Envious. Slow worm is still on my list of Animals I Want To See, because I don’t count dead on road.

OMG, the 4x4 post made from shorter posts “spliced” together with little galvanized plates!

Gorgeous! That would be a bucket list snake for me. I look whenever I am in range, but no luck so far

Hickory nuts and acorns here.

Oak, left. Sourwood, right. It would be interesting to know whether there has been any actual grafting of the two unrelated trees, or if they remain completely separate, though pressed together.

That first ampullaria is sweet!

In college, genetics seemed pretty cool, and honestly, a field with more funding than herpetology. In grad school the mutant mouse I was studying turned out to have a mutation in a neuron-specific gene. So, slow drift into neurobiology.

Yeah, it’s a big one. I think it’s mostly genes from N. northiana, plus some hybrid vigor, that make it so large.

Nepenthes pitcher plants mostly get their nutrients from trapped insects, but there are several species specialized to serve as toilets for tree shrews and one that houses ant colonies that eat trapped insects, swim in the pitcher fluid, and feed the plant with the poop and leftovers.

1981 Brittanica, but yes.