This is a lachrymouse. He goes "sobsobsobMEEP, sobsobsobMEEP," as you might expect.
This is a lachrymouse. He goes "sobsobsobMEEP, sobsobsobMEEP," as you might expect.
S. and I often like to contemplate the following question: What animal would you like to have in a tame, one- to two-inch version, hanging out on your desk today? You can have a little habitat for it, too, if you like. You might choose, for example, a little puddle-pond for your desk hippo or a patch of sod for your desk sheep.
Recently I have found myself often opting for capybaras; they're so noble. They are also apparently quite good-natured. (While we generally assume that desk animals are tame, they are not completely domesticated; a desk rhino, for example, is going to be a little bit on the aggressive side and a desk squirrel is going to be kind of... squirrelly.) It might seem a little deranged to select a miniature version of an animal that is mainly famous for being the largest species of its order, but the capybara clearly has much more to offer than mere size.
Just look at that appealing posture! Not to mention the impressive symmetry of eyes and nostrils. Also, sometimes they hang out in the bottom of canoes.
Especially recommended:
Description
Male attempts to mate with female, female walks away then looks at male until he walks off, Alaska
Keywords
CONIFEROUS WOODLAND LOOKING AROUND MALES (GENDER)
MOUNTING ACTIONS COPULATION ATTEMPTED COPULATION
FALLING OFF (ACTION) ALASKAN MOOSE WALKING
FEMALES (GENDER) TREES MOUNTING (MATING BEHAVIOUR)
DISSATISFACTION ALASKA (USA) CONIFEROPSIDA
FAILURE (PERFORMANCE)
S. and I are happy to have identified a phenomenon we call "overly fine-grained following". To illustrate: the cat does this a great deal, when he is trotting along close at your heels. You go walking off towards the kitchen, say, and realize you wanted to grab a coffee cup on your way in. As you backtrack a single step, he whips around in order to follow you in this new direction, only, of course, to have to do it all over again when you return to your original path, when if he'd been a mere half-second slower to respond, he would have been just as well off.
Although first observed in this particular cat-human configuration, I think you will find that this terminology is more widely applicable than you might expect, and that the concept is a useful thing to have a name for. Try it and see.
Just a little sumpin' sumpin'.
Oops, fixed to deal with the stupid misplaced highlight I originally had on the front cat-guy's pants. I don't know what I'm doing wrong with my color profile when I save this -- the raspberry color is much more intense in my Photoshop file. Oh well.
Trinity is killing me! So much terrible tiny animal death.
Thanks to lint's helpful suggestions, I have revised the squid picture. I think this version is a great improvement. If only crits in my university art classes had been so immediately rewarding.
Unfortunately, the new layout does result in a proportional en-smallening of the squid and girl when it gets resized for Vox. But you can click through to see a version large enough that the squid does not appear to be a giant daikon. The border is just there so you can appreciate what's going on with the arrangement on the page.
Just three colors on this one, and no vegetables. Astonishing! But meanwhile, I bought a fennel bulb at the farmer's market this weekend for the express purpose of having an excuse to draw something else with feathery foliage. Whatever compression Vox does with its automatic resizing is having an unfortunate effect of making the edges of color areas darker than they should be here, giving a watercolor/over-Unsharp-Mask'd effect. Oh well.
I feel that there is a certain lack of the cute and the charming in IF. Where is the Orisinal of interactive fiction, I ask you? Well, one answer is that it is easier to do understated and adorable successfully in the visual realm, and also that it is easier to do it in a context other than that of extended plot. But still! I am thinking that while I am still in the kiddie pool of being an IF amateur, I should be sure to include lots of sweet mammals. Perhaps hordes of cuddly wombats. Who's with me?