Is It Possible To Be Beyond Great? The Water Bear

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"If the US had an army of water bears, we would always win." - my 13 year old son.

He prevails. He can live ten years without food or water, and that's just the first of many astounding facts about the water bear.

You don't believe me? Look up the facts.

It can live in hot springs.

It can live on top of Mount Everest.

It can live inside of ice.

It can be found inside a rock. But they prefer moisture.

You can find them in a box, you can find them in a car, you can find them here or there, you can find them anywhere. 

But what else is about them, you ask?

The water bear/tardigrade/moss piglet can live in water, rocks, space, ice, space, in the beginning in the past in the future. Wherever he damn well wants.

When he is dormant, his metabolism is .01 percent and he can withstand 304F and -328F. degrees.

Mmmhmmm.

And for a few minutes, water bears can survive close to absolute zero (which is not zero degrees HA!)

Water bears can withstand being in a vacuum (not like a Dyson, HUGE difference, google it) As an example, humans can't exist in a vacuum - if we did we would explode. This is why astronauts wear space suits to keep their insides inside.

Water bears can survive 1,200 atmospheres (WHUT) An atmosphere how much pressure we have on earth from our air. They can be broken into a thousand pieces and rehydrate themselves together again better than the patched up tire on your college bike.

Is this refusal to perish enough to love him? Because there's even more facts. Or you can forget about all that and just look at the pictures!

The water bear is 1.5 mm and that's the biggest one. The smallest one is 0.1 mm. This is very very small, like sand.


via GIPHY

Oh the water bear with his teeny tiny hands!! and his elephant trunk nozzle out front!

Water hands, chubby legs like a baby, a little Michelin man Sumo wrestler. Just when you think all that will make you lose your mind, you find out that when he gets cold his body gives him a little coat, complete with his own little hood!

Amazing.
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*This post just about rings out NaBloPoMo : 30 days of blogging. It's a perfect example of the freedom one has when you know you have 30 days of blogging in a space that is all yours.  

NaBloPoMo is a celebration, really, of how lucky we are to be online and be able to write whatever we freakin' want. I'm a water bear of blogging, baby.

What Do The Birds Say?

Ignore the piles of snow alongside your driveway. Forget about still needing to wear that white wool headband that leaves you looking like the drummer boy returning home from the Civil War. The calendar tells us it's spring! And so do the birds outside my window.

I love the sound of bird songs. I am dorky enough to have this CD in my kitchen going at all times. It makes me happy. Happy, as long as I stay ignorant and just keep on telling myself, they're only bird sounds. They don't serve the purpose of communication, of course not.


120 minutes of bird calls! You wouldn't expect him to be creepy, would you?

This means, just as with WebMD, don't google, "What do birds sing." If you do, then you'll find out why birds sing. It's not to sound pretty, how's that. And if you think you're as smart as a fifth grader and our feathered friends are only setting their lives to a backdrop of trills and whistles merely as the obvious mating calls and to claim territories, you would be wrong. That’s a whole lot of effort and repertoire for “be mine” and “it’s mine.”

Life is complicated, and bird life no less entangled. Predator warnings are needed, information regarding food locations must be sung out, much like hobo markings on a fence in front of a house. “Hey, yo! Over here. And it’s a squirrel-free feeder too!” Maybe they're whistling out, “Hey, it was fun, let’s keep in touch” or “Let’s V-fly formation again soon!”

Mating calls are necessary, but even with their pebble sized brains, birds go beyond “Me want you.” Just like human life, there are whackadoo birds out there, too. Their eyes alight on a particularly dainty yellow finch, they begin screeching out right outside your kitchen window, “I won’t give up. You will be mine! Have you seen the extra food I gots here?” ::deep breath:: “You want THIS.”

Think about how we’re all more alike than not on this planet, makes me kinda glad we don’t know what birds are saying because mating season, y’all. I’m sure there are some calls that if we had a bird-o-translatron what we’d hear would be creepy. Down right inappropriate. Like really gross stuff. “Hey. I got surprises in my nest.” “Who's ready for the world’s biggest worm?”

And what about the bird that we see, all by himself? On that branch right outside your first floor window? No one else around for miles or for hours, yet, that bird keeps on chirping. To himself. Birds are not solitary creatures so is this guy a self-talker like on Seinfeld? I mean, I talk to myself every once in a while. But for hours on end? Outside? For the world to see? Just too sad.

If you've gone and taken your kids with a bag of bread to a pond to feed ducks, you’ll know the quack quack quack sound as you toss slice after slice at them. Is it as simply translated as, “bread bread bread BREAD bread bread.” No... it's all mine, go away, all for me.

In Wisconsin, wild turkeys strut and gobble around all year. They’re unsightly. They are as close to walking scrotums as ever designed. BUT, even more so, turkeys are the annoying people of the world. Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Google “turkey sounds” on youtube and you’ll be screaming ENOUGH after the first 17 seconds into any video.

Bird translations. I know all I have to know. I prefer to just enjoy and imagine they are sweetly innocent and so unlike us. I really don’t want to hear a Robin Red Breast boasting, “Look! Ladies! Shiny things in my nest! Blue ribbons! Some broken candy pieces! Twigs! Look at this place I got here! And let me tell YOU -- Plenty o’room. I do mean plenty cuz you’ll need it for the 80 eggs you’re gonna lay after spending some time with me. *wink wink*”

On second thought, wipe your mind clean of this post. Forget you ever read it. Continue on enjoying our sweet bird callers. Don’t imagine it as arguing, inappropriate pick up lines, shouting to each other to keep away from their tree branch.

I'm sorry if I just ruined spring for all of you. Now, the next time you’re at a park on a beautiful spring day, you’ll hear a bird sing and it won't sound like anything else but, “Hey! I’m talking to you! Big Papa, that's who! That's who and whose army!"

Maybe birds are all crazy like us. Crazy and screaming. Two fold screeching and scaring away while also calling forth. “Stay away. Be mine,” they call out. Just like the rest of us losing our minds because spring. Finally.

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Other Places You Can Find Me This Week:

Huffington Post

Aiming Low

MetroParent Milwaukee

Purple Clover