🤣😂🤣
It’s always good assurance that my personal brand is rock solid when people recommend me to myself!

@quasimofo.bsky.social 👀 for morgan

Muppets Christmas Carol

@toomanywasps.bsky.social

Fantastic work! I was absolutely delighted in the demo!!!

And then you have to fix it, and as long as you’re doing that you should do the next one before it breaks…

4 days later you wake up in a haze of old ethanol and plastic chips. You’re surrounded by new full vials. You’re finished!!

But wait, look on your elbow, where did that label come from?!?

I’m posting this now because I’ll be devastated if Bluesky deletes it accidentally, but we aren’t done.

Ps. Here’s the link to that prior source

thinkinthemorning.com/de-mortuis-n...

This leads me to a different record with stories that make me stop feeling as inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. (Are you starting to feel like you’re trapped in #TheRoottreesAreDead ? I sure am.)
This excerpt is from a blog called Thinkinthemorning from 2017.

(For the record, he was a legitimate naturalist.)
I’ve included the limerick because it adds some more details.
(Find the letter in the archives of “theava” number 30261)

theava.com/archives/30261

Dig a tiny bit deeper and holy crap does his local drama go hard.
In a Letter about the first chairman of the Mendocino Historical Review Board, Donald P. Hahn, I came across a scathing review and poem about the death.
Oh, did I forget to mention that he was found at the bottom of a cliff?

While endeavoring to discover if Jacques Richard Helfer actually drew these comics (he did) I found quite the… uh…. engaging history. He was enough of a ‘community member’ to have historical records made about him, including his mysterious death.

kelleyhousemuseum.catalogaccess.com/people/1868

These particular illustrations are from the much later “How To Know The Grasshoppers, Crickets, Cockroaches, and their Allies” by Jacques R. Helfer (a different Jacques, don’t get confused) and might be my favorites.

If you come across any of the “How To Know The…” series, check inside for periodic illustrated comical drop caps, a frontispiece cartoon, and opening peppered with playful comics. Look closely at the L. There’s four orthopterans hiding there!!

A curse on all snap cap jars and vials too.

Awesome! Well, if you went to the museum of biological diversity during your visit, he’s the spider guy there!

Oh, but also just in case so it’s not a bummer later: it might be literally impossible if they’re not sexually mature. Spiders are very rude that way.

Mostly the big thing is that we never pin, point mount, or dry them. They generally disarticulate in the worst way. Legs everywhere.

Email Dr. Richard Bradley at OSU. He’s a lovely emeritus professor, curates the spider collection at the museum here, and will be very happy to point you in the right direction. spidersinohio.net

@americanbeetles.bsky.social is a museum person who can add details.

What I can say is that we usually use 80% ethanol at the museum here. Nowadays we prioritize safety so some of the recipes you might find for flexible preservation from earlier eras have been *very* intentionally retired.