Lattes + Drabbles

He realized his dogs have an unusual skill. Now he uses them to help save turtles.

By Cathy Free

John Rucker was a high school English teacher in North Carolina when he stumbled upon something interesting: Whenever he took his two dogs hiking, they would run into the tall grass and bring him back box turtles. Like a gift, his Boykin spaniels would gently lay them at his feet, unharmed.

He mentioned it to a few people, and soon, biology teachers from the University of North Carolina started reaching out to him and asking whether he would take their students out so they could put transmitters on the turtles to study them.

Several years later, the outings were so successful, Rucker was fielding calls from wildlife veterinarians and zoologists who were studying turtle populations.

“Because turtles aren’t easily detected in the wild by the human eye, I could see that I was on to something,” said Rucker, now 73.

Now, two decades later, Rucker’s spaniels are a highly in-demand, specialized team trained to sniff out box turtles by following their urine trails.

The dogs — Yogi, Ruger, Jenny Wren, Lazarus, Scamp, Skeeter and Rooster — travel across the country with Rucker helping to track turtle populations and identify threats and diseases.

So because parkour is such a ridiculously male dominated sport, the "correct technique" for a lot of these movements that you're taught when you become an instructor plays to a male body's strengths: upper body strength, higher center of gravity, etc.

She demolishes this course by moving in ways that make sense for her body. She doesn't muscle her way up to her over a wall, she just throws a leg up over the wall. She doesn't use upper body strength to do the salmon ladder, she uses her hips!!! And it's fucking incredible.

So many girls and young women walk away from parkour because every movement caters to the strengths of men, because doing what makes sense for their bodies is seen as "bad technique" to be trained away.

A comment on a fic more than once gave me the idea or inspiration I needed to add another part to that fic. It helped me to produce even more of the content that the reader who left it enjoyed so much.

A comment on an older fic reminded me that my fics don’t get lost 24 or 48 hours after posting. True, that’s when most fics get the majority of their hits, kudos and comments, so a writer sometimes feels like if a fic hasn’t done well in that time frame, it’s as good as gone. But some people discover and love such fics later on and that’s incredible.

A comment once stopped me from deleting my AO3 account. For reasons, I was feeling really low, like I had no talent and nothing to offer. Like everything I was posting was banal and worthless. And as my finger was hovering over the ‘delete account’ button, a mail notification let me know that someone left a comment on one of my fics. I went to read it and it was absolutely lovely. And it complimented not just that fic, but my writing overall. It helped me get through a rough moment.

Your comments can mean so much more than you know. You have more capacity to do good and help content creation in the fandom, that you and others enjoy, than you realize.

What I remember more was when I received my first comment. I don’t really know how to describe how happy it made me, and maybe it’s a little silly just how overjoyed I was. That one comment put a smile on my face and encouraged me to keep writing despite how difficult it could be. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that showing support to authors can really go a long way. Whether it’s a long, detailed comment about the chapter, a short one saying that you enjoyed it, or even just leaving kudos because you really don’t know what to say, it helps. It keeps writers encouraged and the community thriving. 

So if there is a fanfiction you enjoy or an author you love, I hope you take the time to show them support, because it really does mean a lot. 

Unfamiliar author: wow I loved this!

Author you’ve interacted with before: you killed me, I’m dead

unfamiliar commenter: Thank you so much! I’m so glad you liked it!

commenter you’ve seen before: Let me grab my shovel and help you into your grave.

Your headcanon is your headcanon. The characters in your mind are what they are, and nobody is trying to take them away from you. Think of the Good Omens TV series as a stage play: for six full hours, actors are going to be portraying the roles of Crowley and Aziraphale, Shadwell and Madame Tracy, Newt and Anathema, Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian and the rest. Will they look like the people in your head? The ones you’ve been drawing and writing about and imagining for (in some cases) almost 30 years?

Probably not. Which is fine.

The people in your head and your drawings are still there, and still real and still true. I’ve seen drawings of hundreds of different Aziraphales over the years, all with different faces and body-shapes, different hair and skin, and would never have thought to tell anyone who drew or loved them that that wasn’t what Aziraphale looked like. (And a couple of years after we wrote it, I was amused to realise that the Aziraphale in my head looked nothing like the  Aziraphale in Terry’s head.) I’ve loved every instance of Good Omens Cosplay I’ve seen, and in no case did I ever think anyone was doing it wrong: they were all Aziraphales and Crowleys, and it was always a delight.

Good Omens has been unillustrated for 27 years, which means that each of you gets to make up your own look for the characters, your own backstories, your own ideas about how they will behave.

The TV version is being made with love and with faithfulness to the story. It’s got material and characters in it that Terry and I had discussed over the years, (some of it from what we would have done it there had been a sequel). Writing it has taken up the greater part of my last three years. You might like it – I really hope you will – but you don’t have to. You can start watching it, decide that you prefer the thing in your head, and stop watching it. (I never saw the last Lord of the Rings movie, because I liked the thing in my head too much.)

Remember we are making this with love.

Fatherhood really matured this two 🥴

Story by @raven-m-3​ You can read  the drabble (Grown Wankers) on AO3 here or by clicking below!