Always One Step Behind

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

My painting of a peony

Art with flowers

Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia, USA Summer, 2000

Loggerhead Sea Turtle Monitoring Internship

Fresh out of college, and my first time doing real field work away from home. My first real time away from home, as well. This was 1 of the 3 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - National Wildlife Refuges that I interned at.

The pay was nothing, and there weren't that many nesting sea turtles that season, but I loved getting paid to drive a 4-wheeler up and down the beach.

My primary job was to look for nests in the morning or nesting sea turtles at night. The coast of Virginia is the northernmost area of the Atlantic Coast where sea turtles nest (specifically Loggerheads). Once nests were located, we built predator exclusion cages around them (or dug them up if we were unable to do that in certain areas... to be incubated at a local marine science center and later released). We got to satellite tag one mother turtle that year, and it was an amazing experience.

The refuge staff gave us all projects to work on, as well, besides sea turtles. I got to help with bird point counts, osprey nest monitoring (and banding - pictured here), prothonotary nestbox surveys, and insect surveys.

some sleepy [REDACTED]

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