoots, roots, and pine needles. Wisent are occasionally preyed upon by brown bears and grey wolves. Reaching around 7 to 11ft in length, 5 to 7ft tall at the shoulder, and 1,000 to 2,000lbs in weight wisent are the largest surviving European land animal. On average Wisent are taller, less heavy, and darker in coloration than American bison and sport more strongly curved horns. The rutting season occurs from August through to October, and after a 264 day pregnancy mothers will give birth to a single calf, which will remain by there mothers side for 7 to 13 months. Under ideal conditions a wisent will reach sexual maturity at around 2 to 4 years and may live up to 30.

Oh yeah. I'd say the transformers baring the beastformers ie Maxamals, Predacons and Ravage their food web is N/A. In a world like TFP they're basically all n/a except for Predaking and he drinks cubes. I'm leaning TFP since i know it best.

Orcas, Dolphins, and fricken octapi would definitely terrorize any Cons in the water. As would the larger sharks.

And humans being omniverous we could get energon from cyber plants, other cyber animals and just cronch the crystals raw as well as drinking cubes of refined energon. There's evidence even as far back as two million years ago our ancestors were hunting megafauna to extinction. And being turned into robots to serve Deceptacon overlords? People would be Pissed. Homo Sapiens techni would be a terror to the Deceptacons as would most megafauna. Scraplets with a vendetta that wouldn't eat you alive just chase you untill you colapsed untill you were too tired to run anymore.

Can you imagine a herd of bison or moose? They will ef up a mofo, and his vehicle. The poor vehicons wouldn't stand a chance agains cyber-ungulants.

Tarantulas where ever he is would be over the moon though. Here you have mechanical organisms retained their organic body plans. And now their easier to fix! Surgons being able to remove and replace wonky organs more easily. Even in the Pit, he'd be swooning with joy. Shockwave would also find this intriguing.

This isn't even getting into the whole Unicron at the center of the earth thing. Would that make us resistant to Dark Energon or more susceptible to it?

Do you think Homo Sapiens techni would be able to transform? Cause in the cosmology Primus is a benevolent diety. Would he adopt the Bastard Children Unicron abandoned? Especially if Optimus did something with the matrix to intervene?

Yeppp, so they absolutely are not prepared for this :)

Goddamnnnnn technoorganic cephalopods would be terrifying, and honestly giving them longer lifespans as a treat WILL probably mean they get to learn more— not necessarily more intelligent, sure, but they'll get more time to apply it. This Will Have Consequences

Also consider: cyberformed dogs. And I don't mean the little yappy fuckers, I mean large hunting dogs and sheep dogs. Imagine how fucking cool they would be, and they too are persistence hunters.

Nopeeeee, ohh. Oh they are in for such a time. Moose are so much bigger than you would anticipate, and I feel like cyberforming would make a lot of these larger herbivores even more bold.

Also bears, don't forget bears.

Tara would be! I've been thinking a lot about Tara but in tfp, and I imagine his little technoorganic spark would be in love with this place regardless of which characterization we're rolling with here. Hell, in this situation, I can see him turning against the cons if we're rolling with a more beast wars style. After all in BW didn't he try to overthrow Megs?? If we're going for Earthspark Tara I feel like he's liable to just fuck off into the CyberEarth woods to study it all. Shockwave's gonna be stealing ideas from Mother Nature: enhanced addition

ooo ohhh adding dark energon into this shit will be interesting as fuck, because we KNOW that shit interacts in interesting ways with energon and if it interacts with the technoorganics... It wouldn't be a surprise if some of the CyberEarth animals that die don't stay dead. zOMBIE SHIT Y'ALL

Adding transforming into this gives us so many more fun things

Not even just including your typical humanoid to vehicle or animal, but being able to transform different weaponry— technoorganic humans and animals alike. Can you imagine if a wolf could have a form more optimized for damage and one more optimized for speed? New opportunities for amphibious lifestyles?? Taking retractable claws and fangs to a whole new level?? I'm staring at a Curious Archives video on "The Future Is Wild" so I might be in the same spec bio heaven mode as Tara is. It would be so goddamn fun if Primus did intervene for the sake of his brother's wronged children, if he (and Optimus, to some degree) wanted to give what's here of humanity and nature a better chance.

in the future when everyone is vegan what will be the future for farm animals?

I don't believe that we will see a future where everyone is an ethical vegan, I think it's more likely that the climate change, resource scarcity and growing alternative protein sources will mean that animal agriculture is gradually scaled back, and will likely be something only the rich can afford.

Even in a hypothetical future where there are no animals being farmed though, those who do remain would live out their lives in sanctuaries and we simply would not breed any more of them. Keep in mind that, as much as they are deserving of our ethical consideration, these are artificial creations, bred to get as big as possible as fast as possible, produce more eggs than is natural or even sustainable, more milk, more wool etc. Most domesticated breeds could not expect to survive in the wild.

What I would personally love to see is the return of native duminants like the auroch to Britain instead of sheep, bison more widespread in the US instead of herds of cattle everywhere you look, wild boars instead of pigs, wild birds instead of domesticated chickens. This would not only obviously be better for the environment and for our biodiversity, but would would allow for rewilding of massive tracts of land currently devoted solely to grazing and feeding farmed animals.

「eddie munson X gn!reader • roadtrip!AU」

3.5k words | prev | next | masterlist | ao3 warnings: none. happy reading! ;) songs of the chapter: eyes of fire - rainbow • call on me - big brother & the holding company, janis joplin • lighter touch - heart

Sunday, July 27

Eddie Munson had hit the jackpot with the tour he chose based on name only.

You both woke up at almost eight, somehow closer than you were when you went to sleep the night before. His hand was still over yours and your feet and legs had met and intertwined under the quilts. None of you commented on it, but the heat of his skin still felt like a burn — a good burn, if possible — for a few hours after you both had left the tent.

Breakfast was made of snacks you retrieved from the storage box — the dining room served breakfast, but you had talked to Eddie about not going back there, and you were both serious about it.

And at the right time you went to the meeting point of the Circle Of Fire tour, and a bus was there waiting for you.

Eddie was thrilled about not having to go on a hike or something.

The tour was absolutely spectacular. It was a whole day itinerary, and it stopped at the most popular sites throughout the park. Granted, you had to leave the bus and walk a little bit around those areas if you wanted to have the best views, but it wasn’t anything near an actual trail, and Eddie’s feet —  not wearing the proper shoes — thanked.

Your first stops were the biggest geysers, Old Faithful and the Deep Blue, and all the other smaller ones around those. The colors of the waters and the smoke that rose from them were otherworldly sights, and when Old Faithful erupted your eyes filled with tears from so much emotion. Eddie said nothing, but you felt his arm touching yours, and when you looked at him he was also enraptured by the sight.

You kept heading up on the road, and some people asked the bus driver and the guide accompanying you to stop for pictures or more attentive sightings of certain specific spots. There was a turn at some point, and you left the bus to appreciate a waterfall. Eddie commented he’d like to be under the waterfall, his hair already damp from sweat as the sun was relentless in the sky, and you laughed.

Reaching the canyon, you walked a bit more than you had so far before. You actually observed more of the other tourists around you than you did of the nature itself. You just found it beautiful how so many of you were gathered to appreciate the Earth in the same way, with the same awe. How enraptured by the natural beauty around all of you were, sharing that experience alongside other humans, remembering how you too were part of nature.

Eddie observed you. You couldn’t help but feel his eyes on you as you were people-watching. You tried to hide your smiles about it. You weren’t sure you managed it.

Going down the valley, at the last part of the tour, the bus went slower as it followed the Yellowstone River like you and Eddie did the day before. At some point you heard a gasp from someone on the other side of the bus corridor, and when the bus stopped and you all walked outside, there was a herd of wild bisons strolling by across the river. You swooned at the sight, and remembered how you wanted to go to the Zoo in Sioux Falls — that felt like months ago, even if it hadn’t even been a week since. But the sun on its way down behind the bisons as they walked together, stopped to eat some grass, the younger ones in some kind of play or rubbing against their mothers — that was so much better.

You might have shed a tear or two.

Eddie might have dried them for you with the tips of his thumbs, hands carefully cradling your face.

Your heart might have almost stopped with the gentle caress.

“Thought you were terrified of all kinds of wildlife?” you asked teasingly once you went back into the bus and sat side by side.

Eddie had retreated his notebook from his backpack and was drafting what looked like a drawing of a bison. He looked at you with a confused face before seemingly remembering what he had said at the motel and chuckling. Maybe he agreed that it felt like it had happened so long ago.

“Well, you’re a very brave soul, clearly. I’m taking inspiration from you,” he answered earnestly, a sweet grin on his lips and you smiled back at him. Then his smile turned into a smirk. “And if a bison attacked us, I’d just throw you at it and run for my life.” He shrugged and you rolled your eyes, hiding a chuckle behind your wrist.

Nearing the lake, once again a beautiful sigh: another herd, of deers this time. They were even further away than the bisons, across the point where the river turned to the lake. The bus stopped once again, and you cried once again, and Eddie hugged your shoulders to comfort you and to bask in the sight with you. “Deers aren’t as scary,” he whispered in your ear, making you laugh.

By the time the bus left you back at the campground, the sun was starting to set and you were starving. You and Eddie only shared a single look before heading to the restaurant nearby, knowing that you wouldn’t be the only ones to have that idea. Luckily, since most people were in bigger groups, you and Eddie were some of the first ones to get there and were able to get a table without waiting longer than fifteen minutes.

The majority of your dinner was spent in silence, basking in the afterglow of the wonderful sightings of the day, and because you were both tired to your bones. The restaurant was right by the lake, so you were able to spend dinner with another majestic landscape, if just to finish the great day with a cherry on top.

You and Eddie walked back to your campsite slowly, the night breeze giving you chills, but Eddie’s arm and shoulders touching yours with every step you took made you forget about the cold real quickly. You gathered clothes from your bags in the van and went for showers. The water wasn’t hot, but it was warm enough to give your sore back and feet some much needed relief.

When you finished, Eddie was once again waiting for you. He hummed another song on your walk back, and the repetitive routine of it all brought a smile to your lips. He entered the tent, you went in right after him, and once more you lied down facing each other. But he seemed closer this time.

“I think this was one of the best days of my life,” you said, a secret whisper again shared only between him, you, and the stars above you.

“Top three, no doubt,” he agreed and you both chuckled.

Some of your neighbors were having a campfire, the light of it illuminating your tent. You could see him almost clearly. The night was cold, and you were practically buried under all your quilts, yet Eddie’s cheeks were somehow pink. You wanted more than anything to reach out and touch him, see if his skin would warm you up, see if it was as soft as it looked.

You felt his hand reach for yours on the mattress between you, as if the thoughts surrounding you were surrounding him too. And the déjà-vu from the day before made you smile again.

“Can’t wait to see what awaits us tomorrow in this land of adventures, my liege,” he murmured. You giggled at the nickname, nodded in agreement to his statement, and bit your lips in excitement.

His eyes dropped to watch the movement. Just for a second. Before raising to meet yours again.

His brown eyes reminded you of the bison earlier, and you chuckled.

“Laughing at me?” he asked, so you shared your thought, and he laughed too. “I don’t look like a hairy cow!”

“Kinda do.” You shrugged and he cackled. You could listen to that sound forever if he indulged you.

The neighbors by the campfire were playing guitars and singing songs. You wished Eddie would agree to play you something sometime, he hadn’t even opened the guitar case, not once, and you wondered if there was a reason for that. You’d ask him tomorrow.

A sudden smell of burning marshmallows reached your nose and you inhaled deeply and sighed, liking your lips in yearning.

Eddie’s eyes dropped again to watch the movement. For a second or two longer than before. Before raising to meet yours again.

He swallowed hard.

You suddenly forgot about the s’mores. You yearned for something else.

He gripped your hand tighter.

You didn’t fight the want to touch his cheek this time, and it was still pink — maybe even pinkier. It was warm, and it was soft.

Your eyes dropped to watch his lips as he slightly opened them. You didn’t look away as you closed the distance between you and him.

And only then you closed your eyes.

His lips were warm — maybe warmer than his skin. And also soft — even if a little chapped, you caught him worrying them from time to time. But still sweet, as sweet as chocolate and marshmallow on a cracker, and you sighed at the realization that you were kissing him. You hadn’t even noticed how much you have been wanting to do that until you did it.

It made sense, though, how much you could listen to him talk or laugh for hours, and the way his voice would stir something in your belly. The way the sun caught his eyes sometimes, and they were the most beautiful shade of brown you’ve ever seen, and you felt like burning from the inside-out when he looked at you with them. How his tentative touches gave you electric shocks and some of the stuff he’d say or do would make you want to float away. My liege, you remembered him calling you. Yeah, that did something to you.

His hand that wasn’t holding yours cradled your face, and you might have sighed in response, and he might have scooted closer. Your hand that wasn’t holding his went to his chest, and you could feel the warmth of his skin and the fast beating of his heart through his shirt. Suddenly, the cold from the night in the middle of a forest was far gone, and the tent felt like an oven, and your skin prickled with heat.

You lost track of time as your lips slid over his, as his tongue explored the inside of your mouth, as his hand traveled south and he gripped the skin of your hips tightly. There was so much between you, and so very little at the same time — as nothing felt rushed, as you didn’t feel the need to escalate any further, as you were incredibly content in just sharing slow kisses with him for god knows how long.

Sleep came as you were still as intertwined as physically possible, and if you fell into slumber with your lips still touching Eddie’s, well, that was a secret shared only between him, you, and the stars above you.

Monday, July 28

You and Eddie let yourselves sleep in for a while longer than the days before. Two things had drained your energies — the tour throughout the day, and all the kissing at the end of it.

You woke up before him, and even though you had no memory of how you fell asleep, you knew for sure it wasn’t in the position you had awakened. Eddie was draped over you, legs caging you in the most comfortable of prisons. One of his arms was trapped between the two of you and the other was over your torso, hand under your shirt and fingers gripping your waist. His face was tucked into your neck, his breath was sending chills down your spine. You bit back a smile, closed your eyes, and stayed as still as you could, for as long as you could, enjoying what all that felt like.

It felt like pure bliss, if you were being honest.

Still, you didn’t want to waste the whole day inside the tent, even if the idea of being curled up to Eddie’s warmth was indeed very appealing. So you wiggled a little bit, trying to wake Eddie up without warning him you were awake yourself, eyes still closed and expression as neutral as you could master it.

You didn’t want to be the first one to rise, because then you’d have to be the one to acknowledge what had happened the night before, and how you’d both behave for the rest of the day. It was the one responsibility you didn’t want to fall over your shoulders.

It worked somehow.

He stirred awake, took his sweet time to notice the position you were both in, froze in place as he realized it. Tried to bolt away, only to probably realize that it would be a bad idea — since it would ‘wake you up’ — and got up as slowly as he could, leaving the tent right after, not a word or sound behind him.

Eyes opening slowly, your head buzzed with the indecision of whether you should be glad you didn’t have to react first, or if you should be offended by Eddie’s reaction. You were still barely awake, though, so you just shrugged and waited a few more minutes before leaving the tent too.

Eddie was stretching his limbs outside, some rays of sunlight hitting him at all the right spots, making his frizzy hair look angelical and his skin glow warmly. He heard you approaching and turned to face you, his eyes a caramel tone under all the light, and you wanted to kiss him again.

You just smiled, and he smiled back just as sweetly before handing you a water bottle and a protein bar from where he had laid some breakfast snacks on the picnic table. You thanked him and sat down, and he sat beside you to eat his own food in gentle silence. It was comfortable, and it didn’t feel forced, and you were feeling hopeful.

After you both went through your morning routines, brushing your teeth and changing clothes, Eddie was checking out one of the pamphlets he got from the visitor’s center as you stepped out of the tent once again, this time out of your pajamas and dressed for the day.

“I feel like I’m gonna regret saying this, but do you wanna go for a trail? To one of these lakes?” he asked when you sat beside him again.

You leaned onto him, shoulders touching, so you could see the map he was pointing at in the pamphlet. You read the information, overly aware of how close you two were, his skin still just as warm as last night. You wanted to kiss him again.

“Maybe one of these two? They’re not as long so you won’t get as tired.” You pointed to two trails to different lakes. They were closer to your camping grounds as well, so it wouldn’t be a long ride to reach them.

“I’ll pretend you didn’t get a superior complex just there,” he teased with a dramatic hand wave and you laughed. “We can stop at this one for lunch, see the area and then go to this other one,” he continued, pointing at Lewis Lake and Shoshone Lake in order.

You agreed and you gathered some stuff you’d need for the day before hitting the road. He smirked as you once again sang loudly and completely off tune along with Bowie and Christine McVie, not complaining once about your antics.

It wasn’t long before Eddie was parking the van near the beginning of the first trail. You put on sunglasses and a cap, he refused to put his hair up so he wouldn’t ‘ruin his metal look’ (his words) and you started the walk. It wasn’t a long or tiring trail, not many ups and downs —  not that any of that stopped Eddie from complaining. But it was nice anyway, the birds chirping around you, the smell of dirt and leaves and you even saw a few squirrels crossing the forest.

In a bit over an hour, just in time for lunch, you had reached Lewis Lake. There were few people in there, a couple and a lonely adventurer; and you could see that, way across the lake, the Campground was more crowded. A few boats were scattered on the lake as well, their riders fishing.

You and Eddie settled on the ground under a tree and started preparing your lunch with whatever you still had left. Your food was coming to an end, and you’d have to stop by somewhere to restore your snacks on your way out of the Park. You ate in comfortable silence once again, still resting from the walk that, even if it was an easy one, none of you were used to taking.

Eddie laid down with his headphones on and his Walkman blasting some metal as you gathered your trash into a plastic bag to take back and dispose of it somewhere appropriate later. You took advantage of the fact that you were sitting a little further behind him, out of his sight, to take him in along with the view.

His skin was still gleaming with sweat, and the cropped shirt he chose to wear showed off his arms and the last few inches of his torso. His long, lean legs were also on display, out of his usual tight ripped pants and into what was probably the only pair of shorts he owned. There was a faint breeze from the lake, swirling the few loose curls on his head in different directions, and he was nodding along and tapping his hand on his thigh at the rhythm coming from his headphones.

He looked at ease, relaxed, and content. You wanted to kiss him again.

You settled for a book you had found some day lost and forgotten inside the van. A fantasy novel, not your usual choice but definitely one of many that Eddie owned. It was entertaining enough to get you distracted from the man in front of you. The man you kissed all night, that you wanted to kiss again, and that hadn’t made a move or said a word yet about all the kissing.

You didn’t want to be the first one to break.

── ⇌ • ○ • ⇋ ──

Eddie didn’t talk about or acknowledged the kisses all day.

It made something stir in your belly, unpleasant and a little nauseating, as the sun made its way across the horizon.

You stayed in Lewis Lake until around two before taking the other trail to Shoshone Lake. It was much bigger and more crowded than the first one. There was even a family of metalheads — daddy, momma and two little baby metals all wearing different band tees. And they warmed your heart as the kiddos felt safe enough to talk to Eddie and beam at his long hair (dad was going bald, poor guy). And Eddie felt safe enough to play with them by the water, the kids’ parents clearly enjoying a little peace and quiet for themselves and trusting another one of their own with their kids.

Being trusted with kids was not something that happened a lot back in Hawkins in the last few months, you imagined. Probably even before March.

Once again you remembered of Eddie and Dustin’s friendship, and put on your mental to-do list the task of passing through a post office to send a new update letter to your friends.

Eddie wasn’t treating you badly nor ignoring you, but you hoped the kisses from the previous night would start a different dynamic in your relationship with him. Nothing changed, though. Nothing at all. It was like the kisses didn’t even happen.

You left the lake a little after five and reached the campgrounds just as the sun was setting, and followed the same routine as the first night: laundry, dinner at a restaurant, shower, and back to the tent.

Eddie went inside after you and seemed to hesitate for a second before settling in beside you on the mattress. He looked at you and smiled, his usual beautiful grin, opened his mouth to say something and you felt hope blooming inside your chest, and thousands of butterflies flying around in your stomach.

“Goodnight,” he said, nothing more, and didn’t turn to look at you as he laid down. Instead, he faced the sky, the same one who held all your secrets and whispers and kisses the nights before, the one who wouldn’t have any secret to hold for this night.

“Goodnight, Eddie,” you answered and turned to face away from him before forcing yourself to sleep before he did.

Your hope liquefied and the butterflies in your stomach all lost their wings.

end notes: sorry about that ending i'm not actually sorry

taglist (is open!): @amira0303 @rupsmorge @wyverntatty

polish fact of a day (again!!). european bison. its a near-threatened species (it used to be endangered!!) that poland is successfully restoring for years now. it is also the biggest mammal that lives in europe! :o

in 1997 only 3k of bisons remained, in which around half of it was living in poland. right now its around 10k, and over 70% of it is wild!! :D poland still takes care of those animals, making białowieża forest a national part - right now around 1/4 off a whole population lives in poland.

also, we call this animal żubr!! we also have a beer thats called like that as well

i found this really cool map, its from 2019 and in polish but i think you will understand it - its about wild herds :D

Hi everybody! I’m mostly settled in back home and I’m feeling a lot more energized and ready to finish up those last few requests so I can go into September with a clean slate. Thank you all for your patience, it feels good to be back :D

Under the cut are some pictures from my trip for those who may be interested to see what I was up to.

Starting off strong with a black bear we saw on the side of the road! We saw 5 total I think. All while driving, which was be a theme for most of the animals we hoped to see on our trip. One of the scariest moments was when one bounded into the road in front of us. A very close call, but nobody (person or animal) was hurt. (Riding Mountain NP, Manitoba, Canada)

This elk silently strode right into our campsite one morning. I looked up and I had a heart attack because he emerged from the bushes like a reverse Homer Simpson. He was very chill though, went to go eat leaves in the little island surrounded by campsites. He came back the next morning too. You really don’t think about how big an elk is until the only thing separating you is a picnic table. (Prince Albert NP, Saskatchewan, Canada)

Bison, also seen on the side of the road while driving by. This was also the same place where I saw the beavers and because of that I think that’s why this place is ultimately my favorite from the whole trip. I’ve only seen one wild beaver in my life before I came here so getting to see a bunch chew and swim around made me very happy. Also, you could not pay me to get into the water there. Never mind the fact that they had a blue-green algae bloom, but they also had leeches that you could see swimming around just by looking in from the dock. Icky, but fun to watch. (Elk Island NP, Alberta, Canada)

Moose, also brought to you by simply driving down the road. Which is funny because we went on a trail that pretty much guaranteed you to see moose and we didn’t see a single one. But this one was just hanging out on the side of the road maybe 40/50km away from the critically acclaimed moose spot. She was the only moose we saw, and some people were disappointed to have not seen one with antlers, but I say better one than none. (Jasper NP, Alberta, Canada)

Jasper probably had the most cool views. Love me a mountain with a big ol’ glacier on it. There was a nice, cool wind that blew through this area almost constantly. (Jasper NP, Alberta, Canada)

Another elk, but this one was too cool not to share in my opinion. Another from the car shot as we left Jasper. He’s running with the mountains in the background and he’s got the biggest antlers I’ve ever seen. Super neat. (Jasper NP, Alberta, Canada)

Here’s a nice little artsy photo I took. We saw a lot of these purple flowers around and I think they’re really pretty, especially paired with the beautiful glacial waters and rugged mountains. Wish I could see views like this all the time. (Yoho NP, British Colombia, Canada)

I know this probably doesn’t look like much, but I think it’s so neat to look at. It’s a mountain that still has snow (maybe a very small glacier idk) on it but also has a little dune that looks like it belongs in the desert and a refreshing little stream curving around the rock. I took this photo while on a 10 mile (~16km) hike too much elevation gain and the down didn’t feel much better, but on those rare stretches of flat ground I felt like Rock Lee when he took off his ankle weights. Also, 10 mile hike up a mountain, barely any people around, you think we saw any animals? No. No we did not. (Yoho NP, British Colombia, Canada)

I think these birds are called Clark’s Nutcrackers if my quick googling is to be trusted. I thought they were really cute, but also kind of vicious. I saw one dive bomb a woman and steal a good chunk of her wrap/burrito. (Banff NP, Lake Louise, Alberta Canada)

A whole herd of big horn sheep seen while waking around the campground. Some of them looked really menacing. Really big horns and super buff. If one wanted to mess you up, it definitely could. Still really neat to see from a distance! We also checked out the hot spring nearby. Too hot for me, so I spent most of my time in the little cool pool, a refreshing 55F (~13C). (Kootenay NP, British Colombia, Canada)

Bison. Corporate environmentalism. The greenwashing of bison meat products. Decolonization on the prairies and multispecies relations. The “authenticity” of food. Indigenous resistance to “cattle empires.” Obscuring histories of violence and ongoing nationalist appropriation of environmental rhetoric by claiming bison as a national emblem, as in 2016 with the US’s official declaration of bison as “national mammal.” Invoking “conservation” to create a narrative of redemption for a nation. “US historical and environmental discourses transform the bison from a site of imperial violence and ecological destruction into a symbol of American exceptionalism and sustainability.” [Excerpts from: John Levi Bernard. “The Bison and the Cow: Food, Empire, Extinction.” American Quarterly. 2020.]

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In May 2016, President Barack Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act, adopting the bison as “the national mammal of the United States.” [...] [T]he Wildlife Conservation Society, identified the bison as an “icon” of American “values such as unity, resilience and healthy landscapes and communities.” These optimistic assertions, however, belie the actual histories of both the bison and the Indigenous people the act purports to acknowledge. [...]

[T]he bison exists in a state of what scientists call “ecological extinction,” [...]. And though the rhetoric of “species recovery” generally refers to conservation herds in protected spaces [...], the primary mechanism of bison preservation is literally bison consumption: while thirty thousand currently live in some semblance of the wild, there are over three hundred thousand in commercial populations across North America, with sixty thousand slaughtered annually in the United States alone. [...] [I]ndeed, early conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell were both cattle ranchers and big game hunters [...]. Conservation efforts thus consisted of neither the restoration of populations nor the protection of individual animals from human violence but the enclosure of bison herds within either national parks or private ranches and game preserves, creating, on the one hand, symbolic spaces of ecological nationalism and, on the other, opportunities for upper-class white men to revive through recreation and commodifcation what their own imperial and commercial enterprises had largely destroyed.

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Given its association with these sites of enclosure -- whether the public park or the private ranch -- we can see how bison conservation has always been aligned with a culture of consumption embedded in the larger context of colonization. Yet the predominant narrative of conservation, which the Bison Legacy Act reiterates, tends to obscure these affiliations. Celebrating the bison’s survival as a national triumph while ignoring the nation’s responsibility for its near annihilation in the first place [...].

These discourses shape a redemption narrative for the nation and species: with respect to national history, the bison has been framed as the tragic but necessary casualty of US development; with respect to the species, its recovery is evidence of the success of the conservationism that emerged after the closing of the continental frontier. As opposed to Indigenous accounts that recognize what Tasha Hubbard calls “buffalo genocide” as one front in a larger “colonial war on nature,” US historical and environmental discourses transform the bison from a site of imperial violence and ecological destruction into a symbol of American exceptionalism and sustainability.

This appropriation of the [...] species as a sign of the settler nation exemplifes what Nicole Shukin calls the “semiotic currency” of “animal capital.” [...]

[T]he narratives of conquest and conservation [...] effectively converge. [...] [T]he bison’s image and its flesh have been appropriated for an American exceptionalist mythology -- first in the nineteenth-century literature of the US “frontier” and then in contemporary discourses of environmentalism and sustainability [...].

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Across the literature of US expansion, the bison was a sign of wilderness inevitably yielding to the progress of civilization while also serving as a kind of ritual meal for white settlers and tourists on the prairie. [...] American eaters today can signal a commitment to environmentalism by choosing the meat of the bison over that of the cow, investing in notions of sustainability and resilience that are equally operable in the Bison Legacy Act and the marketing materials for a variety of buffalo meat products available now -- products that literally incarnate, as the Texas-based meat-bar company Epic Provisions declares, “the timeless forces of power, resilience, and freedom embodied by our foreathers.” [...]

The focus on authenticity and simplicity would be at home in the marketing materials for a company like Epic Provisions, which advertises its products as “real foods” that are “pasture centered, and, most importantly, delicious.” Yet as food historians such as Mark McWilliams, Keith Stavely, and Kathleen Fitzgerald have shown, the rhetoric of culinary authenticity was already aligned with early nineteenth-century discourses concerning the nation’s mission [...].

Native American Natural Foods (NANF), an Oglala Lakota–owned business, introduced the Tanka Bar several years earlier; and as NANF explains in its own marketing materials, the Tanka bar is a replication of wasna, a mix of dried berries and buffalo meat that Lakota have eaten for generations. [...] Epic obscures the Lakota origins of both its product and its business model [...].

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[T]he US government and corporate environmentalism effectively replicate the primary operations of both settler colonialism and animal capital, [...] obscuring the material violence of that nation’s business as usual. In the nineteenth century, that business involved the eradication of the bison in the interests of capital accumulation and territorial conquest, while in the twenty-first it means the enlistment of the remnants of the species in the “greenwashing” of a [...] food culture [...].

The US settler enterprise replaced the multispecies relations of the prairie with those of the cattle ranch [...].

Hogan prophesies in her poem, the realization of what the “ghost dancers heard / in their dream / of bringing buffalo down from the sky.” Hogan’s poems and Monkman’s installation situate the rise and fall of what Roosevelt called “white civilization in the West” in the deeper contexts of evolutionary and even cosmic time, offering a reminder that those five centuries constitute -- as Whyte has noted -- only the “tiniest sliver” of a much longer human and nonhuman history, and signaling the possibility of some alternative and recuperative future beyond that civilization’s fall. [...]

Just as Indigenous-led resistance to petroleum infrastructure has highlighted the necessity of decolonization [...], the bison’s enlistment in the interrelated projects of ecological nationalism and “sustainable” meat production suggests that conservation without decolonization -- conservation that fails to “resist,” as Whyte has put it, “the capitalist-colonialist ‘matrix’” of which the cattle industry is a predominant feature -- may do as much to drive extinction as it does to prevent it.

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Text by: John Levi Bernard. “The Bison and the Cow: Food, Empire, Extinction.” American Quarterly Volume 72 Number 2. June 2020. [Italicized first paragraph added by me.]

the more I read about current efforts to restore biodiversity the more I believe that north america should be eating primarily bison and elk/deer meat. While conservation herds and wild bison are important, the vast majority of plains bison (420,000 as opposed to 20,500) are in commercial herds.

If we are going to get that number even close to what it used to be (millions!), it is going to be because of an increased demand for bison meat. An increase on our reliance for bison would likely see more effort put into bison genetics, which would serve conservation efforts.

Eat bison.