Wordless Wednesday featuring Camila and Emmett

Vancouver!

Who can resist an excuse to visit Vancouver? Certainly not me! The last time I was there I tripped over a Canada goose in the park, ate authentic Indian food, discovered an amazing beach, and found a hot dog vendor on the street who actually sold veggie dogs from his cart!



Gabriel is going to be a special guest at the Vancouver Comicon this Sunday, September 12. That's the same weekend as our anniversary, so of course I'll be there too. We'll have two full days of doing fun Vancouver-type things (spotting orcas! Hiking in a northern rain forest! Buying books!) before settling in at the Con on Sunday. Gabriel will be doing sketches and selling sketch books, we'll have copies of our graphic novel Heathentown, and we'll be very happy to meet you if you stop by.

I was excited to see that writer Greg Rucka will also be there. I recently read his Batwoman trade and really enjoyed it. So if you're in Vancouver this weekend, come to the Con and say hello! If you're not in Vancouver this weekend, I bet you wish you were!

Wordless Wednesday featuring an Imperious Coyote

Meanwhile, Back at the Ol' Cactus Ranch...

"Some day I'll have to take you to the mutant cactus mausoleum".

What? Was I dreaming?

I was told of a wonderland of bizarre plants, right in the middle of Reseda. One that was full of giant metal dinosaurs. Mutant cacti and huge dinosaurs tucked into a nondescript corner of The Valley. Could it be?

The answer is: how can it be that this place isn't incredibly famous? It's only open to the public on the weekends, but damn, I can't believe I'd never heard of it before! Nothing that my friend Carole told me about it could have possibly prepared me for what waited behind those chain link fences.

Every square inch of the 1.5 acres is covered by strange cacti and succulents. And many of them actually are mutants, which are apparently quite prized by collectors of such things. There's a subculture of mutant cacti collectors? Who knew?

Merely saying that every square inch of this place is covered may give the wrong idea, as if orderly rows of plants line carefully arranged beds. Wrong! It's more like a treasure hunt, with weird little succulents tucked in here and there; beautiful gem-like potted plants sandwiched between huge yuccas and aloes. Things are arranged broadly by type, but never boringly.

And I haven't even mentioned the greenhouses yet! They go on and on, filled side to side, floor to ceiling, with even more plants.

And best of all, none of these plants are taken from the wild. They are all grown from seeds and cuttings, except in the rare cases when they are rescued from construction sites. 

Obviously, owner Dave Bernstein has a passion for these plants. Supposedly over 100,000 fill the property, and that doesn't even count what he grows in other greenhouses in San Diego county. Want to check it out for yourself? Don't bother bringing a credit card. It's cash and checks only here. Even the phone number is unlisted. But everyone is friendly and I promise that you will feel like you have been transported far away from Los Angles. 

To a magical place called Reseda, where the cacti are mutants and giant metal dinosaurs rule the day. 

Horror of the Flies!

Since people know I work with animals they sometimes call me to deal with something that isn't, strictly speaking, a member of the zoo. People seem to equate "zoo keeper" with  "person who will touch things that I wouldn't touch with a cattle prod".

This happened yesterday when I got a call to "remove a bug that's bothering a guest". Okay, not really my job, but I was curious to see what kind of silly person couldn't remove a harmless bug themselves. And I was curious to see what the bug was. I grabbed a small jar and a net and headed off.

What I found was completely unexpected. No interesting spider. No giant centipede. No weird beetle. Just 50 MILLION FLIES, all congregated in one corner of the room near the floor. Okay, so maybe there were only hundreds of flies. But it seemed like more.

What were they doing there? The room was spotless. No food anywhere, no spilled drinks. No dead squirrels outside the window. Nothing to draw them in! And oddly, they seemed especially attracted to a coaxial cable plug. Could it be Satan?

Well, no. At least, I think there is a more parsimonious explanation. After I removed the flies I did a little research. I assumed that they were house flies, but I think they may have actually been something called cluster flies. These insects look a lot like house flies (the difference is just a few golden hairs) but their life-cycle is different. They feed on earthworms, staying out of sight in the soil most of the time, and hatch out at the end of summer. As the weather cools they tend to emerge en masse and head into structures where it's warmer, usually congregating on the interior of the sunniest wall while trying to get inside the wall. Yesterday was much, much cooler than the preceding week. It's the end of August. They were on the interior of the warmest, west-facing wall. Check, check, check. The only thing I didn't discover was what their exact range is, but I think the mystery is solved. Unless anyone else has a better explanation for me?

Thanks to google image search for the fly pictures.

Wordless Wednesday featuring Three Harbor Seals

Baltimore vs. Work

How exciting! The 11th annual Baltimore Comic Con is this weekend! I've never had the chance to go to Baltimore. And sadly, I'm not going this weekend either. I have to work instead.

But all is not lost because Gabriel is will be there! He'll be doing sketches and signing things and selling copies of our graphic novel Heathentown as well as copies of his sketchbook. His sketch list is almost full, but if you want to grab one of the last slots you can still tweet at him.

So if you're going to be at the Con this weekend stop by and say hello, check out the pretty new second printing of Heathentown, and send some sympathy back to Los Angeles where I'll be battling the heat and traffic and thinking of Baltimore.