To overandoverandunder

[rthstewart]

Well, the upside of permitting anonymous posting is that I do hear from folks without ff.net accounts and those who prefer true anonymity.  So, to overandoverandunder, should you head over here and see this, thank you, that is indeed high praise coming from someone who is actually in the trade.  I'm just a dabbler who has spent the last 15 years wandering the zoos, aquariums, and natural history museums of North America.  I have memorized parts of Planet Earth  -- I really wanted to but could not get in something about those Birds of Paradise mating dances, but did capture the ferocity of giant river otters going after the Mugger crocs and I relied on the National Geographic issue on hummingbirds.  I have seen every episode, many many times of Walking With Dinosaurs, When Dinosaurs Roamed America, Walking with Big Al Allosaurus, Dinosaur Planet, Prehistoric Park, Chased By Sea Monsters, The Giant Claw, and Land of the Giants.  We own them all, plus a lot of dragon material.  And let's not forget all the reptiles I've had in the basement at birthday parties and the enumerable trips looking for big reptiles -- we never did find the big pythons in the Everglades, though we've driven the park road at dusk a few times.  And let's not forget Ms. Frizzle in the beehive.  Perhaps you will get who and what the Stone Gryphon is! 

I did jigger some of the timelines for some of those expeditions referenced, I fudged the terminology of some of the bonding systems because I just didn't want to try to explain the distinctions between polygamy, polygyny, polygynadry, and promiscuity, and after I posted, I read something that said that cardinals actually did form stable mating bonds.  

But, thanks, and if you can find a comfortable way of communicating, including over here (also anonymously), I'd love to hear more from you.  Trying to make the Beasts into true beasts is one of the real efforts I've made here and it's been very gratifying to see a few others try to do the same things in their stories.  Should you have any suggestions/improvements/tweaks/ideas, I welcome them.

Comments

[autumnia]

So this explains a bit of the research you've done for your stories! I had been wondering about this. It's absolutely amazing how you can take all this information and make it work so well in Narnia.

[min023.livejournal.com]

Yep, much is indeed explained - you've been paddling in this stuff for years! So, did this all start because you had the reptile/dinosaurs/whatever phase with your kids? Because if it did, then your household must _really_ have done the dinosaurs and natural history and whatever else. And I thought my household was mad about dinos!