Come On, When Was The Last Time You Were Blown Away By The Natural World? Remember Nature? (This Is Not An Intelligent Design Thread)

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I was looking at pictures of snowflakes today. So. Un. Fucking. Believable. Plus, on 60 minutes tonight they briefly gave a peek at the actual bird flu virus and that thing is as pretty as a picture. so much to see. even if you aren't a drippy hippy! any epiphanies? don't be shy. Yes, I'm a little drunk, but still...

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 5 December 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

this morning, watching a cardinal near the bird feeder - not to sound all acid-casualty, but the shades of red! and the color of the beak! and the character! the whole freakin' amazing machine that is a bird havin' a bite to eat! made me grin.

they raised the allowable alcohol content on beer down here so I too am a little tipsy

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Monday, 5 December 2005 01:08 (twenty years ago)

http://www.archicats.com/images/Mom-and-Baby-March-12-20054.jpg

― Je4nn3 ƒur¥ loves little creatures (Je4nne Fury), Monday, 5 December 2005 01:15 (twenty years ago)

ATP as a neurotransmitter for taste! Makes perfect sense. I love it when things fit like that.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Monday, 5 December 2005 01:21 (twenty years ago)

I promise i won't tell the metal world how twee my two favorite decibel contributors are!

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 5 December 2005 01:30 (twenty years ago)

I was in a cafe I hadn't been in for several months - the last time I'd been there one of the owners/managers was pregnant. She wasn't pregnant this time, and there was a really beautiful picture of her newborn baby in the display under the counter. Now, I understand the facts of life, of course, and have friends who've had babies, but at that moment, I just thought: wow. people have babies. and that's freakin' amazing.

(and: awww, kittens!)

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Monday, 5 December 2005 02:06 (twenty years ago)

nature is the shit.

every time i'm on a plane and i can see out my window, i look down and think "oh yeah! nature!"

― The Great Pagoda of Funn (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 5 December 2005 02:08 (twenty years ago)

The moon last night was just a crescent, but there was a faint glow of the rest of the face making it ghostily visible. Jupiter (I think) was bright as hell right next to it.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 5 December 2005 02:13 (twenty years ago)

A few weeks ago there was a ladybug crawling on some paperwork on my desk. It agreed to sit still on my arm for a few minutes while I put my printer's loupe over it and take a close look at its insecty face parts. Bugs are cool (when they're not coming at you stinger-first).

― I do feel guilty for getting any perverse amusement out of it (Rock Hardy), Monday, 5 December 2005 02:19 (twenty years ago)

This photo I took about a year ago still trips me out:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/walterkranz/dragonfly.jpg

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 5 December 2005 02:53 (twenty years ago)

Completely insane. Almost unbelievable. Who needs aliens? But don't get me wrong, I love aliens. Is it really true that 99.9% of all past species have been wiped out? And yet, there is still so much left. Truly freaky. I was watching neon jellyfish last week on t.v. Neon jellyfish! They have no bones or organs or nothing and they can light up like christmas trees!!!

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 5 December 2005 02:59 (twenty years ago)

That dragonfly is awesome. Do you have a 1920 x 1200 or bigger version you could email me for a new desktop picture?

― I do feel guilty for getting any perverse amusement out of it (Rock Hardy), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:06 (twenty years ago)

Completely insane. Almost unbelievable. Who needs aliens? But don't get me wrong, I love aliens.

yeah, i've made this observation many times. i mean fucking ELEPHANTS! what the fuck are they?

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:13 (twenty years ago)

http://www.genome.gov/Pages/News/Photos/Science/elephant_image.jpg

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:14 (twenty years ago)

My friend just came back from Puerto Rico and told me about a bioluminescent bay where something in the water glows when agitated so the wake of boats or swimmers leaves a glowy trail!

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:16 (twenty years ago)

gah, that elephant!

― The Great Pagoda of Funn (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:24 (twenty years ago)

Check your email Rock Hardy.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:40 (twenty years ago)

Got it -- thanks!

― I do feel guilty for getting any perverse amusement out of it (Rock Hardy), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:41 (twenty years ago)

Elephants! There was a half-hour documentary on yesterday about Barbara Gowdy's book "The White Bone", and in the docu they went to Kenya (I believe) and elephant-watched and she talked to elephant experts. At one point an elephant came across elephant bones and spent a long time feeling them and sniffing and picking them up. Then they showed an elephant brain and talked about their increased capacity for memory, relative to other animals. So, even if we take into account our tendencies to anthropomorphize: Elephants remember a lot, and when they're examining bones like that for a while, it means they are familiar bones - they most likely knew the elephant when it was alive. ohmygod, THE WORLD.

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Monday, 5 December 2005 04:24 (twenty years ago)

http://www.reiseagentur.de/Travelogs/NEUS99/jpeg/018.jpg

― kephm (kephm), Monday, 5 December 2005 04:26 (twenty years ago)

There was some PBS special I saw a couple years ago about elephants. One of the segments was about returning a zoo or circus (can't recall which) elephant to a herd in some kind of protected habitat. There was some suspicion that the returning elephant was a relative of another animal already there. When they brought it out and the two elephants they thought might be brother and sister saw (or smelled, or whatever) one another, they ran right over to each other and twined their trunks, and just stood there rocking back and forth.

weepies.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 5 December 2005 04:28 (twenty years ago)

this summer i lived in a house right above the connecticut river; every morning i could go outside and look out and see the trees all over the opposite bank, and the sun shining down on the gently flowing stream. so basically i got the chance to be blown away by the natural world every single day this summer. it was AWESOME

― nervous (cochere), Monday, 5 December 2005 04:42 (twenty years ago)

xpost to elephant meetings: oh, aw, wow. tears in eyes.

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Monday, 5 December 2005 04:44 (twenty years ago)

There was a great Huell Howser episode that reunited a Hollywood elephant trainer with his elephant. Here's a synopsis:

In 1988, Huell attended a touching reunion between Charlie Franks, an 80-year-old elephant trainer, and Nita, the elephant he had raised from a baby of five years. When Charlie retired in the early 1970s after traveling the world with his beloved performing elephant, he donated her to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and hadn’t seen her for 15 years.

Charlie has since passed away, but Huell returns to the San Diego Wild Animal Park to say hello to Nita.

When the two met again for the first time in 15 years it was like two old friends.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 5 December 2005 05:17 (twenty years ago)

the snow this morning, especially on branches (I was too lame to go outside yesterday.) (Once in Columbus, OH, it snowed overnight and I was lucky enough to be outside while it was happening.)

― youn, Monday, 5 December 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago)

I love having my dog lick peanut butter off my balls

― latebloomer: The Corridor (Yes, The Corridor) (latebloomer), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:34 (twenty years ago)

Serious answer:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/DSCN0833.jpg

― latebloomer: The Corridor (Yes, The Corridor) (latebloomer), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:35 (twenty years ago)

the fact that sauropod dinosaurs over a hundred feet long and weighing hundreds of tons walked the earth never fails to amaze me.

― latebloomer: The Corridor (Yes, The Corridor) (latebloomer), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:40 (twenty years ago)

All the time. I've been collecting all of David Attenborough's DVD series from the BBC over the last couple of months and I've been mightily impressed by all of them.

(Life on Earth - The Living Planet - The Trials of Life - Life in the Freezer - The Private Life of Plants - Attenborough in Paradise - The Wildlife Specials - The Life of Birds - The Blue Planet - The Life of Mammals - Life In The Undergrowth)

― StanM (StanM), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:42 (twenty years ago)

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/sgifs/Seismosaurus_bw.GIF

― latebloomer: The Corridor (Yes, The Corridor) (latebloomer), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:50 (twenty years ago)

I've been reading about the sex lives of houseflies fairly recently...That's some seriously fucked up shit!

A clear night with good seeing conditions when you can see forever...

― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

Around this time of year EVERYTHING looks amazing, nature or not. On the bus to L:ondon from Oxford you go over loads of pretty little overgrown rivers, and they look like something straight from Hobbiton.

― Come Back Johnny B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 12:55 (twenty years ago)

I was following this amoeba around on a slide for a half hour or so, and
it started doing thing folding/rolling thing... it seriously looked like
a dog chasing its tail. So cute.

― shieldforyoureyes, Wednesday, 7 December 2005 03:25 (twenty years ago)

not that it's a pristine vision of nature, per se, but i like that i get to see the east river every morning on my commute nowadays.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 03:28 (twenty years ago)

Several times a day. I live in NM (land of enchanment/entrapment) and with light/colors/winds I have "paradise moments" all the time.

David Attenborough OTM. "Life on Earth" changed my life.

― steve ketchup, Wednesday, 7 December 2005 15:47 (twenty years ago)

http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?issueID=79&articleID=1158

― cutty (mcutt), Friday, 9 December 2005 00:40 (twenty years ago)

A: How could those frogs not win?
B: Why do those frogs have built in ipods?

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 9 December 2005 00:47 (twenty years ago)

When I was a junior in high school, I was volunteering at the zoo and happened to be at convenient place to view a giraffe giving birth. It ruled. They are some seriously spindly motherfuckers.

― Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Friday, 9 December 2005 00:48 (twenty years ago)

― Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Friday, 9 December 2005 00:49 (twenty years ago)

― Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Friday, 9 December 2005 00:50 (twenty years ago)

http://web.pdx.edu/%7Ecws/water/P9070013.jpg

http://web.pdx.edu/%7Ecws/water/PC180015.jpg

― Clay (cws), Friday, 9 December 2005 00:59 (twenty years ago)

ihttp://mail.google.com/mail/?view=att&disp=thd&attid=0.1&th=1080d114b7bd337c

― Thea (Thea), Friday, 9 December 2005 01:11 (twenty years ago)

damn.

― Thea (Thea), Friday, 9 December 2005 01:11 (twenty years ago)

crazy red fungus growing in my backyard. don't tell the boyz at ScOre, but it's the coolest most colorful creature in South Beach.

― Thea (Thea), Friday, 9 December 2005 01:13 (twenty years ago)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/movies/43623/43623_cf.jpg

― latebloomer: The Corridor (Yes, The Corridor) (latebloomer), Friday, 9 December 2005 01:15 (twenty years ago)

thanks, Clay! In stores, at work, they all tell me about 7 inches, 7 inches of snow!

― youn, Friday, 9 December 2005 02:04 (twenty years ago)

Celebrate the wild and beautiful places of America and the world!

I heart nature so much. I can't wait to leave the city.

....sort of.

― giboyeux (skowly), Friday, 9 December 2005 02:17 (twenty years ago)

I heart nature, but I wish I could move to the city.

― I do feel guilty for getting any perverse amusement out of it (Rock Hardy), Friday, 9 December 2005 02:21 (twenty years ago)

Basically, if I could live someplace like Vancouver, Seattle, Portland (OR), or even NYC, I'd be the happiest. I'd get city shit AND nature shit.

― giboyeux (skowly), Friday, 9 December 2005 02:23 (twenty years ago)

Blown away by the natural world.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Friday, 9 December 2005 03:30 (twenty years ago)

From link:

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Friday, 9 December 2005 03:32 (twenty years ago)

stupid python

― cutty (mcutt), Friday, 9 December 2005 03:42 (twenty years ago)

i was telling my friend about my hometown the other day and looked up some pictures of the amazing mountains and waterfalls in the area and got so naturesick (like homesick) as i've not been there for more than 16 hours in over a year. latebloomer, you are so lucky to have looking glass falls/sliding rock/cesar's head/jones gap/the drive up the watershed to saluda so close!

also, the other day, i got in my car and a snowflake fell on the door and the light hit it just perfectly so i could see all the crystallization and it was so awesome i forgot how cold i was and that i had a 25 min drive home from work ahead of me.

― tres letraj (tehresa), Friday, 9 December 2005 04:56 (twenty years ago)

sometimes i feel lucky just be alive in this strange and wonderful universe

― latebloomer: The Corridor (Yes, The Corridor) (latebloomer), Friday, 9 December 2005 06:16 (twenty years ago)

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