blowin bubbles

Have you heard the good word about the Pembrokeshire walrus yet?

This walrus is fucken lost.

But Wales has lost its collective shit about it. They're generally keeping its location secret to keep people away, but we get updates every day if it's still here, if it's happy, if it's healthy. We think it was in Ireland about two weeks ago, which is interesting, because it is not actually native to Ireland either. Why is it here? No one knows.

It seems to like Pembrokeshire beaches.

I regret to inform you all that the walrus is a delinquent.

In attempting to climb aboard a dinghy in Tenby it capsized it.

It then proceeded to Tenby harbour where it tried to climb aboard a fishing boat.

Incredibly, this is not an April Fools

Today on English People RUIN Everything, a bunch of English tourists from Essex and Leeds broke covid-19 regulations and travelled to Tenby over Easter to try and see Wally (so named after Where's Wally) and crowded him with jet skis and surfboards and stuff, so he's not been seen since Monday. We don't know yet if he's moved to a secluded spot again, or left Wales entirely.

But, you know, I doubt we were going to have Wally for much longer anyway, since they need to head back home again at some point. Godspeed, Wally. May your fish be ever plentiful.

The English went back home and Wally came back to Tenby! We stan a true Welsh icon, folks.

Some facts about Wally:

This story on Wales Online claims she’s believed to be male, but then uses female pronouns. It also features a video of some Welsh people chatting about Wally, including a child whose first language is very clearly Welsh and by the end of his part is struggling to think of things to say about the walrus in English.

WALLY UPDATE!!

The Western Telegraph has opted for male pronouns, and is being very firm that Wally is male, although other news outlets are still all over the place. But what has Wally been up to the past few days?

What an Icon.

The photographer of this picture, one Amy Compton who has been Wally’s official photographer since the start, has been making these delightful Wally masks (inset). They sell for £5, of which £1 goes to Welsh Marine Life Rescue. If you would like your own Wally mask, contact her here!

My mother came for a visit today and we checked and Tenby is an hour away from me, so we went for a Lovely Day Trip to Find a Walrus.

Friends, I took the shittest photo there has ever been of a Walrus. But I absolutely did get to see em.

A lifeboat wandered by to check em out at one point, and ey just... sank. Just dropped below the surface like Homer Simpson moving backwards into a hedge. After a while the boat left, and Wally surfaced again.

I can now confirm that ey really, really likes blowing water around like a whale, and also kept eyeing up that buoy next to em.

Also, I had entirely forgotten how comically beautiful Tenby is, but that's an aside

Time for a Wally Update!!!

It's only a little one, but apparently we're getting Serious about this walrus, lads - the police are now stepping in to say that anyone interfering with Wally (examples of this interference to date: throwing things at him, taking boats and paddle boards out to him, throwing fish overboard to tempt him closer, etc) is committing a criminal offence and we must send evidence of Assholes to them. So that's fun!

Meanwhile, the tense stand-off between the RNLI and Wally continues over Who Gets To Use The Lifeboat Slipway. Here is a picture of Wally in full delinquent mode.

What a public menace.

Time for the weekly Wally news!

Here is the problem with 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato using the slipway of a lifeboat station as a spa bed: sometimes, canoeists get in trouble near Stackpole and need rescuing and then some underwhelmed Welsh coast guard is going to have to try to chase said predatory sea potato off the slipway so they can launch the boat.

Here is the problem with that scenario: an underwhelmed Welsh coast guard basically views 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato as a sort of ornery gelatinous cow, and so will try to do this with, and I am not making this up, a broom. But a ton of overgrown seal has no fear of brooms, so the attempt is not entirely successful under time-sensitive conditions while canoeists are actively drowning 10 miles away.

Solution? An air horn.

Which did work long enough to get the boat out, and then Wally clambered back aboard barely minutes later and fell asleep again. So trick learned, I guess.

Anyway, since I've apparently become Tumblr's primary Wally journalist, I thought I'd go for a cheeky visit again today so I could report on their condition FIRST HAND (you're all welcome, I have incredible integrity). Today I tried using a binocular over my phone camera with was extremely stressful and moderately successful - and I have two pieces of NEWS.

Two dinghies with divers aboard suddenly turned up and sailed right up to them. There are Welsh Marine Life Rescue volunteers everywhere, and one woman immediately yelled "YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. MOVE AWAY."

Everyone on the cliff went silent. The boats went closer.

"YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW," yelled the beachmaster. "MOVE AWAY."

Tumblrs, they did not.

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" she yelled. "MOVE AWAY."

At which point, the whole fucken cliff starts joining in, because Welsh people are Like That.

"Move away!"

"Leave 'im alone, mun!"

"Move away, butt, what you doing!"

"He's the size of an 'orse, bois, can't you see 'im from here?!"

"Bloody move you fucks, you'll scare 'im away again!"

(That last one was, I swear, an eighty year old woman.)

The boats, suddenly being yelled at by a whole cliff of Welsh people, sailed away. Later, we followed the beachmaster who was now on a mission, and found her with a couple of community police officers ripping the shit out of the divers. It was very satisfying.

I mentioned my binocular and phone trick. It came in handy. At first it gave me some very satisfying shots for a distance picture on a phone camera:

But, you know, whatever.

But THEN I got this picture:

which I got 0.256778 seconds before that majestic Arctic beast of purest beautiful nature untamed FELL OFF THE SIDE OF THE SLIPWAY LIKE A CAT THAT GOT TOO CLOSE TO A TABLE EDGE

Wally was fine, the seagull to the right was traumatised.

This is not an update as such but my friend Chris who I took with me to get the scoop on Wally on Sunday had a real camera with him, and he has produced a WAY better photo than I did, and I want you all to see Just How Louche a Walrus is capable of looking:

Handsome boi

Okay, so this post went from 24,000 notes to 40,000 overnight, and I am getting a lot of important scientific queries about Wally! So I shall call upon my expertise as a skilled journalist of huge integrity and also a genuine, actual lecturer in environmental science to answer them all as best I can. I shall also use pictures.

1. When did this happen?

I have included many links in this thread to news articles on Wally, each of which is dated, so you can check those for accurate dates; but, xe turned up in Ireland in March 2021, and then made hir way to Pembrokeshire, Wales end of March. Xe reached Tenby a week or so later in April, and now refuses to leave. As of this update (6th May, 2021) xe’s still there and chillin’ - my friend Chris’ louche photo there was taken on Sunday the 2nd May. 

I shall date all updates from now on. Apologies for this uncharacteristic lapse in my journalistic performance. I have let Wally down.

2. “Oh my god do you guys call Waldo Wally?!??”

Folks!! Folks so many of you are doing this!!! But here’s the thing!!!

Where’s Wally is a British series and that’s the original name!!! It has been translated and regionalised around the world, and the name was changed in 28 of them!! A sizeable number don’t even sound like ‘Wally’!!! In France he’s Charlie! In Lithuania he’s Jonas! In Arabic versions he’s Fuḍūlī!!!

Yet only one nationality is repeatedly reacting with astonishment while assuming theirs is the one true original version!!! Guess which one!!! You have to stop!!! Especially the few who have responded with out and out swearing and aggression when I’ve explained!!! THIS POST IS ABOUT A WALRUS!!!!

3. Is Wally okay in Wales? Does xe need to leave/be moved?

Xe’s currently fine - an Arctic walrus can handle water temperatures of up to 15 degrees celsius, which West Wales is certainly currently accommodating. Xe was also distressingly underweight when first spotted fresh off the ice floe, but we’ve been monitoring hir health and xe’s roughly doubled hir bodyweight and is very healthy. I asked the fishmonger in Tenby if xe’s affecting the catch and the nice man said no and sold me a lemon sole for my mam. So right now, Wally is doing great, all needs met, with no real clashes with other stakeholders (i.e. fishers and that) except for, you know, the one (i.e. the lifeboat people).

However, high summer in Wales is warm enough that the sea will top the temperature threshold. So, we’re expecting Wally to leave by hirself in a month or so, if xe doesn’t decide to move sooner. Whether xe decides to swim all the way back home, or xe starts just moving north along the western coast and next turns up in the Isle of Mann or Scotland to continue hir holiday of the Celtic Ring remains to be seen. But, xe’ll do it hirself eventually, so it’s down to us to just keep hir happy and healthy for as long as xe chooses to stay.

4. I think Wally is female!

Yeah, maybe

5. I think Wally is male!

Very possibly

6. I think walruses have no concept of gender!

Almost definitely

7. What’s Walrus in Welsh?

They’re not native, so the Cymricisation “walrws” is getting a lot of use - but, Welsh is nothing if not poetic, so in official literature it’s “morfarch”, which means “sea stallion” or “sea knight” depending on your dialect.

8. Did they really use a broom and an airhorn on Wally?!

Here is a forlorn coast guard attempting to shift hir with a broom:

And here is the same coastguard attempting to shift hir with an airhorn:

9. I cannot believe this walrus is a delinquent!!!

Very well. Here is Wally’s criminal case file, including photographic evidence of two boarded boats and hir mugshot:

Imagine assigning pronouns to a walrus.

...What are the alternatives

I drew the delinquent

X

There is so much going on here, the fact she made a laptop mockup for her own cat, the fact that she put the “google images of birds” on it, the fact that the cat KNOWS it’s the cat’s “laptop,” the fact that the cat is UPSET WHEN HER LAPTOP IS MESSED WITH...

12/10 would watch again

So great lol

IM DEAD SJFJDJAJF

No one gets ink stains like yours just out of a desire for money.          LITTLE WOMEN (2019) DIR. GRETA GERWIG

i just hit 3k followers last night

why are you so violent : (

Kittens having fun with a disco ball.

(Via)

This looks like a great Pyrenees, a breed of livestock guardian dog, so he’s literally doing what he was bred for by protecting a baby ruminant.

Finally seeing a dog experience the “I can’t get up because my pet is laying in my lap” problem.

For anyone not so familiar with cat behavior, this cat is out of its mind excited to do this. It’s much more rare for cars to wag their tails but it means the same as it does when a dog does it. This cat is curious and proud and playing. It keeps looking at its owner too, like “LOOK AT ME, DAD” and it’s so rare to get videos of cats this happy. This is fucking rad

Nope.. wagging tails means anger or irritation in cat body language.

hey y’all, hope you don’t mind me stepping in!

you’re both right :) a wagging tail means the cat is highly stimulated (think coiled spring, ready to go off). depending on the situation, this can be interpreted differently - just like people can smile nervously at job interviews vs. happily grin at friends.

in most cases, it’s safe to interpret overstimulation as ‘you’re doing something to amp up the cat & it wants you to stop’ (ex. unwanted petting). it should be seen as a warning; all that pent-up energy COULD be released as a swat or bite.

BUT in this case, that tail-wagging ‘frustration’ is the stimulation that comes from problem-solving (where can I jump? is it safe to go here?) and the excitement of play. it’s good to be wary of ‘cute’ animals vids, but this seems like an unproblematic video!

I’d like to add to this–just look at world-famous box-loving cat, Maru, who wags his tail every time he stuffs his body into a box or other small object. He’s clearly not about to attack the person behind the camera! It’s definitely based on stimulation, but more to the point of “ahhh FINALLY I’ve gotten into the small space, now how do I get the rest of me inside”:

i love everything about cats ever always

this is an extremely good joke format

I wish I knew how to play chess

I needed this.

I understand chess and oh my god can this be a meme format? Cause there are so many possible combinations here

Happy Women’s Day ✊

✨ Get the book: https://warandpeas.contactin.bio ✨

the internet is so cursed, when people look back on the history of covid-19 it's going to look so different from the history of the plague because we will have left a trace of quarantine playlists all featuring toxic by brittany spears

That is why Toxic becomes an ancient earth ballad.

SJ & Co + textposts

Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.

My original OTP. Idiots.

I think the goose game is so successful because it captures a fundamental human desire to be absolutely but harmlessly bastardous

it's the same reason we gleefully smash pots in zelda games

sometimes you just need to be a moderate to severe nuisance

we are all poltergeists in meat suits

what a horrifying way to phrase this thank you