he’s right about shane’s haircut tho. hudson looks like a fucking kpop idol and shane looks like he’s allowing himself the minimum required amount of hair.
I wish we could teach each other how to love the way we can teach animals that aren’t supposed to be able to feel it.
@kaijutegu is this cute? I know you deal with tegus and not iguanas, but I didn’t know who else to ask
This is precious.
So, first thing you need to know is that is a very visibly healthy adult green iguana. Every part of the iguana is sharp. The claws evolved to haul a ten pound lizard up a tree. The spines are like tiny icepicks. The tail is a bullwhip. The teeth evolved to shred leaves, but they’ll just as easily shred your flesh. Good luck making a healthy adult iguana do anything they don’t wanna. That puts us on our first thing to look at- is the animal capable of defense and getting away, physically? Yes, definitely.
Next thing to know is what does a threatened or scared iguana look like? When an iguana is threatened, it doesn’t stand on its hind legs like that; it stands on all fours and puffs itself up to look bigger, aggressively bobs its head (note: head bobbing is a behavior used for a LOT of things, it does need context- for example, they also head bob as part of mating displays), there is hissing, there is tail whipping- iguanas are not subtle creatures. None of this is the behavior of an iguana that feels threatened or is being a threat!
So what does standing like that mean? That’s just simple reaching. The iguana sees something they want and is attempting to reach it, and what they want appears to be uppies, because they settle into the human’s grip immediately.
Then, we see some GREAT handling from the human. There’s really great communication happening between the two of them! The person picks up the iguana very securely- pelvis and pectoral girdles are well supported, and he doesn’t grab. (Iguanas typically do NOT like being grabbed around the sides; many of their predators are birds and coming at them from above or gripping the sides is scary!)
As he goes in for the pet, he lets the iguana support their back half on his knee. The hold is secure but not tight; at any point, if the iggy was distressed, they could leave. But they don’t- instead, you see them leaning into the pets, actively participating in the behavior. They’re not even closing their eyes to block stimulus. They want this to happen.
This is the kind of bond that’s possible when you can prove to a big lizard that you’re trustworthy, and easily the best iguana video I’ve seen in a long time. Thank you for tagging me in!
Some green iguana body language resources under the jump!
I have written a poem about the current situation.
Not just ICE, but all of it. Months ago, a thinkpiece referred to the dissipation of Trans rights as the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for American Fascism. And then again, and again, and again… another issue, another issue, another issue.
The canary and the coal miner share a special kinship: they’re both trapped in the mine.
This is a beautiful meditation on the horrific situation a lot of us are living through right now, and the hopelessness of feeling born to die, or helpless to fix anything, or often both.
I hope it’s okay if I add something to the post that you inspired me to reflect on, OP. Though I normally lurk, I was a historian once upon a time, and one of my most emotional discoveries was learning about the machine invented to resuscitate canaries, which held its own oxygen tank in hopes of preventing the bird’s death if it was exposed to toxic gas.
There’s something to that, I think - how natural it is for humans to care, how connected and protective we are, how easily we pack-bond with things that are different than us because at our core it is our most honest state to be empathetic, cooperative, and caretaking.
I say all this to not to diminish the horror that is happening now - but to instead focus the lens on how much constant *work* a cruel and broken few must employ to propagandize us against our natures. The terror is the point. The hopelessness is the point. Maybe there’s a reason that we all learn the phrase “canary in a coal mine” as a sacrificial entity allowed by an apathetic overseer to die and be discarded, the truth of their importance as a warning only recognized in hindsight. Maybe there’s a very specific reason we never learn about the device invented to save them, and the miners that loved them enough to use them, no matter how heavy the added equipment was to carry, which endangered them too down there.
We help each other. We resist cruelty. We resist apathy. We invent new ways to live and keep our neighbors alive to spite the inhospitable conditions we are forced to endure. Hand in hand, we live. We outlast them. We all get out of the mine. Together.
Maybe
#I don’t know tumblr etiquette #genuinely hope I’m not overstepping #this is a beautiful poem OP and it just made me Think Things #I hope we get out of this mine OP #lets survive and see the sun again
i was chatting today at work about HR and that i couldnt stop watching it. Specifically the cottage bc I like watching Ilya cry when he tells Shane he loves him bc hes pretty, even tho Shane is more my type, and it was nice that they were both so good looking bc it made it fun to watch.
And my supervisor was like “Tea…!” in this warning tone bc everybody knows the show’s rep and we arent really supposed to chat about inappropriate things on the floor
so I was like 🥺I DIDNT SAY ANYTHING. I SAID HE HAS PRETTY EYES.
(which he does. huddy is blessed with brown eyes which i roll incoherently around on the floor for. i also just like to watch boys cry.)
Avoidance is the worst reaction to stress. Oh this thing is giving me anxiety? And it’s something I could prepare for by looking at it more or learning things about the topic? No, I will take psychological damage if I look at it directly. I will still be thinking about it and be stressed though.
