Creatin And Consumin’ Contents

These little guys are called Pikas, and they live in the mountains around where I am in Washington State (and other places too, obviously, but I’ve only really *seen* them here), and in these pics they are actually collecting certain types of plants during the rest of the year that they Only Eat In Winter.

Why do they collect food for winter from species that they don’t like to eat the rest of the year? Because these plants have Tannins and other stuff in them that make them taste bad/possibly even make them toxic when the Pikas eat them Fresh… so the lil guys have figured out how to store them in special little chambers in their burrows, and to let the plants *ferment* all year, like we do with dairy products or alcohol! So by the time winter rolls around, all the gross tannins and stuff have broken down from fermenting all year, and the Pikas can live on their stores of delicious home-brewed snacks all through the winter until the better-fresh stuff grows back in the spring!

In that moment I realized I was in front of a lecture hall of privileged students. I was surrounded by people who didn’t know poverty or desperation like I had. I clawed my way here on scholarships while they were legacy kids or trust fund babies. In that moment it clicked in my head that there’s this level of empathy that you can only gain when you have absolutely nothing to lose. A level of empathy that only the impoverished have. A level of empathy that screams out that you have to fight to make things better even if it doesn’t benefit you. It’s a concept that you can only really grasp when you have nothing to lose and the kids before me hadn’t known that pain. They hadn’t developed that kind of empathy.

Animation practice, it’s rough, but look, she mooooves!!!

This quarantine is going to give me some solid Tori Time to work on some art. Stay safe out there everyone!