From Voyageurs National Park on FB: Called “Catamaran” by locals, Bert Upton is among the strangest of historical characters on area waters. He lived in a hut built over a dug-out at Squirrel Narrows. Found frozen to death in the 1930s by Kettle Falls pioneer Oliver Knox; Upton was perched lifeless in the snow just a half-mile from his home. Shunning civilization, Upton defined the word hermit. First spotted rowing his crude log raft on Namakan, no one knows how he got there. Upton’s accent implied an English heritage but any personal inquiries brought a stony silence. Some suspected him a man fleeing the law; others saw a bizarre outcast; everyone knew he was peculiar. Just five feet tall and wildly unkempt, Catamaran wore hacked-off pants and walked barefoot with a stick. Winter demanded shoes but no socks, a cast-off Mackinaw, and a trailing cap made from the leg of old underwear. He was oddly religious, and suspicious of being poisoned. Surviving on snared rabbits and fish, he ofte...
I, for one, welcome our cephalopod overlords.
ReplyDeleteI KNOW WHY, BUT THEY WOULDN'T BELIEVE ME
ReplyDeleteWHYYYYYY WOULDN'T THEY BELIEVE ME
Yeah, yeah, Paul. Back to your cell now or you'll be getting the "treatment" again.
ReplyDelete😑
ReplyDeleteOmg so delicious! I hope they conquer Lake Michigan, too!
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that, toward the end of the dinosaurs, a small, smart-ish dinosaur named Struthiomimus had a population boom. The explanation presented at the time was that as living conditions became tougher, intelligence became disproportionately useful, more so than other abilities.
ReplyDeleteThe argument concluded with the idea that the human population boom may be the same phenomenon - alternating ice ages make for brutal living conditions unless you can adapt, and that takes brains.
I hear octopi are pretty smart.