Thank you Mr. Mulder

 So for my first post of the New Year (yay! 7 years!) I thought I start with what I hope is a series of me writing down my thoughts about people who did simple things for me that had a large impact on me. Hopefully as a reminder to myself and others to be mindful of our interactions with others.


So I sat down last week and tried to remember what I actually LEARNED in school that I still use today.

I already knew that I had wasted a lot of my youth sitting in classrooms being taught stuff I had learned from watching PBS when I was 5, but I had never really thought about it deeply. Well, I finally have.

First off, I went to public school in Southern California during the 90s. I went to average to above average schools that were not over crowded or what we would call underfunded today. I Graduated HS just as the crowding and cuts were becoming a thing,


After some soul searching... I figured out that after about 6-7th grade I can't remember a single thing that was explicitly TAUGHT to us in class that I use today.

I'm not saying I didn't learn anything new after 7th grade. You pick up things just from exisiting. Tv, social interactions, falling down, etc. I still learned stuff.

 I'm saying that as far as curriculum, I didn't learn anything useful to me as an adult after about the age 11 from my teachers or school directly.

I'll preface this by saying I was in advanced math for my age, I was taking algebra courses at this stage.  Ironically, most of the math I do is making change in my head and figuring out tips. I was never taught how to count back change and just figured it out on my own. I learned percentages in 6th grade.


 It is borderline criminal that I basically I could have dropped out in 7th grade and not wasted the next 5 years getting picked on, drawing dragons in my notebook and reading fantasy novels.

Literally every memory I have of being in class in HS is me drawing dragons in my notebook and trying to look invisible. I'm not kidding. I would try to pay attention, become extremely bored and then check out. I was still acing tests. My grades didn't start slipping until things at home got bad coupled with me ditching school all the time because I was SO EFFING BORED.

So this is the last useful thing a teacher taught me and I loved him for it.


In 6th or 7th grade in math class we built this huge Icosahedron (think like a D&D dice but with more sides) out of PVC pipes and rope. My math teacher who was an amazing guy, taught us the difference between granny and square knots, so that the structure wouldn't fall apart when we were building it.

 I remember being struck with OMG THIS IS SO FUCKING USEFUL when he explained it....It was like a religious moment.. and thinking to myself  I WILL USE THIS FOREVER THANK YOU.  I remember being so happy, like euphoric. This alone tells me that perhaps I was already not getting a lot of new knowledge at this age but wasn't so bored that I remember it explicitly.

So I did remember it.

 I still use it.

A lot.

 Forever maybe.

Thank you.

I miss my old studio. Things like this happened there.

HaLP!! #chihuahua #cute #stuck #bra

A photo posted by Crystal and Chili (@criosphynx) on Apr 8, 2014 at 9:35am PDT

MOAR.

A year ago yesterday. Chili and Escher hanging out

But first. ..let me take a selfie. #selfie #rescue #chihuahua #mutt

A photo posted by Crystal and Chili (@criosphynx) on May 27, 2014 at 10:01pm PDT

Chili has so few friends, but I think thats ok. Hes an introvert

Tongue out.  #rescue #chihuahua #dogs

A photo posted by Crystal and Chili (@criosphynx) on Apr 14, 2014 at 8:08am PDT

mOaR Escher





much yay.

Chihuahua for scale

So I found a giant monitor.

The spice was not pleased.

Parkinson's Law

 

 

"Expenditure rise to meet the income available."

 

 

 

When I was a kid, my bestest bestie friend in the world was Andrea. We spent most of childhood and young adulthood together before she decided I was too mature for her and I realized she was never going to grow up.

 

 

My parents gave us allowances, small ones. Mine was $7 a week for many years and it eventually bumped up to $12, briefly before I got my first job at 15. At which point it vanished.

 

 

Andrea grew up in a single parent household with lots of siblings. My family was considered middle class and hers was considered poor, but I never really saw any difference in our abilities to get through life and the day. The only thing that reminded us of her "poverty" were not the lack of things, but the lack of attention paid to things. After all, mom had to work, which meant she had little time for grocery shopping, yard work or cleaning.

 

The house always had stuff in it, lots of stuff, new furniture, new decorations. The kids had new clothing and toys. I remember Andrea always  had the coolest new clothes and interesting things for her room. Her mom regularly bought her and her siblings things or just gave them large amounts of cash (granted usually for xmas or a b-day).  My parents would screen the things I bought, esp clothing, and her mother did not.

 

 

Several red flags waved in my face during our friendship. The first was when we were kids. We both were obsessed, I mean absolutely obsessed with legos. She had a large collection when I met her, and I had one measly bin. This gap decreased and I overtook her collection dramatically in just a couple years. I saved all my pennies for legos, asked for them for xmas and birthdays. She did the same, except for the saving part.

 

 

We would walk to the mall and I'd but a small set at Kaybee toys. She would blow her entire wad of money at The Sweet Factory.

 

 

This would have been fine and dandy except she began to become upset that I had "more" things than her. I would point out that she was eating her money in candy and she didn't want to hear it. She just wanted to go on and on about how privileged I was and how she had nothing.

 

 

This taught me early on that happiness and wealth is a matter of perception rather than an actual dollar amount. Andrea always wanted more, more, more and was never happy with what she had. She also spent her money on silly things. As kids it was candy, as adults it was still candy and overpriced make up and clothes. She was never satisfied. She'd also blow her entire paycheck and then complain she didn't have money to eat and it was never her fault. Granted, as I learned to budget as an adult I occasionally overspent and had to scrape by for nessessities. But I never, unless I was unemployed, starved or spent so much money I had to beg and guilt others to feed me.

 

I often wonder if shes still stuck in the endless cycle of buy (stupid things) and be broke, buy and broke, buy and broke. I know I learned a lot from watching her over the years, and learned a lot about myself in the process.  I can only hope she came to an realization at some point that true happiness is from within and not the mall.

 





Things do not change. We change.

"To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often"

Winston Churchill

Blast from the past

I found this on google. Emma and Critter. One of my fav photos ever.

Four things Friday with random Photobuckets

I decided a random assortment of old photos from my photobucket account would be a good way to pop the cherry on my first FTF blog entry. There might be blood. 

Heck its me, there will be gross stuff.

First up is my first acrylic painting ever.

While I do consider myself an above average artist. Better than most, not as good as the people who do it professionally.  My art is certainly not "above average" in this category. I've tried to paint numerous times and I always get discouraged and never finish. Watercolours I fair a bit better, and ink and pencils being my medium of choice. (For my real, albiet old, shiz, click here)

 This painting of Adjour was the first I actually forced myself to finish. I hadn't created any art in almost a decade when I painted this to boot.  As is pretty obvious, I can grasp sky, water and creatures pretty well, but rocks have always baffled me.  I can remember being in elementary school and having to draw rocks for this or that and always knowing I sucked at it. Basically I can draw anything you want, but my rocks are the equivalent of stick figures. 

I will add that the entire thing was free handed and was not sketched out of planned in any way, including Adjour, who came out pretty dang proportionally correct considering theres no erasing paint. So maybe I'm not so hopeless after all. Damn rocks.

A nerd and her tree.

This tree in San Diego is a Ficus  (or fig for my non nerd readers) but I can't remember which one to save my life and the top is chopped off in the photo. I know I saw a huge Ficus Macrophylla that day, but don't have a photo of it. This tree is too tall to be Macrophylla in my opinion. 

The best part about this photo is when I uploaded it I named it "anerdandhertree.jpg" which, years later, reminds me that being funny is so ingrained I do it even when its not meant to be remembered.

Chili's DNA results from Wisdom Panel. I find it hilarious to look at because all the chihuahua images are identical and Chili doesn't resemble them at all. It contaminated my brain so whenever I try to think about what Chili's parents looked like, tiny limbed, brown and white long hair chihuahuas facing left always creep into my mind. I imagine them all barking in unison. Its adorable. Finding the thought of a bunch of chihuahuas barking adorable is a clear sign that you're a small dog lover.

Zipper Dog

 I chose this pic because I thought it had been lost and was pretty excited that it still existed. Critter went in for two mammary tumors and my wonderful vet ended up removing four total. If I remember correctly it was just over FIFTY staples.  This is what can happen if you don't spay your dog people. Spay your damn dogs.

Gross stuff. See I told you.

Prosopagnosia...

its whats for dinner!


Seriously though, tonight I wanted to talk about Prosopagnosia aka "face blindness".

Face blindness is essentially the inability to recognize people from just their face. There are different nuances to the condition that I wont get into, but I will start off by stating it effects people differently. Some people can't even recognize their own family, at all. Without a contextual cue. For example a man can come home and know the woman in the house is likely his wife, and act accordingly. Yet if she surprised him in the grocery store he'd have no clue who she was unless he recognized her outfit. This is because theres no context to cue him as to who she is. Without context she could be his mail lady for all he knows.

I'm no where near that severe. However there is a noticeable deficit now that I deal with reasonable amounts of people on a daily basis. I really can't think of any instance of this happening in childhood or even early adulthood, but I don't doubt it existed. I've never had large circles of people around me and my contexts were pretty limited, so there really weren't any situations to bring it to my attention. No proverbial wife to surprise me at the grocery store.

Today I had a client in class. This is one of my regulars and I noticed she didn't bring her husband like she normally does. When he arrived later during class, he hung back for a while watching. I always like to play the game in my head of "who does the guy belong to" and see if I can correctly guess who's husband had showed up. To my startle (or rather not) he belonged to my regular client.

This wouldn't be profound except I've met the guy probably about 15 times now. I've had conversations with this couple. At length. But without him being next to her for context, I would have sworn I'd never laid eyes on him.

This is just one of countless examples I could bring up. Sometimes people arrive and I recognize the dog and not the owner. AT ALL. These are people I've spent time with. One time I had two owners reversed in my mind. Like they had swapped dogs. I'd even fudged the dog context. Instead their body type PLUS the dog was the context and when two people with the same body types showed up at the same time, my brain found them interchangeable.

I have a theory however.

Face blindness is pretty much considered either Brain damage or hereditary. I know I was never dropped and I already know there's some odd genes present in me so we'll run with that a bit. The thought with it being hereditary is there is an actual physiological difference causing the impairment.

I hate the word impairment. Firstly.

here's the slippery slope. I CAN remember faces if I want to. If you asked me to remember a persons face I CAN do it. More and more I am reminding myself to do so, for careers sake. This would suggest the ability is in fact intact but my brain is just not running the program automatically.

Also I remember some people automatically and others my brain simply skips over. Its picking and chosing  which faces are important to attend to, and thus, who it can remember at a later date. I can pass all the celebrity face blindness tests I should add.

So I took this one. Without famous faces.

http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/index.php

Overall I scored decent. 85% was my lowest score, and on one of the tests I got 100%. So what the heck gives?

I got bored.
 

During the test I had to force myself to focus on the faces. Focusing on a task is what I do best. I am the exact opposite of ADD. I tend to be understimulated.  I can handle and process a very large (non social) information load. In fact I'd say I can handle pretty large social loads as well as long as its not direct interaction (for example, noisy crowds don't bother me) I also pick up on details others do not. Pretty much I'm an info junky in every sense of the word and if the environment isn't stimulating enough I get very bored. ( aka most of my childhood) In this case I found my eyes kept leaving the screen and my mind would wander in the middle of it. It was so unlike me that I was pretty startled. I am the test taker, the task doer, the finish things quick and now. I'm not the kind of person to wander off mentally in the middle of something.

Yet, as I suspected, this is what my mind does when confronted with human faces. It wanted nothing to do with the task at hand. I could feel my mind saying "c'mon theres gotta be other stimuli here thats way more important". And when I ignored its whining, it tried to leave the room anyway.

 I remembered the asymmetrical eyes and the odd teeth easily and struggled with the rest. Pretty much my brain is an information junky and unless I find something entertaining, odd, or distinctly memorable, my mind decides its uniportant and that the texture of the carpet is more interesting. Basically, my brain decides that recognizing and remembering faces is not important and instead attends to the other cues as to who the person is.

This makes me wonder how much of the typical eye contact issues are less about being uncomfortable and more about our brains saying its an unimportant behavior . Then as you age, society demands it and you feel awkward about it because it wasn't ingrained as a child. Your brain sees it as an "expensive"  behavior and not worth the calories it burns. After all, people aren't the most interesting thing in the room, most of the time.

 I will also note that while I have no issues with giving or receiving eye contact typically, I find if I'm tired, overstimulated or lazy that day, or don't find that person important (like someone bothering me), I'll fall into not looking at people, like a habit. I'm not uncomfortable with it, its just too much effort for no real benefit to me as far as information gathering if I'm conserving energy. When taxed I'll spend my calories on other things that will reap more benefits. You aren't thinking about digestion when your running from a lion.

So pretty much my physiology is saying; Social interactions are not important unless its someone you find interesting. This seems to match up with my behavior in other, more tangible realms.

Fascinating, but nonetheless, it basically means that if I recognize you at the grocery store, your in a good place in my mind :)

Chicken Hickeys

 

“ An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it. ”   James Lovelock

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.
James Lovelock
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/virus.html#rhDztREt7sHsuDaR.99

My Chicken Hickey has returned.

For the third time in my life now, I've had a shingles outbreak. For those who don't know what that means, basically when you get chicken pox as a kid your immune system defeats it in most places. Occasionally, they miss a spot or two and the virus goes dormant. These dormant places are next to nerves.

When you are stressed, the virus (known as zoster) sees your immune system is taxed and it wakes back up, angering the nerve and causing stripey lesions on your skin, oddly on only one side of the body. Its the same virus as chicken pox, from your initial infection as a child, but it behaves very differently and takes weeks to go away again. Unlike chicken pox, which resolves in under a week.

Some people are lucky enough to get it on their chest or even their arms. The really fucked people get it on their face and around their eyes.  Mine appears on my neck in true moderately fucked fashion. Not the best place, but at least I can still see.

It fools you by acting like its a zit. You try to pop it, nothing comes out. You think, wow thats odd.  It then gets angry and red. You think, wow I must have pissed that zit off by trying to pop it too soon. My bad Mr. Zit, I'll let to your brew a little longer, no need to get so angry. When the redness doesn't go down, you think wow my neck skin sure is sensitive. You put neosporin on it and go to bed thinking it will be gone in the morning. Wake up, its still there but theres obviously nothing in it. Shit. Ok more neosporin and vow not to touch it or pick at it that day. Wake up on day three. Its bigger. You put some make up over it and think what. the. hell It's a good thing I'm not dating.  Day four rolls by and its now long and red and really raised. Its brought a friend with it today. The friend is a red flag. You finally remember, oh yeah I'm carrying Zoster. Wee fucking wee. I can stop saying wow now.

Then the bastard starts to itch. If  you are really lucky, it will give you horrendous nerve pain in your jaw and teeth like it did the second time I had it. You can't scratch it, cause well, its your fucking neck and the skin there is like rice paper and we aren't trying to make the spot bigger by raking our flesh off.

The best you can do is stand in the shower with your neck up to the nozzle and let 130deg water hit it for an hour to kill the itch. How do kids do this chicken pox shit?? I can't imagine my whole body feeling like that. I can however, remember my mother screaming at me frantically to stop scratching while my sister and I sat in the bathtub. Hey sis,  you know how you say you're too young to remember all the fun stuff we did together as kids? Well thats the kind of things you missed.


Far worse things are to come however. See, the first few days the thing looks like a zit. Hell it even fools me at first as I just illustrated. The subsequent days it looks like a bad evil zit to the general public. The kind people will notice and feel sorry for you, but not say anything about. Or maybe they think you picked at it like some meth addict. Who knows. The point is they try to ignore it.  After all acne is sad, and you are to be pitied at this point..

Thing is when we hit about 7 days in, it will look like a hickey. I'll know when I've arrived at that point because the comments will start. Generally they are people I know or kinda know and they get a free science lession about the life cycle of chicken pox. But the bad comments always come from people I don't know...

 The first time I had shingles. I was a cashier at Petsmart. I helped hundreds of people a day and the looks I was getting were quite spectacular. I was about 20 years old, pretty, and in a menial job so it was plausible that I'd come to work like that. This guy made a joke about my hickey and what a fun night I must have had. (which is ironic because I'm pretty certain the volatile relationship with my then boyfriend is what triggered it) Har har. I told him it wasn't a hickey it was just acne from hell. (I didn't know at the time what shingles was and still had bad skin back then). He laughed and basically called me a liar. I insisted. He laughed harder. I insisted again. He laughed.


There's no real moral to that story except that some guys are jerks who will laugh at you.

The second time I had shingles, It was just after my split from Kev and my stress levels from moving repeatedly and dealing with a freaked out diarhea dog and a screaming-destroy-the-carpet-lost-your-deposit-cat were sky high.  Thus It got much larger and eventually looked like a bonafide "rash" and only one person commented on it, and not to my face. This time I was preemptive however and told everyone that I had a thing. It was going to grow. It wasn't contagious, and no I didn't make out with an overzealous teenager.  He was able to explain on my behalf to the commenter.

This time remains to be seen. I take peace in the fact that its really uncommon to have this more than three times tops. But then again it was uncommon for me to have it as a young adult anyway, so perhaps I'm just a freak of nature.

 Either way, I like talking about my odd bits, chronic dormant viruses and all.

But if I have to defend myself as "not having a hickey" at 31 years old. I may have to smack a' bitch. Or at least rub my neck on them.

That is all.

Eureka

"Some times I feel like a motherless child"

I had never heard of this song until today. Turns out its an old "negro spiritual" as wikipedia so puts it. I felt an instant feeling when I heard it. It was a gentle pointing and a "that's it!, That's how I feel". A eureka moment.

I've struggled to explain my relationship (or lack thereof) with my mother, both to others and in my own head. I've long tried to find a simple statement to sum up my experience, that neither exaggerates or downplays it. Because the truth is, no one wants to sit through a bunch of stories with me coming off as trying to make my case as the heroine and she the villain. I'm not trying to do that.

The hardest part is, for me at least. Is my sister seems to both have had a very different experience than I did, and the parts we share, she doesn't seem as sensitive to. I've had her say "so?" when I describe something my mother did that stabbed me to the core. I truly believe she perceives things differently, and I do not fault her or feel she is insensitive. Perhaps I'm over sensitive and that's the root of the whole damn issue. At the same time I wish for once she could understand why I'm so traumatized.

Very few people witnessed the things that occurred (or didn't to be more exact). My sister, whos perceptions don't match mine. My Father, who, when he did catch glimpses of the crap that was going on, reacted quite strongly to the situation. And lastly, my Best friend growing up...Andrea and to a lesser extent, her mother. Whom, while mostly dealt with the situation second hand, made it very clear to me that she understood something abnormal was going on.

Andrea was great for witnessing my experiences and confirming their deviance from norm. I think part of my issue as an adult is not having her anymore to validate what happened. Its basically my word against my mothers.

 For a long time I actually made peace with what had happened. I understood she was a product of a messed up upbringing and she was mentally ill. Its not her fault.  But something still nagged at me. The fact of the matter is that she would hide her real behavior from every person who was around.  This is the main reason I am so upset, even as an adult. To me, you only do this sort of thing if you know that you are doing something you shouldn't be.

Whether that's just another manifestation of her mental illness, or just crappy judgement, or demons from the past, or shitty upbringing, or trauma I don't know. No matter what its from, its sad on so many levels. I think though, what makes me sad about it, is the inability she has to own it. Which also can be a delusion caused by mental illness.

According to her, she was a stellar parent, anything I remember is fabricated.

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows I hate hate hate liars. I'm certainly not one of them. I am honest to a fault, the blunt kind of honest that makes people hate you in droves. Honesty takes on a clinical diagnosic feel for me. It's defining.  As I type this I can't help but wonder if my mother is the reason why I am so deeply affected when I meet a new liar. It could be baggage from childhood I suppose....

 Her delusions, nonsensical "logic", and lack of patterns pretty much make her function like an unintentional liar. She was random and unpredictable, and I thrive on routine and logic. No matter how much I tried to placate her, nothing seemed to work. She'd change the rules constantly and be mad when you didn't read her mind. It felt like I was being fucked with. If you want privilage A you have to do chore B. Then next week that no longer applied and when you asked for an explanation none was given.

I was punished constantly for things that didn't make any sense. It wasn't the punishment, but the delusional reasoning behind things. I would be told I couldn't go somewhere because a car was going to veer off the road and kill me. Then an hour later she told me I could go anyway (wtf???).  You were told you couldn't do this or that because god or a spirit had told her something bad was going to happen if you did. I remember being confused by this logic as I didn't feel she loved me. Thus why do you care if something bad happens to me? It felt more like a way to control and micromanage me, and in all honesty, It might have been.

Nothing was ever without a criticism and encouragement was non existent. When she wasn't being negative, nonsensical, or critical she ignored me as much as possible. I remember asking her on several distinct occasions, as a young child... why she had children if she didn't want them. Take a second and let that sink in. A young child voicing that they feel unwanted and the following reaction...

Her reply would always be "I did want kids"  matter of factly. As if she was answering a math question. She'd answer without breaking eye contact with the TV.  At which point she'd wave me away and continue watching television. When I would be even more direct, asking why she didn't want to talk to us or play with us, her reply would be "I do that all the time" with another tv induced wave away. The answer always baffled me because It would take weeks or months of being ignored to get up the courage to ask the question to begin with. As an adult I don't see how the child asking that to begin with wasn't heartbreaking and a ginormous red flag that something was wrong. Let alone something that could be blown off so you don't miss Oprah.


The disinterest really got bad at about 7 years old and was pretty sudden. I was like a discarded toy that had lost its novelty. It only grew as time went on. As did the paranoia and negativity. I have zero memories of being comforted when I was upset, and was either ignored or told to knock off the crying. I cried a lot as a child, I had so many things to be upset about and no anchor to ground me. The emotional absence left everything cold.



I'll only indulge in one story, but I think Its worth sharing. We were at my Aunts house and my mother was telling my aunt about something her sister had done or not done to/for her. I forget what it was exactly but I remember thinking she was being awful nasty about it considering what the  transgression was.

At some point my mother burst into tears (something I had never seen before) and began sobbing something along the lines of "I just want my sister to love me".  My aunt, also probably shocked at seeing whats normally a stone cold statue cry, just sat there.

I felt compelled to do something to make her feel better, even though I couldn't really empathize with what she was experiencing. I went over and stood next to her. She ignored me. I put my hand on her arm. She ignored me. I tried to hug her (which I must have learned on tv) and I realized a few seconds in that I was indeed  hugging a statue. There was no reciprocation.

Then suddenly... She threw me off her roughly and  loudly screamed "get off me!". I stood there for a moment, watching her continue to sob, doing the child version of shaking my head in disbelief, and then I went back to my toys in the living room. The look on my aunts face was total shock.

That story pretty much sums up my relationship with my mother. Negative and easily pissed off over trivial things and rejecting anything resembling closeness or love from their child. All peppered with lots and lots of ignoring and disinterest. The only thing that makes that story different than the norm was she showed her behavior in front of another adult. Which rarely occurred. Part of me is angry that these adults didn't do anything, but at the same time, as an outsider I probably wouldn't have felt one incident was intervention worthy either

I suppose it teaches us all to pay better attention, and to question things when we see them.


Its late, and that's all I can transcribe for now. Goodnight.

Pants on fire

"i have one major problem with the internet. Its full of liars"

As usual, my rants usually consist of contempt for liars and this is no exception.

I always say what I think, with little sugar on it, if any. I don't speak about things I don't know about. Thus even if I can't remember my exact words. I can guess them quite acurately.

I may be blunt. Rude even. But at least I'm true to one thing. The truth.

Too bad they taste like tomatoes

I have a love/hate with tomatoes

Love the grow em' hate to eat em. Wont eat them to be exact. I think raw tomatoes taste horrible and I have consumed absolutely ZERO of the hundreds of lbs I've grown over the years. Yes I know its wierd, but I am ok with that. I like to grow shit.

Living off the land is a long held hippie-like dream of mine but being raised on red meat and potatoes seems to have wired my brain in antithesis of that ideal...

I've pulled literally hundreds of tomatoes off this plant. Thats alot of happy rats and torti

Heres one harvest and my female betta watching from her spacious 5 gallons of "fish prison"..

Defacing Government Property...

Taken to a whole new level.

Katie did it.

 

One of the most interesting things about starting a new garden in a new area is seeing all the new wildlife that arrives. I don't mean birds and squirrels, but the insects. I enjoy new species of plants and bugs the same as I would seeing a new species of bird or mammal. Some may find this odd, but in my opinion, it makes my life more interesting, because I can enjoy all of nature, not just the cute and fluffy things.

When you first start a new garden, its pretty sterile. Nothing really visits it, especially if your neighborhood is bland as far as biodiversity. Most people keep ornamental plants that are over bred, and then spray them with chemicals, because god forbid they have to look at a spider once in a while.

After the "sterile" period, the "pest" period begins. This is when the news gets out that you have opened the salad bar, and they appear in droves in the tenor of Homestyle Buffet. Typically the aphids appear first, and they did in fact, but I hadn't planted anything weak and sissified (aka roses and hibiscus)  so they came and went very fast and didn't do any damage. The locusts have also come and gone for the most part. Those that stick around are great Chili toys, being both fast and tasty. Or so he lets on.

July has been the month of the katydid, with more than I've ever seen in my entire life, including this big guy. Who was stuck to the window screen by a leg, necessitating I rescue him. He thanked me by pausing to clean his antennae while he sat on my hand, and allowing me to watch him do so.

The real interesting ones were these awesome green horned caterpillars that appeared in decent numbers on my red Guara plant. There were four big ones today but one was not very gentlemanly and didn't want to be picked up. So he kept vomiting his dinner on me to make me go away.  Like any bad romance his tactic eventually worked so I had only these three guys to hang out with:

The Three (non vomit-y) Caballeros

I liked the variation in pattern. They were hard to photograph because they wouldn't sit still. A little googling tells me they are the larva of the Spinx moth, likely Hyles lineata the white lined sphinx moth. It's a huge moth that can hover like a hummingbird. I've seen them a couple times, and their size is a bit intimidating. I'd like to see one again, and they pollinate some uber rare native California plant, so I'll be letting these green dudes live.

They seem tame and docile until you get them too close to each other. When personal space disapears, they do like any civilized society would naturally do and try to beat each other up, using their heads like hammers and biting the invader on the back.

I kick your ass yo.

 So all in all, a nice, bug boxing filled evening.

Wordless Wednesday. Sir Smallness

How much is that monitor in the bathtub?

How much is go-ing on upstairs?

I know my blog has been a bit reptile-centric lately, but bare with me. Reptiles are a huge part of my life in the summer months, mainly due to babies being born en masse. In winter and spring I can breed them and still have other hobbies and a life in general. Once babies are born, its like having a human child, everything else gets put on hiatus til things get settled.

I've been thinking more and more about intelligence in Varanus Salvator the Asian Water Monitor and pretty much monitors in general. Humans generally view intelligence in animals in the form of modified behavior. Aka what can it do for me? Thus regular people confuse trainability with intelligence, and trainers can occasionally mistake trainability for intelligence. Regular people think the trained dog is smarter than the untrained dog, when really nothing has changed as far as intelligence. Trainers teach a chicken a few behaviors and suddenly have to question if we are eating little Einsteins.

I personally think the truth, as usual, is in the middle.

Teaching behaviors and modifying behavior gives you a window into intelligence.  The interaction becomes two way and you can communicate with the animal vs simply observing it. It's in this communication that you get to see whats going on upstairs, or not.

Little Fran is about 16 months old now and my initial goal was simply taming the animal (my hand is not food, and don't run away from me are basic "taming"). My other goal was to have a monitor who is comfortable being groped, carried and lifted (desensitization).  I didn't do this with Sammi and now that shes 20lbs, its not really feasible or worth doing. Especially since her cage is on the floor, theres no real need. When  I interact with Sammi physically I get the vibe of being tolerated, and I didn't want this with Fran.

 I put some time into it and now Fran is very comfortable with being manipulated and carried, and took to it in very few sessions. He moves around a bit more than I'd like, but that's just teenage spunk and normal IME. Theres no fear of being dropped or that vibe of " I'm just tolerating this" that I so disliked.  Its hard to say until I rear another monitor from birth if this is a personality difference (genes), a born in captivity difference (cortisol levels), or early experience difference (socialization)

We have a bathtub we use for cleaning and sanitizing big items in the rear of the store. Its a bit scratched up and well used. Historically Big Fran was given baths in this tub and the practice disappeared when Tim left and  Big Fran was sold. I decided to try it out on both Sammi and Lil Fran to see their reactions.

Sammi, perhaps stressed from being lifted and carried to the tub, seemed pretty disinterested and quickly grew bored and tried to leave the tub. Sammi likes water, as is normal for this species, but didn't like the tub experience. She ignored me for the most part, acting like the traditional animal automaton. All instinct and no mind.

Sammi, uninterested, trying to leave.

Fran on the other hand was full of notable behaviors.

Firstly, he did not try and leave the tub as I had anticipated. This being a new experience I expected an initial response of fear resulting in him spooking. As would be normal for his age when exposed to a novel enviroment.

 I was quite surprised when this did not occur. He did sit there for a minute or so, unsure what to do with himself. He made eye contact with me during this, as if looking for guidance. I told him it was "OK" and began to point at the water. I had already taught that "OK" is a safe word and a release and had introduced pointing* previously. (*Monitors learn what pointing is so quickly it would be easy to mistake it as innate if you aren't paying attention) Immediately he began to explore the tub in the spots I pointed to.

Then the first face dip under the water, seemingly on "accident" or instinct.  Followed with what is known in mammals as an "approval glance". The animals way of saying "is this OK  with you for me to do?" by hesitating and making eye contact. He did several of these to each I nodded and said it was "OK" to do. He quite enjoyed face dipping after that.

He wasn't understanding he could swim in that depth of water so I grasped him and pushed him around a bit like a toy, all while giving verbal approval. He did not object and seemed to like it.  He then began to experiment with swimming, each motion was punctuated by another approval glance (three, just like for face dipping) and thus he decided it was ok with me, and began to swim.

The really interesting thing happened when I got bored and tried to walk away after 15 mins of this. When I did this he immediately stopped what he was doing and stood tall to see where I went. I stood out of sight and watched him for a minute or so. He sat there and waited for me until I walked back to the tub and then he relaxed and began to play again.

Fran seeking approval with eye contact.

If I hadn't told you this was a monitor, it would be easy to write the same story about a dog playing in a pool for the first time. Unsure, until the human encouraged them and upset when they were left alone. The amount of eye contact would rival a domesticated animal, as would the response to my voice. Fascinating stuff, in my mind. I have not done any formal action/reward training with food yet. I did this with Dino and he was an incredibly quick learner, but like Sammi did not seem to care about me at all. It will be interesting to see what an animal that is "bonded" to a person will learn when I start clicker training him. I could put social and verbal feedback into the loop on top of primary reinforcers (or lack thereof). I'll have to see, but I have a feeling that the trainability of such and animal and intelligence (aka problem solving) meets or exceeds the abilities of a dog.

If so the moral implications of keeping such animals in cages, or at least small boring ones,  will have to be explored.

Stay tuned.

Happy Birfday!!

(she means "Independence Day" ;) )

Skateboarding Mexican

I attempted to teach Chili the skateboard about 6 months ago but his fear of it outweighed anything I could offer him.

He learned what I wanted but was too frightened to stick with it. So I put it away for half a year and brought it back out on friday.

I think he just gave fear the middle finger...

Rivendell...

Turned Fabuland Gazebo


Frodo would be proud. Maybe