Time to let the cat out of the bag.
What, it’s Friday already again? Where has this week gone? It seems like just yesterday it was only Thursday. Oh well, I guess that means I have to dig into the cookie jar of reader submitted ideas to pull out one of the last couple crumbs that remain to give me my sugar high. Yes, it’s time once again for another fly by the fur of my tail version of Prompt the Squirrel! This series has certainly properly challenged me like I was hoping it would… the results have been pretty good even for prompts I didn’t think had any promise. But can I keep the quirky creativity coming as I tackle those submissions that I quietly saved for last just in case the apocalypse or something would strike before I had to strap it on and deal with them?
Damn you, Firefox! Now I have to actually do some work.
This week’s penultimate prompt comes to us from another one of my very, very longtime followers… the amazing Gentlestitches. Aunt Sharon, as I like to call her, has been pleasing me for three years with the wonderful array of cute amigurumi animals she showcases on her blog, two of which I am extremely fortunate to have on my shelf behind me! That would be the beautiful little Sponkies…
How come you two get petted more than I do?
So what did Aunt Sharon ask of her favorite American squirrel?
I would like to see a post about a not very well known weather phenomena of your choice with squirrels highlighting salient facts.
Well, given my meteorology background, you’d think this would be right up my alley. Those classes were…. gulp… almost twenty years ago, and contained enough advanced mathematics and physics to melt my poor, acorn sized brain into differential equation mush. No matter how much I wracked my brain over this prompt during the last three months, I couldn’t think of anything good to feature with it!
Next week’s weather will be full of little known phenomena, because I have no idea what the fuck is going to happen!
Of course, the problem is associated with the fact that I was thinking of weather in a simplistic form like most others do…. sun, clouds, wind, rain, snow, lightning, and don’t forget that pesky wintry mix. But weather encompasses any kind of atmospheric condition we experience here on earth in the troposphere… and though I dismissed all of the exotic phenomena I thought of right off the bat, that’s pretty much what “little known weather” is, the things we experience rarely, or perhaps even never to our own eyes.
So with that being said, for this week’s prompt I’m going to talk about the awe-inspiring occurrence of St. Elmo’s fire.
Oh, cool! I think we’re gonna learn something today.
No, not the 1985 movie of the same name… it wasn’t not very well known, plus I’ve never even watched it, so I can’t offer much of a discussion on its plot and cultural significance to those coming of age in the 80’s. But I can assemble my own Tree Brat Pack of sciurines to help guide us through one of the worst scientific explanations you will probably ever read outside of a book with a cross on the cover.
Here’s a very well known weather phenomenon as punishment for your blasphemy!
Let’s begin our exploration of this strange phenomenon, shall we?
And speaking of the end being nigh, I don’t need The Nest’s resident prophet Mr. Applewhite to tell me this prompt is ready to meet its maker. Thank you Aunt Sharon for allowing me to use my squirrels to show how little I really know about science!
Everything I know about luminescence I learned from Regis Philbin.
You’ll want to make sure you come back next week for the final prompt in this series that I have no fucking idea what I’m going to do with…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
There’s a patron saint of WHAT?
Oh. Never mind.
John Parr earworm now. Arigato!
Ha! One comment in and someone already called me on using seamen instead of sailors!
It irks me that Parr seems to be remembered for that crappy song more than “Naughty Naughty”, which is a kickass tune. Squeal those tires!
You will be happy to know I have both of his iconic songs on the iPod of Shame 😀
Me too!
St. Elmo. Who was St. Elmo? Did he make the fire in your eyes? Light up my life? What business has he messing with our weather? Just saying we should maintain 7 degrees of separation between church, state, and weather.
Keep the saints out of meteorology.!
Now you know I know even LESS about it than you do.
Too late… Noah’s already the governing body of weather… or is that NOAA? Either way, he may have gotten the only accurate forecast in the history of the world…
Hmmm. This is interesting. You never saw St. Elmo’s Fire?! I thought it was required viewing. That everyone has seen it. I mean, how else would you know what to do with hairspray?
I grew up with four sisters, and whenever Aqua Net was lingering in the air, it would leave me gagging. I know exactly what to do with hairspray… destroy it with extreme prejudice!
huh huh..you said “god of seamen”
No, just the patron saint. Nobody named Elmo is ever going to become the god of seamen…
you never watched the movie? it was THE EVENT of the year in europe. I could learn a lot… that the soundtrack was a onehitwonder for John Parr and that your ears start to shrivel when you have to hear it more than 87 times per day… I’ve also learnt that Andrew Mc Carthy is a genius but a dwarf… and at the end I’ve learnt that 18 bucks for a movie ticket is daylight robbery …it was trivial, boring and completely out of touch with any reality :o( …but I watched it 4 times LOL
Nononononono!!! John Parr is not and never will be a one hit wonder! “Naughty Naughty” rules! I don’t care what VH-1 says!
“Mannequin” is one of the movies me and my youngest sister can still easily amuse ourselves by riffing off of 28 years later. Not that Andrew McCarthy has anything to do with that… it was the role players who made that movie…
I guessed you were going to do “ball lightning” so I was close!
Thanks for the education, though I’m not sure about the “deadly chileh” theory 🙂
Oh, and thanks for the “St Elmo’s Fire” earworm :-(.
It didn’t seem like even the experts knew what in the heck ball lightning was, or I would have so been there. I guess I should have did it anyway since nothing I said about it could probably be disproven as fact!
Yeah, I looked it up and it seems to be a bit of an urban myth.
HaHaHaHa! Too funny. Patron saint of seamen and abdominal pain???
I’ll bet “Patron Saint of Seamen” was on St. Elmo’s business card…
That was definitely the most informative thing I’ve read yet this morning, and so well illustrated. 😉
If it wouldn’t have been for the damn illustrations, I’d have had it done on time! But once I get Paint and Photoshop out, I just can’t stop myself…
This was awesome. Great drawings. You should write kids books. They like stuff like this (not that overly sweet crap they get shoved down their tiny throats.)
I’ll bet they would get a good chuckle from the patron saint of seamen… and my occasional… er, frequent F-bombs!
OMG!!! The most amazing thing happened at work last night! You are not going to want to miss my Wednesday Photo Prompt post this week, Juliette! You are going to LOVE it! I think everyone else will as well, but I know you will really LOVE it!!!
I can’t wait
I love this! I agree with Juliette that you could write and illustrate children’s books. I doubt my brain would have been able to begin to comprehend St. Elmo’s Fire without your character’s help. Now when I forget what St. Elmo’s Fire is (sure to happen with my memory) the file clerks in my brain can pull out the image of St. Elmo’s Fire above Chump Tower. (I found that part particularly hilarious)
It would be even funnier to observe St. Elmo’s fire over the Chump hairpiece…
Lol! I almost spit my coffee all over when I read that! That would be even funnier. I can totally picture it!
I think they prefer to be called seafarers these days… 😉
I don’t blame them!
This is awesome & one of the reasons I realise I was stupid to neglect my blogging pals for so long. Maybe you could open a squirrel educates slot? The only bit I knew about was the film & for the record I’ve never seen it either. I was told by my other it wasn’t suitable for me at age 13….& I assumed that was a forever unsuitable with no time limit.
My other??? WTF auto correct? My MOTHER
Otto Correct must have had issues with its parents. I’m glad I don’t use anything with that dreaded feature, though I’d probably cause it to go haywire trying to fix my shitty typing…