RDP Wednesday – SPLASH

Do you think that Sharks are the scariest thing in the ocean?

BEHOLD

The Starfish.

Starfish ( or Sea Stars, they aren’t fish but they aren’t stars either so whatever  ) have no blood and no brain but they do have eyes, hundreds of feet and they eat by pushing their stomach out of their mouths into the inside of their prey ( shells of muscles of clams for instance ) and digest it.

Can you imagine if Starfish were bigger?

” So, did you hear about what happened to Jill on her trip ?  She got eaten by a Starfish! It was messed up.  She was on the beach drinking wine and reading poetry like she does and she went for a quick dip and this Starfish crawled up on her and stuck it’s stomach in mouth and yuck, yuck, YUCK.”

Update from 2018: An unknown mutation is saving sea stars from wasting disease

My favorite sea animal is the Seahorse- first of all, unlike Starfish, Seahorses are actually fish. They suck their prey up their noses- or snouts and they have excellent eyesight.

Only 1 in a thousand baby Seahorses live to adulthood, which means they are both rare and precious and unlike Starfish I can see no scenario where they evolve into merciless killing machines like Starfish.

I’ve always wanted to have seahorses, but I kill house plants so I don’t think that’s going to happen. Still, when I go to Aquariums I always check out the seahorses

Maybe it’s their faces, or the way they swim or that they mate for life, like wolves but Seahorses are the coolest things in the ocean check out these videos and see for yourself:

 

To answer the prompt more specifically –

this is  what splash means to me…it’s the sound that the ocean makes

when the monsters are swimming  around.

RDP Monday: VERDANT

Last year I visited Wisconsin for the very first time and my family- with the happy addition of my beautiful Granddaughter- took a nature hike at a park outside of Fox Lake.

Here’s a picture of my handsome son and his beautiful baby:

There was greenery everywhere- even the turtles- who I had never seen in the wild before were green. I’m from Washington state, so the minute I see green and blue I instantly feel at home and I settled into my creative ways right off the bat.

That is always a good thing, right?

Because of  the I felt so at ease,  I saw a lot of potential  for some great shots that I could use for my Halloween stories.  Ok, Halloween was like five months away but if I want to post daily I get my work finished by the end of August.

 

So I was standing at this lookout point and I could see marshes and animals like hawks trying to not be noticed as they went about their day and these gnarly clusters of trees and the ground was super soft and if you wanted to:

” This would be a great place to dump body parts.” I told my son and about a dozen people standing next to us who were part of a bird watching group. ” I mean, what you don’t toss into the marsh is going to get eaten by a hawk or maybe foxes or something like that.”

My son who knows his Mother well wasn’t  exactly  taken back by my observation.

” So. ” I said as these beautiful birds burst from a tree and took flight over head and my Granddaughter crowed in delight. ” Are there any old cemeteries around here?”

” You know the kinds I like, the creepy ones ghosts wouldn’t get caught dead haunting.”

My son assured me there was and did we want to stop for Ice Cream first?

” Hell yes!” I  said with boatloads of enthusiasm, because who doesn’t love Ice Cream on a hot day?

I turned around and a group of very nice people who were enjoying a day of bird watching looked from the sky to me and I sort of tilted my head forward so that my bangs  fell across my eyes and I smiled, well my version of one.

Yeah. I didn’t help myself there much. It’s not one of my more Grandmotherly looks- unless you put it in the same category as the Wolf pretending to be Red Riding Hood’s Grandmother.

I suppose that sometimes it might serve me well to remember to use my inside voice when I’m working.

But when inspiration takes root and burst to life, I don’t think that reigning it in is the thing to do.

amm