My coworkers to me this morning: Oh, glad to see you're still alive!

Me: After getting stung by wasps?

Them: No, after eating Bush Eggs.

excuse me tumblr user Draconym? you belong to the Fae now

I didn't eat all twelve eggs because I gave one to my bird; surely that should protect me at least somewhat from being bound by the Fairy Queen?

Everyone's supportive when life gives you lemons but then as soon as the forest starts handing out eggs everybody's a critic

I laughed so hard at this. The Fae are probably just standing there with their mouths open and the sheer and beautiful audacity of you feeding their ‘gift’ failed trap to your beautiful birb.

i’d say that since op only ate 11/12 they belong to the fae 11 months of the year, the other month is when they get op’s bird

I give it a week before the fae send him back

Questions from the Notes:

Your grandparents were Druids, right?
They were a Steel Worker and Head Clerk at the local grocery store, respectively. 

How does a Horse run races the Wrong way?
Get near the finish line then make a U-turn becuase he wasn’t done running yet.  He was also an excellent jumper and swimming horse. Much happier being a trail horse on Cleveland’s Emerald Belt.

How does a St. Bernard hide in a small suburban house?
Clever use of the space behind the couches, under the sink and under beds.  For a 110lb animal, Gretchen was also very quiet and knew to wait until the house was empty to move from hiding spaces or to snitch food off the counters.  Once her coat grew back in she was willing to be visible again.

The Tarantula Didn’t come froma  pet store, did it?
You know that stereotype about Tarantuals hiding in Bananas? That used to be a real thing that happened when bananas started being regularly available in Postwar mass market grocery stores.  Not very often, but it did. Grandma found the tarantula in a shipment of Bananas, and being the only non-arachnophobe working in the store, took her home and named her “Carmen Tarantula” after the famous brazilian singer. Geography was not Grandma’s strong point

Carmen Tarantula lived for 3 years and juding by the extremely blurry polaroid in the family albums, was probably a Brazilian Black.

What do you mean Spooky was an “Alleged Dog”?
Well, for one thing, she Meowed.

Spooky was a 35lb delicate-limbed dog with owl-like pale green eyes and bat-like ears that was solid black save for a white patch on her chest in exactly the shape of Casper The friendly ghost, which was the only part of her visible when she would roam the halls at night, which is how she got the name.

Spooky was living in the house at the same time as Dummy, Son Of Stupid and another more Prototypical cat named Needles.  Dummy would sometimes forget what he was doing and get lost in the house, causing him to mewl pathetically until one of the humans or animals found and escorted him back to more familiar settings.  Typically, Needles would meow back at Dummy until she found him.

After three weeks in the house, Spooky could do an astonishingly good Cat’s Meow as well.

Spooky could also open doorknobs, get into the attic which didn’t even have a human entrance, would sit up like a human to eat her dinner or watch TV, and had a peculiar penchant for fishing.  Grandpa and Uncle popeye would regularly take her on fishing trips becuase she’d gleefully dive into the lakes and finish bringing the catch in, whether it were lake trout or pike or in one case, a strugeon.

Spooky also LOVED tomatoes.  More than anything else in the world.  If given a choice between a ribeye and a tomato, Spooky would chose the tomato every time.  This only applied to raw tomatoes though, she despised ketchup.

So while very much shaped like one, Spooky gave the distinct impression of something else dressed up as a dog.  Whatever she was, she was a loving and beloved companion to the family for 16 years.

If you enjoyed this story, you can check out my #Family Lore tag on my blog, or you can pre-order copies of the Family Lore Book containing many more stories on my Patreon. 
I am disabled and telling stories online is my primary source of income so if you share these please link back and consider donating to my Ko-Fi or PayPal.  Thank you all for your support!

DEFINITELY go read the tag. The stories are incredible! I would straight up read an entire book of them. Repeatedly.

And if you’ve got a buck to spare, drop it in that tip jar.

Appreciate your taletellers, folks. 😊

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots. My day has been made.

i, too, have only seen this post in screenshots….. and the lore about spooky has me thinking: “what if it was a spirit of the fae (or something of the like) who came and chilled with your grandparents bc they took in all the injured, unwanted, supposedly unlovable animals…?”

I’ve known Gallus was an amazing storyteller with a remarkable family for years, but this is the first time I’ve suspected an ancestral connection to Gerald Durrell.

Yet another epic. :)

I wondered why this was getting notes lol.

Some More animals from my mother’s childhood home:

• Nickel and Dime, the bait fish that lived in a teapot
• Susan, the rat snake
• Susan 2 or “Twosan”, also a rat snake but may have also been the same rat snake but bigger.
• The cats Smoke and Fire, so named because:
  1. They were gray and orange, respectively
  2. Fire was blind and navigated the house by following Smoke around, so literally, wherever there was Smoke, there’s Fire.
• A Goldfinch that moved into the Canary’s cage after he passed away and it was put outside one day during housecleaning
• A flying squirrel
• After my Grandparents moved to a nursing home, Grandpa had a “pet deer” that was a wild whitetail buck who would come up to the window of their room for carrots and head skritches, despire everyone telling Grandpa NO!!
• The Woodcock That Lived Under The Oak Tree. several attempts were made to name it but the next time it came up in conversation, everyone forgot what they had agreed to call it, so it became The Woodcock That Lives Under The Oak Tree.
• Romaine, a frog they found in a head of lettuce
• A Cow, briefly
• Apparently Strange The Dog had puppies at some point and they managed to find homes for Weird, Odd, and Bizarre, but they decided to keep Queer, which was a real funny animal to stand in the street calling in for dinner.
• At least 17 Bullfrogs, all named “Dog”
• Skittles the Pony who had a penchant for swimming in the local lake and biting pieces out anyone who wasn’t paying enough attention.

Honorable Mention:

• The first Dog my mom got was “Cops” a beautiful 120lb purebred German Shepherd who had flunked out of the police K9 academy.
• Cops HAD been doing very well at Bite Training, except that being A Creature of Profound Intellect and Sound Philosophy, Cops had assumed that the purpose of biting was to get the guy who was shouting and behaving aggressively to stop.
  So the first time he was told to Chase Down A Fleeing Suspect (the guy in the bite suit, sprinting away) Cops correctly decided that the man screaming at him to bite someone who was actively leaving the confrontation must be the aggressor, and promptly bit his handler in the dick.
• Being that he was entirely too morally upstanding for police work, Cops was surrendered to the local animal shelter as my mother arrived to adopt a dog.
• She expressed an interest, was told why he washed out and “He’s got a mean streak a mile wide- A little lady like you wouldn’t be able to control him.”
• My mother, 4'11 and the former Ohio State Weight Lifting Champion, looked down at this gentle soul and promptly scooped him up into her arms on his back like an infant, where he was thrilled to remain, tail wagging, for the rest of the adoption process.
• Cops was my mother’s loyal guardian, and largely aloof to politely hostile to nearly every man my mother brought home, which tended to end romantic relationships. Until one night when she brought a former ESL teacher turned computer programmer she’d been seeing home for a drink and when she came back from the kitchen with the bottle of wine, Cops had climbed into the man’s lap on the couch and rolled on his back while the man goo-goo’d over him like an infant.
• “That’s when I knew it was serious.” She told me, much later. “I hadn’t made up my mind about marriage at that point, but I knew I wanted children, and that I wanted him to be your father.”

—

I still make my living telling stories on the internet, so if you want to support my Ko-fi or Patreon, I’d be very grateful.

Delighted to announce this bird is real and is a corvid.

Truly the family that just keeps giving.

I haven’t seen it in the notes yet, so afaik, here’s the source of that video! So now you can see the funny poison bird much more clearly.

It was taken by a biologist that studies birds so it seems like he knows what he’s doing. For the most part. Here’s his caption:

You all know that he 100% licked his fingers after handling that bird

I can’t leave this in the tags, I’m sorry.

Oh, great! Not only is the North Australian Murder-Bird dangerous, it also growls like a tiger.

Man, fuck that bird.

100% shittest bird.

1 out of 5 stab wounds to the abdomen.

Would not recommend.

Love this thing, it is the closest bird to a raptor.

Antarctic penguins (and most other Antarctic animals for that matter) are very interesting because they lack a natural fear of humans since, of course, humans are not a natural occurrence on the continent. It is one of the few places on earth where it is completely normal for fully wild animals to be comfortable around you. In fact, most react as though humans are just especially large penguins as those are the only flightless biped native to the area.

As far as this gentoo penguin is concerned, it was saved by a float of large yellow penguins also hiding from orcas.

Penguin Diogenes

It’s a Muppet made of dryer lint

The fact this isn't a painting is a testament to one of the greatest feats of set design and production I've ever seen.

My god just look at this! The lighting, set design, photography... I've just never seen anything like it.