Siamese are highly intelligent problem solvers and escape artists. They’re famous for opening doors and drawers, turning on taps, and getting up to more mischief than normal. And you have two of the beauties.
I don’t get many contextual opportunities to share this story, but yeah, I get you. I like snakes fine if they’re not in my personal space, and they’re really good at blending in.
When I was 13, we were driving from Phoenix to a town in Mexico. There’s a long stretch through the desert before you reach the border that’s literally nothing but highway. Before you hit it, there were signs pointing out the last place for gas and refreshments, with a ‘now or never’ vibe. It was the height of summer, so of course we stopped and I got the largest drink I could find.
It turned out my eyes were bigger than my teenage-girl bladder, and about midway through the most desolate stretch, I had to pee badly. We pulled over, I hopped out, and made for a set of dead bushes that were the only cover in range suitable to protect my modesty. I squatted awkwardly – everything was hot and pokey – and just as my business started, I heard a sharp rattle from right behind and below me.
I panicked and launched myself forward, just spotting a coiled rattler in a patch of shade under the bush, who was pretty annoyed I’d nearly pissed on him. I scrambled back to the truck, ass bare to the world, too scared to bother with my shorts.
My family found it hilarious and I didn’t live it down for years. I learned two things that day – rattlers will usually warn you before wasting their venom on something too big to eat, and fear (or humour) always trumps dignity.
TLDR: Always check the shade under bushes before pissing in the desert.
Thank you for your detailed response. That explains things very well. I don’t know a lot about chemistry, but is oxygen specifically required for cell metabolism or could that be replaced with a similarly reactive gas, too?
So from what I understand, we need a rather precise amount of oxygen plus a large amount of an inert gas – pretty much any inert gas, barring a few that have narcotic effects. So nitrogen isn’t special, except that it’s inert and doesn’t get us high.
But I’m also curious whether the reactive gas in low quantities (oxygen) can also be replaced. I’m not a chemist, and this is fascinating. I’ll keep reading.
My climate example was poor, I’m sorry. A better example of what I mean is that when we look for habitable planets, our focus is ‘oxygen rich atmosphere’, not ‘nitrogen rich’, though most of our breathable air is nitrogen and too much oxygen will actually kill us.
That makes sense, thanks, since our threshold for co2 is less than 0.5%.
I may have worded my question poorly; I’m more asking why low oxygen is a problem vs low nitrogen. In retrospect, my climate focus may be distracting. It was what made me wonder about this in the first place, but the medical and scuba points are much more relevant. That has little to do with co2 (I think?) and more to do with the relative compounds in our air.
I’m still confused why we hear about oxygen but never nitrogen. Another example: when we look for habitable planets, the focus is ‘oxygen rich atmosphere’, but not ‘nitrogen rich’.
So glad Winter has such a comfortable and obviously cultured home now.
‘Pretty girl’ was the first sign Emma learnt; I’m pretty sure she thought that was her name. I signed it at her every time she looked at me at first, lol. After a bit she would pay more attention after I’d do that sign, like she was expecting more.
She was ten when she learnt her first signs. She picked up on several pretty quickly after that. ‘Food’ was the cutest, because she started doing it at me after a while (probably because she knew a treat was coming immediately with that one, where with things like ‘down’ she didn’t get a treat if I had to physically put her down from where she didn’t belong. It was obvious she knew what it meant because she’d go out of her way to look away from me if she didn’t want to hear that one.
Sorry for the mini-screed, but Winter reminds me of my girl and I’ll bet she’d respond to ‘pretty girl’. :)
