Rumor has it that if you were to get past the murderous mannegishi lurking in the grasses, drift across the lake with nary a ripple (to avoid disturbing the kooshdakhaa) and you strike the stone tomb three times – at midnight – with a stick crafted from a mountaintop pine, you can awaken the bukwus, which will then rise, emaciated with hunger, hair blowing in the sudden breeze, and proceed to devour all life for miles around.

But we didn’t do that, as we were guests in Canada, and that would not have been polite.

The LensBaby lens makes things look magical … though the spell would have looked better had I focused on either the stick or the face.

Ah well, something to experiment with when I’m allowed to go outside again.

See? Beautiful and inviting.

Infrared photography makes gardens look beautiful and inviting … until you add children.

At the museum of natural history in London, I got to see my first platypus skin. At the biodiversity museum in Vancouver, I got to see my first platypus skeleton.

That means I’ve finally seen a whole platypus, right?

Some swings are purposefully designed so you can never get a good picture of everyone at the same time.

One of only three exhibits at the anthropology museum that kids are allowed to touch. Thrilling.

(Still processing the photos from our Vancouver trip last summer … so you’re going to start seeing more people pictures than normal.)

I’ve been thinking about getting a kayak for years. Now that entire world is becoming introverts, this may be the year to do it and finally paddle out to explore things like this close-up.

Minnesota has dwarves. River dwarves.

I’ve been reminded that people need to see more than just pandemic news. I still don’t have the time to process my (extensive) backlog, but I have some upload I haven’t posted here yet, so here you go.

I may not have time to come up funny captions for everything. Hopefully the photos are enjoyable enough on their own.

This coyote observes that it’s less than a year before the next major US election, so it’s about time for a nice distracting war in the middle east.

This coyote plans to hide in his tail until 2021.

I was holding this one to post something like “remember when water was liquid?”, but we live in the era of climate change, and I suspect I could take a similar photo if I were out on the river today. (Though perhaps with fewer leaves.)

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for the workers at the botanical garden who will politely ask you to leave, should you cause it to toll again.

Sometimes you can’t come up with anything clever to say but really like the photo, so you post it on an international holiday and hope no one notices that you weren’t interesting in the caption.

This owl wants to know how Santa delivers presents to: 1) Children that live in houses without chimneys 2) Children that live in hot desert areas that are inhospitable to reindeer 3) 69,550 children kept in cages along the US border