🧵 A THREAD IN WHICH I REVIEW BEING BITTEN BY VARIOUS ANIMALS
1. GOAT 🐐
Overall a soft and gummy bite, often with a faint bouquet of fermented grain. Near-prehensile lips make the whole experience rather cute. Only downside is the painful accompanying headbutt. 4/5 stars.
2. CALIFORNIA KINGSNAKE
Startlingly swift, a thing of beauty to observe. No fangs, just teeth. Perplexing belief by snake that a human finger can in fact be swallowed by an eighteen-inch animal adds a quirky, vintage charm. Drew blood, but wounds healed quickly.
3.5/5 stars.
3. AFRICAN PYGMY HEDGEHOG 🦔
A rare bite, suitable for connoisseurs, best obtained by offering a sweaty hand to a hedgehog craving salt. Brief, sharp pinch, no lasting effects. Humor value added by hedgehog’s tendency to react to taste of human by hissing.
5/5 top notch bite
4. PARROTLET 🦜
A large bite in a small package. If you’re looking to induce your brain and mouth to emit new curse words, this is the bite for you. Focuses on tender webbing between human fingers, as well as cuticles and nail beds. Useful for CIA interrogations?
1.5/5 stars.
5. HORSE 🐴
Variable-quality bite, owing to lack of standardization among horses in terms of size, quantity, and condition of teeth, not to mention strength of bite. Ranges from delightfully amusing mischievous love nibble to aggravated assault.
1 - 5 / 5 stars, depending.
6. ROBOROVSKI DWARF HAMSTER 🐹
An aperitif rather than a main course bite; painful, but brief and localized to a small area. Hamster usually more alarmed by experience than human. Suitable bite for newer appreciators, but gourmands will seek larger hamster varieties.
3/5 stars
7. UMBRELLA COCKATOO
A crushing bite, a nice change of pace for those tired of bites that cut or pierce rather than mashing. Left bloody, crescent-shaped marks. Would rate higher, except bite was followed by bird attempting to vomit in my mouth as prelude to mating.
2/5 stars
8. OSCAR 🐟
Teeth where no teeth were expected! Far from goldfish-like kissing motions, this tank-dweller packs a surprising punch with a bite that combines small, piercing teeth with alarming strength. Shocking at first, with aftertaste of profound amusement.
4.5/5 stars
9. FERRET
With dedication and practice, this Mustelid could become a truly adept biter. At present, however, it lacks focus and determination. Bite quick and sharp, but ferret typically distracted and across the room within seconds. Got a headache watching it.
2.5/5 stars
10. NORWEGIAN RAT 🐀
The casual hobbyist will tend to assume this is a top-quality bite, based on length and yellow color of teeth. In reality, a very difficult bite to obtain. Even slathering hand in gravy only produced a frenzy of licking. Good pets, bad biters.
0/5 stars
11. LEOPARD GECKO 🦎
A rare vintage; usually seen only when gecko mistakes human for cricket. Bite force sufficient to remind you of gecko’s distant relationship to alligators. Frightening, mostly to the gecko, and almost never repeated. Crickets taste better.
3/5 stars
12. BLACK BEAR (SYRIAN) HAMSTER 🐹
A bite of epic proportions. Why did evolution provide this creature with such jaw muscles? If this bite was a video game weapon it would nerf the whole game. Developers run out of town on a trail. Would NOT sample this bite again!
1/5 stars
13. AKITA DOG 🐕
A bite only for the most serious appreciator. The Everest of bites. Do not attempt without health insurance. I collected this bite at age 9, scars still visible. Threw tantrum and bled on floor until parents agreed it wasn’t dog’s fault.
4/5 for experts only
14. CHINCHILLA
A rare bite, usually more of a nibble. Probably your fault. You shouldn’t have upset him. He’s very soft and doesn’t deserve that. Whatever you did, I’ll represent him in court at no charge. Just give him here. I will love him—OW!
5/5 gimme that chinchilla
15. IGUANA
An exotic bite not available in most regions. Where present, usually only obtained by either denying snacks to iguana accustomed to snacks, or upsetting male in breeding season. A small dinosaur bite, worth trying for fans of natural history especially.
3/5 stars
16. DOMESTIC CAT 🐈
Often intended in play, but serious enthusiasts discourage the collection of this bite at any level capable of breaking skin. Salivary bacteria may cause unsightly after-effects. Only rank amateurs go for this bite.
0/5 you’re cute but SHOO MITTENS OW OW OW
17. DOMESTIC BISON 🦬
Disturbingly humanlike teeth. Usually more of an exploratory tasting than a bite. Unpredictable level of force but rarely does serious damage. More forceful events may leave interesting bruise. Watch out for the horns, though.
3/5 bye, son.
18. NANDAY CONURE 🦜
A peculiar bite—aggression, or a manicure? This bite seems to focus on fingernails and cuticles, but the fingernail trim provided is haphazard at best, no substitute for a good pair of clippers. Still, amusing to watch them try. Occasional OW.
4/5 stars
19. VICUÑA 🦙
If this can bite you, you’re too close. Seriously, back up. This is not a llama. I know you want to feed it. I wanted to feed it. I regret feeding it. It is an agent of chaos. I suspect it serves an elder God that may yet awake and consume the world.
-5/5
20. GIANT SQUID 🦑
Ending with an aspirational bite. Should be on every bite-ket list. Surrender yourself to the darkness and mystery. Do not ask why it looks exactly like a parrot beak. You will not like the answer. Or the additional questions that it sparks.
1000000/5
If you finished this thread and want a chaser of an animal that does NOT bite even when he should, read about T’Challa the bobcat that doesn’t know he’s a predator (and kick the rehab a couple bucks, it’s peak orphaned fox season):
I sent a text to friends this morning & some asked me to share more widely, so here it is 🧵:
I woke up just feeling like he doesn’t get to take anything more from me than he’s going to take no matter what I do. If he kills us all, then I die. But he doesn’t get my mind too.
He doesn’t get to make my life less enjoyable.
I control what I control, not him, and I control whether or not I spend the one life I have freaking out about him.
Dr. Edith Eger survived Auschwitz & wrote about realizing that when Nazis were screaming at her they still had no control of her mind.
And the fact that they didn’t understand that made them prisoners in a greater sense than her physical imprisonment.
It's September in Southern California, which means it's time for the annual Spider Simp Thread!
No photos, don't worry, just information on why you're seeing more, bigger spiders this month and what to do to avoid a face full of spiderweb without harming lovely mosquito eaters.
First, Giant Face Hug Spiderwebs: elaborate webs stretching across sidewalks or even whole streets will become more common this month through October/November.
These are the work of orb weavers! They've always been around, they're just at their largest in the fall.
Our local orb weavers in the Los Angeles area are:
- harmless (the only medically significant spider here is the black widow)
- extremely afraid of you - startle one at the wrong moment and it may run away then later EAT ITS ENTIRE WEB to avoid encountering you again
Hi! Heat wave picketers, would you like some tips on increasing your heat tolerance?
I'm an endurance rider, which means I do a sport that requires me to sometimes exercise in up to 120-degree temperatures for hours at a time.
Heat tolerance is not fixed—you can build it.
First rule of heat training is: NEVER PUSH IT.
I'm serious. Do NOT get heatstroke. It will take away all your hard work building heat tolerance and make it easier to get heatstroke again in the future.
If you feel overheated, even if you've been outside for 30 seconds, cool off
Related to "never push it," don't be distracted from your bodily sensations in heat.
For my neurodivergent folks especially: NO HYPERFOCUSING IN HEAT! You will not notice that you're too hot!
If you have to do hyperfocusy things, SET A TIMER for cooling breaks every 20 minutes.
Once upon a time, a friend got a job working for someone who makes an amount of money my mind can’t fathom, doing a job in the entertainment industry that many aspire to.
She passed his desk one day to find he’d left the screenplay he was working on open on his desktop.
Now, this guy seemed like a pretty decent fellow, and he was actually TRYING to find his own creativity. No hate!
But the point is, everyone wants to experience creative self-expression, even if every other desire they have ever had has been fulfilled.
wild how the percentage of workers belonging to a union peaked in 1954 at 35%
and 1954 is the "golden age of the vibrant, thriving middle class" that everyone yearns for
but nobody yearning for the golden age of the vibrant, thriving middle class is proposing more unions
NOSTALGIC POLITICIAN: we need to go back to 1954 to save the middle class
MILLENNIALS: neat! by getting 35% of American workers into strong labor unions, right?
POLITICIAN: not that part
MILLENNIALS: so what part then?
POLITICIAN: I was thinking racism and housewives
look I know correlation is not causation and some proximate cause could have led to both the golden age of unions AND the golden age of the middle class
but like... it doesn't seem like giving management 100% of the power & profits is working? look at the egg prices?
God, he's just such a basic fucking model of "dad whose kids don't like him."
No features. No bells and whistles. Not even power windows. Just an absolute, off the lot, take it or leave it, as-is crappy dad.
Men will literally buy Twitter, unban convicted terrorists, ban journalists, ban competitors, play footsie with white supremacists, and sell the office espresso machine at auction before apologizing to their kids.
And honestly? I think they have no idea how corny and absolutely the opposite of masculine that energy looks on them.
"I'm so TOUGH I am NOT going to be MANIPULATED into saying SORRY to my KID"
so ur gonna die alone to own your babies? that's the move?