Old Man Yaoi

It's about to happen*

Some or another group - take your pick really - go on a road trip and get stymied by these guys!

Cameron insists they wait. So does Wilson. House acts like he doesn’t care but SO does. Kutner spouts off fun amphibian facts. Thirteen fights with Amber over the playlist. House shuts it down by playing is own. Taub and Foreman hate it (or do they). Park and Adams have a cheeky make out in the bathroom at the rest stop after some Revealing Personal Something.

We have Kea, Kākā, Kākāpō, and Kākāriki (of which there are 3 species).

Kākā are more olive brown than green but are really neat and beautiful birds and are growing in numbers thanks to conservation efforts.

Kea are mostly green with red underwings and b will pickpocket you, but then again so will weka. The bit about them stopping traffic is absolutely true - I have a friend who has witnessed this.

Kākāpō are, in the words of my ecology professor, “really bad at being parrots”. They suck, but endearingly so. They are so bad at being alive and climbing things and reproducing but you cannot help but love them. Again, they are green, but in a shambling moss pile sort of way.

Kākāriki are much smaller and are kept as pets internationally. The three kinds are the red crowned, the yellow crowned and the orange fronted. Of these, the latter is the rarest (currently critically endangered).

There are also several other species endemic to various outlying islands. We have, in total, nine surviving endemic parrot species and several subspecies of those.

you need to take them into the woods

I do outdoor education work, and within minutes of any elementary to middle schooler getting free permission to mess around with their friends in a clearing, they’re curious and driven again. they’re asking each other questions and yeeting pinecones at trees (science) and using their bodies. sometimes for evil. as is developmentally right. they want to know the names of birds! they want to teach someone pokemon! they want to build stuff and kick stuff and tackle each other and you into the snow!

they’re basically fucking institutionalized for 90% of their lives but their spirits are alive. you need to take them into the woods you need to treat them like animals with powerful inner lives and they’ll show you they are.

chemists will be like this is a molecule

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid, can only infect cells expressing a certain protein called ACE2

ACE2 is expressed widely in nasal cavity epithelial cells but not in olfactory sensory neurons. 

Seo et al. (2021) studied potential nasal targets for SARS-CoV-2 using golden hamsters as a model organism (commonly used as a proxy for humans in virology studies)

They found ACE2 expression in the main olfactory bulb epithelium (MOE, your “normal” nose organ) as well as the vomeronasal organ (VNO)

Several cell types in the VNO were able to be infected and they also found significant inflammatory activity (macrophage activation, apoptotic cells, etc) 

The specifics of how covid actually causes dysosmia are not known for sure but epithelial damage by local inflammatory immune responses likely plays a role, especially because sensory neurons themselves are not affected (Bilinska, & Butowt, 2020). Therefore I would suggest a potential similar effect of VNO dysfunction as we see in the main olfactory bulb

From Seo et al.: “Considering the function of the VNO, infection and subsequent pathologic changes may affect the behavior of Syrian hamsters”

If it stands to reason that omegaverse individuals have functioning VNOs similar to members of the animal kingdom, then it is more than reasonable to conclude that covid may cause them to lose not only their main olfactory function, but also their VNO function as well

 References: (1) (2)