The Emotional Support Hedgehog

“My Facebook feed has gotten about 40% less angry since Libby Bakalar got that hedgehog.” That’s what someone overheard in Anchorage, according to this week’s Stalker column in the Alaska Landmine.

Since I’m mostly too numb to be offended by anything anymore, I turned this phrase over in my mind a couple of times this weekend: Do I really seem that angry? And if so, wouldn’t it be justified? I mean, look at how the country is behaving, for fuck's sake! Or maybe I just invite the rancor of people who get off fighting with each other online? I rarely wade into that fracas, preferring instead to let my original words speak for themselves, come what may.

Still, I chose to interpret this tidbit of gossip in a flattering light: that my recent blitz of pet hedgehog pictures has, in fact, brought joy to Mess Head Nation™ as my blog creeps from social justice/woke scold territory into the rantings of an Unhinged Crazy Hedgehog Lady.™ 

The story of Bonbon—a reverse pinto African Pygmy hedgehog (who is NOT a rodent but an erinaceinid, he will thank you to remember) began two years ago with a relentless campaign by my then 9 year-old son. After the “failure” (euphemistically) of two pet parakeets and the impossibility of dogs or cats in light of my troublesome allergies, Isaac had glommed on to the idea of a pet hedgehog as a solution to all of our non-existent pet woes, and the harbinger of new such woes to come.

My first answer, of course, was “no,” my second was “hell to the no,” and my last and final answer was “over my dead body.” 

These solitary, nocturnal, omnivorous spiny mammals are not like bunnies, gerbils, or hamsters. You can’t just walk into PetCo and buy one. Some species are legal in Alaska and some aren't. You have to find a licensed breeder. You have to get a special type of cage and keep it at a very particular temperature and feed it cat food and certain other elements of a low fat, high protein, dairy free diet. They require specific types of bedding and wheels. You have to clip their tiny little toenails without making them bleed (not easy). They are covered in sharp quills and trend to the ornery. The whole thing sounded like a giant, expensive pain in the ass, which of course it was.

But Isaac’s isolation and boredom during COVID and the misfortune of being the youngest child in the family eroded my resolve, and at long last, I capitulated to the hedgehog. Bonbon, as Isaac named him, was 8 weeks old and arrived in a cat kennel on an Alaska Airlines cargo flight from Anchorage about three weeks ago, courtesy of a wonderful breeder from Kenny Lake named Wendy. In researching and purchasing Bonbon, I discovered an entire world of online hedgehog fandom, full of the usual "spirited debate" you've come to expect in any Facebook group, all of which seem to court controversy, no matter how benign the subject.

I had cats, gerbils, hamsters, turtles, guinea pigs, and fish growing up, but never a dog (my parents said they were too much work and it was inhumane to keep a dog in a New York City apartment). Naturally, I assumed Bonbon would be like one of the other rodents I'd bonded to loosely in my youth, but right from the moment he arrived, I forged a different connection to him than previous pets.

Rather than feeling resentful and annoyed about cleaning Bonbon's cage, I found myself fighting Isaac for the privilege of power-washing a raft of shit off his wheel each morning with the garden hose. I carefully measured out low-fat cat food and ground it up in a Ninja behind the backs of my daughter and husband, both of whom are vaguely disgusted by the hedgehog, and needn't know about the dry cat food smoothie prepared in the same blender we use for human smoothie-making and consumption. Isaac and I have been working as a team to clean or change out his fleece bedding and snuggle sacks, scrutinizing the thermometer in his cage to make sure he is living in the requisite 75-80 degree warmth window. We give him foot baths in the sink to get shit off his feet and have long debates over what his "special nighttime treat" should be--egg, a meal worm, or chicken baby food? Maybe one of the less frequent fruits or vegetables?

But most of all, Bonbon is ridiculously cute, and so we vie for his love and affection, neither content to have him sit on the other's lap. "Yes it's your hedgehog, but I want a turn with Bonbon!" I tell Isaac each day after school, which is the time we feel OK about waking him up to play with him a little bit. Indeed, as I write this, Bonbon is curled up on my lap and I'm hiding so Isaac doesn't interrupt my hedgehog cuddle time.

See, Bonbon is surprisingly cuddly for a spiny mammal. Less cuddly than a dog, more cuddly than a cat, and not as sharp (physically) as you'd think, because he puts his quills down when he's happy and relaxed, raising them only when cold and/or in defense mode. He doesn't try to scurry away and escape like a hamster or gerbil, seeming to understand on some non-rodent level that he needs his humans, and is generally calm and affectionate towards us.

And it turns out that a couple of humans needed Bonbon too. Pandemic Puppies are everywhere--so I guess it's not surprising that Pandemic Hedgehogs are close behind. Bonbon is giving me the mommy-son bonding and emotional support hedgehog therapy I never knew I needed.

Yay! These Parakeets Were an Epic Fail and Source Number 5,462 of Self-Loathing

The thing is, guys, I’m willing to admit when I make a mistake.

And I’m one hundred percent ready to concede that these parakeets (not the actual parakeets in this picture, but Violet and Steele, my “kids’” parakeets) were a Very Bad Idea.™ And I say this as someone who’s no stranger to bad ideas.

From the woman who brought you other popular bad ideas like “faking throat surgery in kindergarten” (long story),"buying 'shrooms in the projects," and “throwing underwear on stage at a concert in a bar on the Jersey Shore”— comes . . . 

PARAKEETS.

The careful reader will note that I put “kids” in quotes above. That’s because—and I knew this would happen—they became MY parakeets within a few weeks’ time. And that, in turn, is because my good-time Charlie crotch fruit were happy to play with Violet and Steele, but not to actually take care of them. And since I’m not a monster, I don't plan to teach my kids a lesson in “natural consequences” at the expense of these critters’ actual lives.

Which is when I really began to see the error of my ways: because Violet and Steele were now my parakeets, and I had to face reality. I didn’t do my homework, and I bought a couple of parakeets from PetCo without considering their dubious origins, which a visiting teenager from Switzerland rightly pronounced “unethical." My mind began to spin with guilt and skipped from one neurotic parakeet-related musing to the next:

I just took them from one sad cage to another. 
Maybe this cage is better. 
But it has fewer parakeets. 
And I also unwittingly subsidized and supported the unethical parakeet trade. 
At least they aren't male and female and I don't have to worry about parakeet babies. 
But they are both males, I think? 
And they definitely hate each other. 
People told me they were loud. 
I didn't realize they were this loud. 
I had no idea birds could be this loud. 
Maybe I should let them out to fly around. 
But then how will they know to fly back into their cage? 
Millet? Cuttle bones? What's up with cuttle bones, anyway? So random.
They won't fly back because they are dumb--bird-brained, if you will. 
They will probably fly into a window and die. 
Maybe I should "set them free?" 
But that would be insane. 
They are an invasive species. 
They wouldn't make it five minutes. 
An eagle or a cat would eat them before they could freeze to death. 
They are also filthy. 
How do two such tiny creatures create such a mess? 
I wish I loved them. 
Maybe I should find them a new home? 
But that is such a cop-out. 
I made a commitment to these fuckers. 
They are going to live a miserable life for 20 years and so will I.

UGH WHAT HAVE I DONE.

In the end, my decision to capitulate to my kids' request for parakeets was a bad one, and a metaphor, really, for my multiple life failures. It's also one that I can blog about, much to Isaac's dismay. 

"I know what you're going to write on your blog, MOM," he told me, rolling his eyes and imitating a high-pitched "mom" voice: "The parakeets are loud and gross and your son doesn't take care of them and blah blah blah."

You got that right, you little turd-monster. Also, you forgot to take the blanket off their cage this morning so I had to do it, and they will get depressed without sunlight.

I Have the Exclusive on the Anchorage Cow Moose Cat Fight

KTUU might have caught it on camera, but only O.H.M. has the sources and access to get the real scoop behind the “disagreement in Eagle River” that “turned into a confrontation in the street” between two cow moose with their four respective calves nearby.

The two moms went “hoof to hoof” this week in the Anchorage subburb. That much is clear. But the question of “why” remains. 

Alaska Department of Fish & Game biologists have speculated that the argument arose due to competition over vegetation and territory in the woods abutting a local subdivision; but that, my ungulate-loving friends, turns out to be FAKE NEWS.

In fact, the two females—whom ADF&G identified in a previous aerial survey and collared as individuals A/986 and A/765—are notorious scrappers who have literally locked horns in a long-standing feud over limited spots on the Chugach Mountain Moose Calf Dance & Cheer Team.

In an exclusive interview, O.H.M. confirmed that individual A/986 was enraged because her calf had been passed over for a prime spot in the lineup for the big upcoming mate-fight between two prominent bulls in rut. 

Meanwhile, individual A/765 was insisting that HER calf had had a better tryout, and A/986 retorted that she was trying to buy off the judges with gifts of mud cakes and that her calf’s outfit was slutty and tacky AF.

It was this last slight over the calf’s outfit that triggered the row and led the two cows to hooficuffs. Eventually, the calves, humiliated by their mothers’ infantile behavior, managed to corral their mothers back into the woods.

The coach of the Chugach Mountain Moose Calf Dance & Cheer Team could not be reached for comment, but the organization released this statement:

“We have been made aware of a physical confrontation between two of our Team Moms. CMMCDCT does not condone violence of any kind, and our selection process for team and competition placement is transparent and fair. We look forward to a great performance at next week’s bull fight.”

A Sitka black-tailed deer, individual D/545, contributed reporting to this article.

Abstinence Only-Education for Parakeets

Does avian sex-ed exist? I’m guessing no. I’m generally not a fan of abstinence-only education, but when it comes to Violet and Steele, the two parakeets Isaac successfully lobbied me into getting from PetCo, it's the only acceptable route. I'll back up for a minute to explain how Violet and Steele (original proposed names Ruffnut and Tuffnut or Fred and George) came to be members of our family. 

Isaac and I were killing time at PetCo one day, which is Juneau's only zoo and a place Isaac likes to window-shop. The store smells like death, but that's because it's housing rodents, reptiles, birds, fish, amphibians, rabbits, and all of their food and excrement. So it's understandable and after awhile in there olfactory fatigue takes over and you don't notice that there are chinchilla turds in your nose.

"Not today," I told him, as he insistently pressed the issue of parakeet ownership while deploying his most cloying voice and most crestfallen expression. "Maybe another day." 

I felt sort of bad about it. I grew up with cats, gerbils, and guinea pigs, but am now somehow deathly allergic to anything with fur. Even a weekend with Oliver, the class rabbit, proved too much for my histamine response. We have an aquatic frog named Squiggles, but as Isaac correctly notes, Squiggles "doesn't do anything." My retort is that he (or she) croaks out mellifluously in the night for a lover that will never arrive, but Isaac remains unimpressed.

Isaac loves animals. Absolutely loves them. He will pick up and cuddle everything from a gecko to a spider to a puppy or a rat. He's always been this way. One of my earliest Isaac memories is taking him to the gorilla exhibit at the Bronx Zoo in his little car seat carrier. A female gorilla came right up to the glass and began pointing and gesticulating wildly at him, eager, it seemed, to mother another primate.

Eventually Isaac wore me down about the parakeets, and Paige and I returned home from a weekend in Anchorage to find Violet and Steele in our abode. 

I had placed two conditions on the purchase of the parakeets. Well, three: (1) Isaac had to pay for them with his own money; (2) he had to read about how to take care of them and do it every day; and (3) we had to get two, because sentencing a lone parakeet to a life of solitude without a cell-mate seemed mean.

This last condition was problematic, though, because a quick Google search of "how to sex a parakeet" both drops weird cookies on your computer and makes clear that it is not easy to determine if you have two parakeets of the same sex or, God forbid, a mating pair. Something about the color of the "cere" which is the little hard piece over their beak might be a clue, but the basic gist is it's a crap shoot and you can't tell the sex unless you do a DNA sample, and my living room isn't 23&Me meets Jurassic fucking Park, now is it? And will I pay a vet a zillion dollars to neuter them? If that’s even a thing?

I don't think so. And that's where abstinence-only education for parakeets comes in. 

They are loud as all ever-loving fuck (I was warned about this). And I know you can teach them how to talk. But can you teach them to say "let's not fuck?" And have them actually internalize it and mean it? I hope so, because the last thing I want is to wake up to a parakeet egg (or worse, eggs plural) in Violet and Steele's cage.  

Because then my options are limited, and each one seems worse than the last. I wouldn't even know if the eggs were fertilized eggs or if one or both of the birds was a girl and just squirting out unfertilized eggs? That being said:

(a) I could let them incubate the eggs and--potentially--make a bunch of baby parakeets that I would then do . . . I'm not sure what with? I don't think the parakeet breeding and adoption market is particularly hot, though I haven't done a focus group or anything.
(b) I could remove the egg and compost it and/or return it to Mother Earth where a lucky raven or eagle would have it for breakfast.
(c) I could have it for breakfast.

Option (c) sounds disgusting. I eat chicken eggs so why should this be worse, and yet somehow it is worse. Much. Option (b) seems a little close to abortion to me. Don't get me wrong---I am fully pro choice. But I don't think Violet and Steele could consent to a compost-abortion, and consent is critical. Therefore, without knowing whether the eggs were fertilized, I don't think I would feel comfortable hucking them over the edge of my deck into the Tongass beyond.

Sadly, I think option (a) is the only possible solution. I know what's going to happen. I can already tell. There will be eggs and I am going to let nature take its course. The only thing that will fix this is repeating "please don't fuck" to Violet and Steele over and over again until they too can repeat it over and over again and actually act on it by refraining from copulating.

Good luck to me.

I Wanna Do X With an Octopus!

By dosing the tentacled creatures with MDMA, researchers found they share parts of an ancient messaging system involved in social behavior with humans.

--On Ecstasy, Octopuses Reached Out for a Hug, JoAnna Klein, NY Times, Sept. 20, 2018

I assume doing ecstasy with an octopus is more fun than doing it with mean, insecure frat bros at Phish shows and music festivals.

Like I would be BEYOND stoked to drop molly with an octopus. First of all, an octopus has 8 arms, which if I’m doing the math right, is four times as many arms as humans have, plus hundreds of suckers on each one. And so deductive reasoning suggests that octopus hugs are at least four times better than people hugs.

Still, I bet there’s nothing worse than being a young female octopus who drops X, opens your big fat beak, and confesses all your mollusk feels to a male octopus, only to have him look at you semi-sympathetically with his beady little eyes and tell you with brutal honesty that you’re fat and embarrassing, and he wouldn’t mate with you if you were the last octopus in the ocean, until you slither away and smush yourself onto a trout’s sandy blanket for awhile, crap in a porta-potty under a coral reef somewhere, and spend the whole next day curled up in a squishy ball in your cave crying salty little octopus tears because no one will ever love you and you’re gonna be Hideous and Alone Forever.™

I have no personal knowledge of any of this, by the way. I’m simply relating this scenario from a friend-of-an-octopus-friend.

But how fun and trippy would it be to take an MDMA bath with an octopus?! This is fully #LifeGoals for me. I’m very scared of the ocean, TBH—the currents, the sharks, the stinging and biting things, the sharp rocks—no thank you. But the ocean on ecstasy with an octopus? 

Totes different story. 

I’m sure I’d lose all my inhibitions and we’d take a big tour of the seabed together and go check out an octopus DJ in an algae-covered booth under a shipwreck that only a few “in-the-know” cephalopods could find. All 8 arms would be scratching away on the turntables and we’d be gnashing our beaks and waving our tentacles in the air like we just don’t care. Also a lot of bioluminescence in the house.

(Little Known Fact™: Ringo Starr was dropping X with an octopus when he wrote Octopus’s Garden!)

I wish I’d thought of doing X with an octopus back when I wasn’t scared of parenting through brain damage and driving kids from soccer to skating and back again with a serotonin-depletion hangover.

I thought my MDMA days were done, but this octopus study is a fuckin' game-changer.

Interview With the Stranded Steller Sea Lion in Sitka

O.H.M.: So, thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me. I know you've been busy getting re-acclimated to your marine habitat. It sure is cold out in this skiff. Can you scooch up a little closer? That's great. Thanks.

Stranded Steller Sea Lion (SSSL): *Puts nose on bow of skiff*: No problem, I'm just grabbing a few crustaceans off the seabed here before I get back to the rookery. I'll try not to get lost on my way there! *coyly covers face with flipper.*

O.H.M.: OMG have you tried their raspberry kombucha? Travis, the owner, swears by it. I just had some last week and was all like I'm not sure about this stuff, it tastes like it's alive and it's kinda funky but may--

SSSL: No, no no. Not the Rookery coffee shop in Juneau. I mean, my LITERAL rookery near Sitka where I breed and bark loudly at other males to defend my territory! 

O.H.M.: Ohhhhhh! DUUUUH. I'm so dumb. Haha, that was awkward. Alright, let's get to the real reason for this interview: What the hell happened out there last week? How did you end up on a four-day impromptu land tour of Sitka?

SSSL: It's pretty embarrassing, actually. I'd just downloaded Swayze™ onto my flipper, and it must've had a glitch, or maybe I plugged in the wrong coordinates because I thought I was headed to a buoy to molt, and all of a sudden, BAM! I'm in front of a goddamned hospital on Japonski Island! (excuse my French).

O.H.M.: No problem. I'm used to it. What made you decide to stick around shore for four whole days?

SSSL: It wasn't exactly my choice. I mean, I didn't know where the hell I was. One minute I'm dodging kelp with my offspring like it's any given foraging excursion, and next thing I know I'm getting sprayed down by a fire hose wielded by the Sitka Fire Department. So I was like, fuck it. I can't see the ocean, might as well lumber into the woods and see if I can't find myself a snack.

O.H.M.: Were you scared?

SSSL: Well, look. I'm an 8 year-old male, and although I'm just reaching polygynous sexual maturity, I already weigh between 1,500 and 1,700 pounds. This isn't my first rodeo. But by all rights I should've died out there, cuz evolution. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't have gotten lost at all if it hadn't have been for your old Barbie Doll heads and plastic Coors Light six-pack rings shitting up my habitat. You're damn right I was scared!

O.H.M.: I realize it was kind of an ordeal, but what was a highlight of your unplanned detour to terra firma?

SSSL: Probably all the scientists and locals who kept oohing and ahhing and snapping pics. I forgot to get their contact info--I was too busy trying to figure out WTF was even happening. But I'm hoping some of them tag me on Insta. Maximum views on social is really gonna up my cred for mating season. I'm ready to own like, 5 bitches right now.

O.H.M.: Totes. Do you remember being tranquilized?

SSSL: To be honest with you, I don't remember much after the woods. I think I heard someone say something about "Airport Road" and "front-loader" and Eumetopias jubatus. Next thing I knew, I felt a sharp pain in my ass and passed out. When I woke up I could smell salt water and was like YAASSS KWEEEN and just dove right back in and started fishing again.

O.H.M.: Which brings us to today. What are your plans post-fame?

SSSL: I'm trying not to let it get to my head. I mean, it's not exactly something to be proud of, losing the ocean. Like who does that?! Still, I'm trying to practice self-care and forgiveness, and at this point I'm just grateful to everyone who helped get me home. The kindness my fellow mammals showed to me this past week has really got me in my seals. I mean feels.

Sucks to Be You, Marine Iguana

Dear Marine Iguana,

Sucks to be you. No, I mean that honestly. Like it genuinely sucks to exist as a member of your species. I'm pretty sure that your VERY best average day is waaaaay worse than my worst average day. Here's what I mean:

BEST AVERAGE DAY FOR MARINE IGUANA: Hatch out of an egg buried in searing hot sand; make a mad dash for a cliff as hordes of carnivorous constrictor snakes slither toward you at top speed; escape--by a hair's breadth--the clutches of the aforementioned snakes; keep running toward cliff.

WORST AVERAGE DAY FOR ME: Hit "off" instead of "snooze" on Crystals by mistake; realize three-day old laundry is now collecting mildew in the washing machine; too many annoying emails before 9:00 a.m.

BEST AVERAGE DAY FOR MARINE IGUANA: Dive 98 feet head-first off a rocky cliff into the broiling Pacific ocean's sub-tidal zone; forage for red algae, feces, and sea lion afterbirth.

WORST AVERAGE DAY FOR ME: Twist left ankle crossing the street in Danskos; find nothing I feel like eating at the Rainbow Foods deli counter AND no gluten-free brownies; get take-out Cobb salad instead.

BEST AVERAGE DAY FOR MARINE IGUANA: Desalinate your own water by blowing it through exocrine glands in your nose; feel elevated stress due to tourism.

WORST AVERAGE DAY FOR ME: Drop coffee grounds on floor; get Prozac stuck in throat; tear Spanx; feel elevated stress due to tourism.

BEST AVERAGE DAY FOR MARINE IGUANA: Stare a category five hurricane and 40-foot seas in the face on the reg.

WORST AVERAGE DAY FOR ME: Get into an argument about #Pizzagate with my second cousin's roofer on Facebook.

BEST AVERAGE DAY FOR MARINE IGUANA: Lock literal horns and butt literal heads with another dominant male in order to successfully defend your territory.

WORST AVERAGE DAY FOR ME: Lock metaphorical horns and butt metaphorical heads with my offspring about slime-making materials all over the house like do they think this house I pay for is a fucking science lab sponsored by Tide and Barbasol.

I'm so sorry, marine iguana. It's not even close.

America is Straight Trash RN But Bald Eagles Still Be Fucking Like Crazy

America is probably the least fuckable country in the world right now (cf: Canada). No one wants to get in our metaphorical pants. Like NO ONE. And really, can you blame them? I mean look at us. We’re a goddamned mess. 

We have babies (human ones) in cages. We spend 24/7 ragefully jamming our thumbs into our phones, pounding out screeds about how much we hate each other. Our President is a division-sowing, treasonous global embarrassment who has plunged his citizenry into a propaganda-fueled race war while generating policy with all the skill of a toddler making purple spaghetti in a Play Doh Fun Factory. 

Like this is actually something the man said at one of his white supremacy fundraising rallies this month:

I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.

I mean. WUT?! No one is making babies with this, even though three different women actually did make five babies with this. But you take my point.

Anyhoo: Trump’s involuntary civil-commitment level psychotic ramblings won’t stop ‘Merica’s official avian mascot—the bald eagle—from fucking and reproducing like crazy, a fact to which I can personally attest having recently seen about three dozen eagle teens drying their feathers along the light poles of the main highway here in Juneau. 

The bald eagle's supposed regal bearing is the delight of millions of Juneau cruise ship passengers each year, but to locals, they are giant, dirty, carnivorous pigeons who will eat small dogs and occasionally take out our power by dropping a deer head or salmon carcass on a piece of fiber-optic cable strung across a mountain somewhere between here and Ketchikan. 

And now they’re multiplying like bunnies. Or birds. Cuz they’re birds. Birds who lurk in close proximity to the fish hatchery and the garbage dump for easy pickings. They’re survivors, those eagles. And lucky AF too. I’m sure the Spectacled Eider is out here in these skies wondering why *it* couldn’t be the symbol for America’s big, strong, giant, 12-inch civic peen and thus granted federal protection from bulldozers? 

The bald eagle has no idea how lucky it is. To paraphrase Neil Young, keep on fuckin’, eagles. Keep on fuckin’ in the free world.

Photo Credit: Heather Hardcastle

I Am a Mosquito and I Am Not Fucking Around!

That’s right, you little homo sapien bitches. I was here long before you came along, and I’ll be here long after you’re gone. I’ve sunk my teeth into DINOSAURS. As in T-fucking REX! All you’ve sunk your teeth into is the five dollar footling at Subway.

Because I am the mosquito, and I am not fucking around.

I’m the standard vector for one of the deadliest diseases known to man, and how do I spread malaria? Or if you’re lucky just irrritate you a bunch instead of kill you? I’ll tell you without even looking at Wikipedia, because I’m a fucking mosquito, m’kay? 

It all starts with my status as the biggest player in the animal kingdom.

See first, I make twenty zillion babies all at once in a warm puddle. My reproduction game is Wayne Gretzky level. In the time it takes you to smack and kill one of me, I’ve already reproduced myself 12 times over. I’m basically like the bug-fucking version of those brooms in Disney’s Fantasia, but more pestilent.

Next, I’m ready for a blood meal, if I’m a WOMAN, which I am. And I have this very sharp, straw-sucking protuberance thing and I land my six tiny weightless legs on the warm, supple flesh of my prey, pierce it with my straw, and engorge my entire body with as much of their blood as my abdomen will hold before leaving behind an oozing, scabrous welt that itches for days.

Do you even understand that? Do you get how successful I am? From an evolutionary standpoint? I’m an endlessly reproducing, weightless, real life FLYING VAMPIRE and I LITERALLY ATE YOU FOR BREAKFAST. 

And what are you? You’re a self-destructive blob of hair and donuts who’s gonna be gone before my 7,000th generation of great-grandbabies comes along. You can keep your glass skyscrapers and drive-through espresso stands and theme parks. Party while you can pal, cuz I’m playing the long game here. 

And if you don’t believe me, I’ve got some Charlie Darwin you should read.

Dog Shit is Legit the Unofficial Mascot of Juneau

That’s a fact, and I think it’s time we just own it and pivot from trying to control it to just embracing dog shit as a scenic symbol of our lives here like the humpback whale or the glacier.

I’ve lived here for a long time now, and I can say without reservation that dog shit is 100% the unofficial mascot of Juneau. It’s everywhere, all the time, and everyone knows it. It’s on the sidewalks. It’s on the trails. It’s in little plastic baggies on the sidewalks and trails. It’s on people’s shoes. It’s on beaches. It’s melting out of snow berms. 

Dog. Shit. Is. Fucking. EVERYWHERE. Dog shit is easier to find in Juneau than mold and spruce tips in spring and a nasty comment thread on a community Facebook page.

Look, I like dogs, even though they make my face explode with hives. And without getting into the whole good dog-owner/bad dog-owner contretemps, I think it’s fair to say that dogs/fur-babies lead better, healthier lives in America than most human beings do in the developing world. Like I would legit and without a second thought choose to live as a Golden Retriever in downtown Juneau before I would a teenage girl in a slum in Mumbai.

I would have way more food, security, and shelter. The only similarity, of course, is that my shit would pose a public health hazard, and no one would bother to do a goddamned thing about it.

Over the years, CBJ has made various failed attempts to deal with the dog shit problem mascot, from PSAs pointing out that dog shit is not in fact a fertilizer, but actually a major pollutant full of disease, to ordinances to baggies to straight-up pleading for decency among the dog-owning public (which outnumbers the non-dog-owning public 100:1 based solely on anecdotal shit observed).

But none of it's working, so let’s just adopt an “if you can’t beat it join it” type attitude and say the dog shit has won and call it a day.

To that end, dog shit definitely needs to go on the Juneau Visitors’ and Convention Bureau website as a main attraction, i.e., part of the local flavor every visitor to our fair city is sure to encounter. Instead of dog-sledding on the glacier by helicopter, how about aerial tours of all the dog shit up there? And also down here? Extra points for diarrhea! Maybe someone should start a GoFundMe for a gigantic dog shit statue to go right next to the whale statue, and then all the naysayers can ask why the funds didn’t go to dog shit mitigation or doggie daycare and we can just say IT WAS PRIVATE DONATIONS, STOOPID, and yell at each other on the internet until we have a rage stroke and die.

Basically the only way to make lemonade out of these dog turd lemons is to somehow decide that we LIKE dog shit. We WANT dog shit. We want it on our sidewalks, trails, beaches, and shoes. WE FUCKING LOVE DOG SHIT! That’s exactly how we act. We ACT like we love it, so we MUST love it! That's the only logical conclusion. And those who adapt, excel.

So dog owners good or bad, just let your dog’s asshole rip a turd wherever and whenever you want now, because we're all set to fucking OWN dog shit as the wonderful local mascot it is and a part of the scenery that we should just be happy about. 

Long live dog shit, the unofficial mascot of Juneau!

Do Flies Like to Blow Their Load? Science Says Yes!

Soooo ... lemme just say right off the bat that I suck at math and science, and I’ve been searching in vain my whole life for a way to blame the patriarchy for my intellectual deficiencies.

Also, I didn’t actually read this study, or even  Newsweek’s full report on the study, that says flies love to blow their wad. So the practical applications of this discovery remain a mystery to me.

And yet, I did get to the part of the article that claimed “this work is important in understanding sexual pleasure among male invertebrates,” (though the overall point of the research was a deep dive into why people love booze).

M’kay.

Unlike my mother, whose career lives and dies by the vicissitudes of NIH AIDS grants, I’m no “sceintician” and I don’t pretend to know where research dollars come from or how they are allocated. But, it seems to me that since science is more embattled than it’s ever been, “understanding sexual pleasure among male invertebrates” wouldn’t necessarily be the first thing to command the precious resources used to advance the cause of scientific progress.

Perhaps shit like “why do so many women around the world still die in childbirth?” or, “maybe access to women’s reproductive health care actually helps society as a whole,” or “how can we stop the earth from melting before it’s too late” or ... something? Like is it really a bigger priority to understand the sexual pleasure of male invertebrates?

I know I know. I get it. It’s not a one-to-one correlation. It’s not like the actual money that would otherwise have saved someone’s uterus or the planet helped a fruit fly nut off instead. 

But I mean, come ON. This is just a bad look.

Like let’s see ... What’s a really neglected corner of science ... oh I know! Do cockroaches like hand jobs? Do salamanders enjoy getting their dicks sucked? Do bro snails like to bang girl snails doggie (snailie?) style? Is the Pacific Octopus addicted to porn? Do squid need Viagra? How much jizz do caterpillars produce at one time?

Only science holds the answers.

Can Anyone Help Get a Bunny Stoned?

That’s the $64,000 question. 

One day a few months back, Isaac came home from school to report that someone had brought in homemade Kombucha. 

“It was probably one of the 150,000 or so kids named after a Greek deity, a constellation, a mountain, or a plant,” I thought to myself. Regardless, it was a decidedly “Juneau Gonna Juneau” moment, and so too is this Craigslist ad from several years ago.

Someone is trying to find their elderly bunny a weed hookup! 

Behold:

11 seems very old for a rabbit (she says without Googling), but I’m kind of impressed with the care his owner is providing looking out for his old bunny’s basic needs: food, water, and the dank nugs.

Because celery and carrots won’t cut it for THIS rodent! This fuzzy little guy wants the stickie ickies. The skunk. The dope. The chronic. The greens. DA TCHREES FAH YAH MIND! 

I mean, I get it!

I’d be pissed too if I was a California stoner bunny and my supply suddenly dried up after my owner stuffed me in a cage and transported me from my nice sunny garden to a cold, wet, rainforest.

Someone? Anyone? C’mon, Juneau. Hook a rodent up.

UPDATE: A few “rodent elites” have commented that a rabbit is not a rodent. I fucking told y’all I didn’t Google that shit. Full stop!

Deep Thoughts: Is Squiggles the Frog Happy? And Does it Matter?

I ask myself this question--I wouldn't say frequently--but sometimes. Specifically, when I feed Squiggles the Frog (a.k.a. "Squiggles II"), since Squiggles the First died in tadpolehood. 

Anyway, on the rare occasions that Squiggles II's customary caretakers (i.e. the rest of my family) are out of town, I'm tasked each day with tending to Squiggles II. This consists of dumping a tiny, plastic yellow teaspoon of froggie pellets into the top of Squiggles II's plastic aqua-habitat, which is made of two plastic boxes linked together by two plastic tubes that look like a hamster tunnel. 

That's it. Full stop. The end. That's all there is to Squiggles II care, because I'm not alone long enough to have to change his water, fortunately.

Squiggles II has been our lone family pet since tadpolehood. He (or she?) is very low maintenance, and, miraculously, has managed to remain alive for almost three years. I'm no frog biologist, but three years seems like a long time for a frog--or at least it's a track record for me and this sort of pet. 

But I do have to wonder. 

Is Squiggles II "happy?" Does he have the capacity for happiness? I want to tell myself no, because I feel sort of bad for Squiggles II. He hasn't had a bad life, per se. This is all he's ever known. He gets fed daily, his water is cleaned, and he seems to be thriving physically by all objective measures.

But what about psychologically? 

Does he realize he's trapped? On some level he must; he tries to escape every time "we" clean his tank. And does he get sick of eating the same thing every day? For his entire life? He has eight fingers and ten toes. Is he bothered by this disparity? What about his toenails? They seem long. Does he want them cut, do you think? He'd never sit still for that.

Sometimes we'll be watching TV in the living room behind the desk where we keep Squiggles II and I'll hear chirping and bouncing around. He's nocturnal (I think, because this is when I hear him) and he swims around a lot and makes a ton of froggy sounds, and all I can think of is to go over there and whisper into his internal frog ears that there's no point.

Like, there is no one to hear him ribbit. No froggy mate is going to heed his call. He's just going to die here alone. We could get another tadpole to keep him company, I suppose, but they'd be so far apart in age that Squiggles II would probably eat the new arrival before they even got to know each other.

In the grand scheme of things, I realize none of this matters. Children are literally out in the streets today demanding not to get shot in school by weapons proliferated by Congress and their war-mongering corporate overlords while the President of the United States pays hush money to porn stars and can't spell "Marine Corps."

So there are bigger problems. I get that. That being said, I just hope Squiggles II is having a happy life and doesn't have a crippling case of froggie nihilism like I would if I were him.

I Lived It: Delta Airlines Banned My Emotional Support Giraffe

The third most read article in the Anchorage Daily News this morning is a reprint from the Washington Post titled “Fur and Fury at 40,000 feet as more people bring animals on planes.”

I don’t really want to engage in a debate over whether animals should or shouldn’t be allowed in the passenger cabin of commercial jetliners. I realize this is a controversial topic and everyone's an expert these days! 

As far as I’m concerned, 747s can and should look exactly like a bus rumbling down a winding dirt road in the Andes mountains, rammed to the rafters full of goats, ducks, chickens, sheep, and other livestock braying, defecating, shedding, and kicking in the aisles.

I only want to take a moment to share the story of the terrible treatment I received from Delta Airlines, which tried to ban my emotional support giraffe on a 45 minute flight from Charlotte to Baltimore last year.

Geri is a 15 year-old neutered male ungulate from Chad who has been my constant companion for two years, ever since I was diagnosed with a rare psychological condition called gerisinephobia. 

Gerisinephobia's primary symptom is unfounded entitlement coupled with a deep fear of being without a giraffe at all times, combined with a total lack of self-awareness and an inability to function in public.

Armed with an online certificate electronically signed by Brant Branterson, Executive Director of the International Institute for Gerisinephobia Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, Geri and I arrived at Gate A-24 in Charlotte for early boarding. 

I’ve grown accustomed to curious and even impolite stares from passengers, but I’ve never been treated more rudely by an airline than I was that day!

The gate agent immediately questioned the necessity and practicality of bringing Geri on the flight, and asked me if I realized that the height of an airplane cabin is less than 8 feet. She unhelpfully pointed out that Geri is at least twice that tall and also just dropped a 7 lb pile of dung on the jetway.

I responded that I was perfectly aware of that fact, and that—OBVIOUSLY—Geri is trained to curl his neck downward during flight. I also noted that Geri is afraid of flying and sometimes poops in public when nervous. 

Who among us can’t relate?!

Reluctantly, Geri and I were permitted to board early, and were seated next to a lap infant, which is my biggest pet peeve on airplanes!

Geri was simply being friendly when he licked the sleeping baby’s face with his gigantic, rough, blue, 20-inch tongue. And he wouldn’t have devoured that fruit and cheese platter if the infant’s parents had been better able to control their child. 

Furthermore, the fact that Geri's left rear hoof punctured the window of seat 25C and the ensuing loss of cabin pressure sucked the mother's diaper bag out into the sky and caused every oxygen mask on the plane to deploy was simply Geri being understandably skittish at a perceived threat to his territory and having a perfectly natural reaction to an unfamiliar smell.

I realize there are blind people who actually need guide dogs, and Geri might not fit YOUR idea of what an emotional support animal should look like. 

Excuse me, but if I have to put up with your screaming baby and his tiny mallet legs kicking my tray table, you can handle my fourteen-foot emotional support giraffe busting through an airplane window at 40,000 feet.

After this terrible experience, I demanded that Delta Airlines give me 20,000 miles and sued them for intentional infliction of emotional distress. 

The lawsuit is still pending, but I am pleased to report that they did give me the miles.

Dudebros Licking Actual Feline Pussycats With a Silicone Tongue is the Zenith of Nope

Guys. Guys guys guys GUYS.

Sometimes a product comes along that is just so unbelievably WTF, it merits a detailed takedown of its fuckery and begs to be dragged into next year. The “LICKI Brush” is one such product, and by all indications, IT IS NOT FAKE NEWS.

“Have you ever wanted to lick your cat?”

This is the first question posed on the LICKI Brush Kickstarter page, and the answer, at least from me, is a NO so loud it would drown out a sonic boom generated by a mushroom cloud over Asia while the entire North Korean navy was in the middle of marching band practice.

Now before you unfairly tar me with the “she-just-hates-cats-and-is-therefore-a-horrible-and-mean-human” LICKI Brush, it’s true that I now hate cats, because they turn my face into a red, swollen, bilious mess of tears, snot, and crusty scabs. Also they are generally mean and ungrateful, and who needs more of what I already have in spades in This Life.

But I grew up with cats, and didn’t always hate them.

First there was Tana and Jerry. Tana had a lot of long hair and was so dumb she would look for bugs after she ate them. When Tana died, we got Marmalade, who at 23 pounds was clinically obese. Unrelatedly, my grandmother was convinced that Jerry and Marmalade were in a May-December homosexual feline relationship.

Then Jerry died of old age, and we got Sergeant Pepper (Pepper for short) who was born with feline AIDS in the back of a bodega and who quickly became Marmalade’s adopted son or perhaps lover, we are not really sure. 

In any event, Marmalade ultimately perished from kidney failure after a round of dialysis (I shit you not) and Pepper finally succumbed to diabetes after years of insulin injections. To say our family was dutiful cat owners would be an understatement, as my parents spared no expense to keep these four shedding messes happy and alive as long as felinely possible.

Sometime in my teens, though, I developed cat allergies so severe that I can no longer go within ten feet of a cat without my whole face exploding unless I have at least three Benadryls on board.

But even in my most cat-friendly days, I don’t think I could or would have put a “high-quality, soft silicone brush, designed to feel pleasurable to [my] cat’s sensitive skin” in my mouth and simulate feline licking behavior. Nor would I worry that “as a human,” I would be “left out of the intimate licking ritual” with, “at best, a one-sided licking relationship” with my cat.

It's like, I'm totes good with "at best, a one-sided licking relationship" with an animal, and preferably a zero-sided licking relationship. Indeed, at WORST, I would have a two-sided licking relationship with cat hair.

Using the LICKI Brush is advertised as an “oddly meditative practice” that helps you “develop a deeper relationship with your cat.” 

I can only speak for myself of course, but my idea of an "oddly meditative practice" is eating weed candy and coloring in butterflies with gel pens. Not putting my face into a cat, pretending to lick it with a plastic tongue, and then calling an ambulance to take me to the hospital in anaphylactic shock.

In my own personal experience, cats don’t give a fuck about having a relationship with you, deep or otherwise. They want a clean litter box and a bowl of Fancy Feast, and then you can fuck off to hell as far as they’re concerned. Maybe the LICKI Brush will change thousands of years of feline indifference to humans, but I doubt it.

Regardless, I encourage you to visit the LICKI Brush Kickstarter, because I guarantee that when you watch the videos of the LICKI Brush in action, your craydar will go on red alert. 

The dudebros in these videos look like they just got back from running IT for a Bernie Sanders rally, and here they are licking their cats like a BOSS. You can never unsee this, and will likely need to douse your eyeballs in bleach after you do.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the dudes who invented LICKI Brush put this much thought, work, and energy into promoting the art of human pussy-licking, they would be millionaires by now and might forget they even have cats.

Tyrannosaurus Rex Takes on the Harvey Weinstein Dinosaur Defense

“[Harvey Weinstein] is an old dinosaur learning new ways.”

--Lisa Bloom, attorney for Harvey Weinstein, October 6, 2017 

Bill Cosby. Harvey Weinstein. Charlie Sheen. Lately, it feels like every old man from the silver screen to your dime-a-dozen VP of pencil sharpening in Nowheresville, USA is actually a longtime sexual harasser/assailant who has, until now, never been called out publicly on his misconduct.

Now, I don’t claim to speak for every species of dinosaur when I say this, but my name means “king” in Latin, and I’m one of the most well-represented and archetypal of the large theropods with a wide range across Laramidia (which includes present day Hollywood) during the Late Cretaceous period.

So I feel I’m in a unique position to say that I am bone-tired of being compared to old man sexual harassers. See for yourself! My bones are on display in many museums. 

And I now call on Homo Sapiens to retire the “dinosaur defense” forever. A time period, by the way, with which I’m intimately familiar, because I’m extinct. Absent major advances in genetic sequencing and editing, extinction is forever, no matter what you saw in Jurassic Park, which probably should have been called Cretaceous Park anyway, although that’s the least of that franchise’s problems. I’m looking at you, Jeff Goldblum.

But I digress.

You know what’s NOT extinct? Human males’ entitlement to human womens’ bodies. That’s decidedly alive and well. And let me just say that I do not appreciate being compared to serial sexual offenders.

Look. I’ll be the first to admit it.

According to paleontologists who have studied me, I was a hollow-boned bipedal carnivore, scavenger, and apex predator with a massive skull—one of the largest land carnivores of all time, in fact.

No one can say I wasn’t smart enough or liked meat enough to act like Harvey Weinstein.

But have you seen my arms? They were arguably vestigial and scientists still don’t understand their purpose. I have no comment on the theory that they were used to hold struggling prey. That’s irrelevant anyway. I NEVER grabbed women’s breasts or asses against their will. Not just because human women were eons away from existing, but also because my more robust morph was likely female, not male! 

Betcha didn't know that, did you!?

I of all dinosaurs know the pressures of fame. I’m one of the best-known dinosaurs of the 20th century and have been featured in countless films, television shows, and toys. And yet I managed to stay out of trouble. 

While I occasionally resorted to cannibalism, my main concern was strategic deployment of infectious saliva to neutralize prey. Plus, I typically died within six years of reaching sexual maturity due to the stress of reproduction. 

One paleontologist put it bluntly:  I “lived fast and died young.” I didn't "live like a criminal, age poorly, and die ashamed and alone and hopefully in prison." Like Billy Joel said, only the good die young. Despite my monstrous reputation, I was good!

I’ll thank you to refrain from suggesting otherwise.

Fuck! Now We Have to Win a War on Slugs?!

You guys. I am supes overwhelmed right now with the number of wars I need to win. 

There are all the big ones, like the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the war on poverty, all of which I think are best left to the experts who seem to be losing spectacularly on their own.

And in Alaska there are already a bunch of other wars, like the war on mold, the war on icy sidewalks, the war on shitty cell service and wifi, and of COURSE, the war on redeeming our reputation with the rest of America ever since the Palin-Discovery-Channel-Bridge-to-Nowhere PR shit storm. 

Fortunately, Lisa did us a solid this week in advancing that particular war with a few en fuego COME AT ME TRUMP AND ZINKE BRO chess moves, so we are doing okay on that front for now.

But now I see that we have to win a war on slugs?! This is just too much.

I mean, truly I hate slugs as much as the next guy or gal. But what is a slug, even? It's not an insect, right? Is it a mollusk? A bivalve? Just a snail without a shell? I'm not a slugologist for fuck's sake, nor do I intend on becoming one. This is a problem, because the first rule of war is KNOW YOUR ENEMY.

Which means that in order to "win the war against slugs" (which rhymes with drugs, so a lot of propaganda merch could easily be repurposed for the slug war) I'm going to need to do more than screech and gag violently when I touch one by mistake.

Do I even need to defeat slugs, though? Like I'm a shitty gardener as it is and I can't really blame the slugs. Mostly slugs and I exist in a delicate truce in which they eat the kale that isn't growing anyway, and I throw them as far as they will go the second one touches my skin while screaming like an idiot. (They've been around a lot longer than me so you kinda gotta respect their survival of the fittest skills).

Between Alaska's fiscal crisis, climate change, the declining supply and demand of oil, brain drain, and DC treating our congressional delegation like mafia hits, are slugs really the war we want to fight right now? Especially since they were around for eons before us and realistically will be here long after we extinguish ourselves from the face of the earth?

Welp, I guess you gotta start somewhere, right? Pass the salt, and vive la slug resistance!

Reminder from Bears to the People of Alaska: We Gonna Fuck You UP!

Dear People of Alaska,

This is your annual reminder that we are bears, and we gon’ fuck you UP.

It’s easy to get complacent over the winter and forget that we bears are actually even a thing. Believe us. We get it. We've been unconscious for a long time so we almost forgot about us too.

But this is our time now. We were marauding up in this piece long before all y’all, and you best hide your garbage/selves and stay the FUCK up out our way.

It’s 48 degrees in July, there are zero berries, we’ve been asleep for six months, and we are HANGRY AF! According to Wikipedia (whatever that is), the females of our species "tend to become short-tempered with their mates after copulating." Surely human females can relate, but you ain't seen nothing yet in terms of temper tantrums. 

We OWN that shit.

It’s barely even July, and already one of us crashed through the window of a kid’s bedroom in Anchorage. Another one of us charged an 11 year-old in Hoonah. There have been maulings and attacks, some with tragic consequences in south-central and some without down in Juneau. We’ve even been caught shopping for booze.

Brown bears, black bears, polar bears, whatever; we’re not making light of these encounters by any means. But the reality is we are out of our dens and we’re not gonna take it anymore. 

We don’t know what’s going on in your world, and we don’t care. We’ve heard rumors that you have a senile, hollowed-out decorative gourd running the asylum of American democracy and that the entire planet might get vaporized because of it. “IF TRUE” (as the FAKE NEWS likes to say), that obviously sucks for you AND us. But it’s not our immediate concern.

Here’s what is: waking up, eating salmon and berries, protecting our cubs, copulating to make new cubs, and storing up fat so we can do it all over again a year from now. 

And our track record isn’t bad, if we don’t say so ourselves. Despite your best efforts to shit up the planet like the selfish asswads you are, at least some of us are reproducing at a breakneck pace and eating all of your peanut butter in the process.

We are not here for negotiations and we are definitely not here to make friends. We are coming for your garbage, your cars, your garages, your candy racks, and yes—your salmon. So all you big dick-swinging "Second Amendment People" better put up or shut up, get loaded for bear, and be quick on the draw.

The ultimate takeaway point here is this: get the fuck up out our way this summer, or you’re going to end up with a good story at best, and a probate of your last will and testament at worst.

Sincerely,

Bears

P.S. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

Squiggles 2 is a Survivor!

I have interacted with my last anus, and I refuse to deal with the feces or anal orifices of vertebrates anymore, at least on purpose.

What does that have to do with Squiggles 2 the frog, you might be wondering? Well, wonder no more—I’m about to tell you.

We don’t have “real” pets for three reasons:

• (1) I’m deathly allergic to everything with fur; 

• (2) I don’t want to be a slave to anyone’s asshole anymore. I had this unenviable job for the past decade on and off, and at this point, I am done. I’ve wiped my last butt and handled my last turd, and that’s all there is to say about that; 

• (3) I have a hard enough time keeping the human beings in my care and custody alive. The last thing I need is to be responsible for yet another life.

And so it was that we settled long ago—on Isaac’s fifth birthday, to be exact—upon mail-order tadpoles as the perfect pet.

Grow-a-Frog will send you tadpoles of indeterminate species and origin in a bag (not even PetCo sells tadpoles—they just give them away for free if they show up with other creatures). Some were dead on arrival, and some were hearty survivors.

Squiggles 2 was in the latter category, and best of all, he doesn't shit. Well maybe he does, but I don't know it, and that's the point.

Squiggles 2, as Isaac named him, has been squiggling around in his habitat for going on three years now. He’s endured the benign neglect of a poor filtration system and the indignity of a giant finger tapping on his tank, periodically, to check for signs of life. 

But not until yesterday evening was his amphibious mettle truly tested.

It started out as an ordinary bi-monthly tank cleaning. This task is Geoff and Isaac’s joint responsibility, as I made quite clear when we ordered Squiggles that I would not be held responsible for his well-being. 

Geoff put Squiggles 2 in a ceramic cereal bowl of water, as usual, while he cleaned out the habitat. Isaac was shellacking me at Uno on the living room floor, when all of a sudden I heard Geoff cry out:

“OH NO! WHERE’S SQUIGGLES?”

He (or she?) was not in his bowl on the kitchen island where he’d been temporarily stationed during his routine cleaning! Apparently, he’d outgrown this vessel, and not knowing that the world was an even crueler place than his underwater plastic catacombs, leaped out impetuously.

Isaac immediately began to howl in grief-stricken agony as Geoff and I launched a panicked search for our charge. Geoff carefully studied the wet trail of slime and water, and within moments, Squiggles 2 was located inside the folds of a paper airplane and deposited back into his home. Relief was short-lived, however, because an odd white film was oozing from Squiggles 2's back.

“Google 'my frog has a weird white film coming off it,'" I demanded of Geoff. “DO IT NOW!”

Geoff demurred, reasoning that such search terms could drop unwanted porn cookies onto our devices, but I was panicking for Isaac’s sanity, and needed a prognosis regarding the ramifications of Squiggles 2’s misadventure on terra firma.

Google yielded a partial answer: the oozy white film was perhaps a routine molting of frog-skin, but I wasn’t convinced, especially because we were missing critical information, such as Squiggles 2’s actual species of frog.

Imagine my surprise and relief this morning, when we went to peek in on Squiggles 2. The white oozy film was gone, and he responded with as much vim and vigor as ever to my index finger flicking the plastic shell of his home.

No matter what happens from now on, one thing is clear: Squiggles 2 is a survivor.

Small Critters Union Clashes with Power Company Over Outage Blame Game

JUNEAU

A brief power outage in Juneau on Sunday has sparked a sharp-clawed backlash from the local chapter of the Small Critters Union, whose membership Juneau's electric utility company, Alaska Electric Light & Power, blames for the weekend disruption.

According to a report on KTOO Public News Media, AEL&P spokeswoman Debbie Driscoll "thinks a bird or squirrel" caused the hour-long outage to several areas including Douglas, West Juneau, North Douglas, and parts of downtown.

Not everyone is buying the power company's theory, though. 

Marty McMouse, President of Local 481, Small Critters, believes his membership--which includes field mice, squirrels, Stellar Blue Jays, hummingbirds, marmots, and brown recluse spiders, among others--has been unfairly tarred with the power outage blame brush when Ms. Driscoll's own words belie the critters' involvement in the mess.

"We've had a good working relationship with Driscoll over the years, this is nothing against her," said Mr. Mouse. 

"But," he continued, "even she conceded that AEL&P patrolled the line and didn't find any evidence of anything in contact with the line. It's like she's just going off past power outages caused by small critters, when in this case she fully admits it could have been anything. It's not like an eagle dropped a deer carcass on a line like last year. This is just spurious speculation on her part."

Sally Squirrel, in-house counsel for the Small Critters Union, told O.H.M. that the Small Critters have a reputation to protect.

"It's our position that, in general, small critters take on a disproportionate amount of the blame for all sorts of things," Ms. Squirrel said in an email. "We get blamed for everything from leaving turds in cabinets that are actually just loose raisins, to chewing through garbage can lids our incisors couldn't possibly penetrate. Juneau needs to be on notice, because increasingly, we're going to be squeaking up about it."