wriggle wriggle wriggle
Kat Eschner's newsletter about human-animal relationships, Vol. 7 iss. 3
I’ve been thinking about the second apartment I ever lived in, when I was a student at UVic. It was also in a walkup, on the second (top) floor. The building had been one-bedroom newlywed apartments in the 1960s, then some philistine turned them into two-bedroom student hovels. Our building manager was an eccentric mail carrier whose apartment was directly below ours. I loved watching the birds come to his feeders from my balcony. Across the street, in front of a deep blackberry thicket, some other guy was living in his old yellow muscle car.
While kind of run-down (not, however, the most rundown place I’ve ever lived), it was pretty delightful in some ways, and a nice enough place to spend a few youthful years studying history. My roommate (who subscribes to this newsletter, hi you) was a philosophy major. We had this gross orange couch that I loved. There were built-in bookshelves by the kitchen. The one kind of grotty thing about it was that it had silverfish.
Silverfish, AKA Lepisma saccharinum, are so named because they’re silvery, wingless insects whose movements kind of look like the wriggling of small fish—think minnows. When one is peering up at you from the bathroom sink at 6 am on the day of a midterm, they’re much less charming than this description makes it sound. One time, I found a massive albino one living in the cupboard above the hood fan where we kept the teatowels. Never really figured that out.
As an aside, they also eat books. Librarians hate silverfish.
Roundup
Shortish
How animals can help us demystify viruses (Popular Science; Sandra Gutierrez; United States of America)
Turkmenistan’s president gives his favourite dog a golden treat (The New York Times; Isabella Kwai; Turkmenistan)
Remote Canadian town programs radar to spot approaching polar bears (Reuters; Gloria Dickie; Manitoba, Canada)
Beyond dog food: Walmart adds pet insurance as animal adoptions soar during pandemic (CNBC; Melissa Repko; United States of America)
Drilling company, animal welfare group to add to reward after white moose killed (SooToday; Dariya Baiguzhiyeva; Ontario, Canada)
Longish
Trapped between the pavement and the Pacific (Hakai; Julia Rosen; Washington State, United States of America)
Satellites, maps and the flow of cattle: Brazilian solutions for reducing deforestation are already in use (Mongabay; Naira Hofmeister, Fernanda Wenzel & Pedro Papini, trans. Maya Johnson; Brazil)
Stuff from me:
My most recent work.
Why you should think twice before opting for a valved N95 mask
Biden’s COVID-19 response plan is missing one major component (and related Twitter thread)
Scientists are tracking down deep sea creatures with free-floating DNA
The last word:
Coronavirus: Denmark shaken by cull of millions of mink (BBC News; Adrienne Murray; Denmark)
Denmark rolls back order for mink cull amid legal dispute (CNN; Jack Guy, Antonia Mortenson & Mick Krever; Denmark)
Fur industry faces scrutiny over fears mink could spread COVID-19 (Al Jazeera; Kaelyn Forde; we raise animals for fur in lots of countries)
All images in The Quick Fox are used under Creative Commons licensing. Efforts have been made to ensure that photographs of living animals or natural scenes have been taken ethically, in responsible pet ownership conditions, at AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums or under safe, non-damaging conditions in the wild. If you see an issue with any image we share, please notify me.