Category: Rock-Flipping Day

You’ve read about my IRFD adventures. Time to check out what the other rock-flippers found. There’s some stuff at the Flickr group pool, and three photos on yfrog, but the main action is at the blogs…

A-roving I will go (New South Wales, Australia)
Peanut worms, a sea cucumber, and a blenny.

Outside My Window (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
Evidence of very stealthy rodents.

Rebecca in the Woods (northern Wisconsin)
Blue-spotted salamander and a shrew! But sadly, under logs. Boo!

Fertanish Chatter (Washington, DC area)
Termites actually look pretty cool close up. As do millipededes.

Bug Safari (southern California, I think)
Bitchin’ macro photo of the fossil-like white exoskeletons of sow bugs. Also, a black widow and a darkling bug.

Growing with Science Blog (eastern U.S.)
Very tiny snails, a beetle larva carrying a case, mites, spiders, springtails and Indian house cricket nymphs.

Wild About Ants (eastern U.S.)
Getting stung and bitten for science.

Powell River Books Blog (British Columbia)
A crushing experience.

Meandering Washington (Washington state)
Robert Browning, a wee spider, and warrior women jumping through fire, all in one blog post. Yep.

Cicero Sings (British Columbia)
Memory fails, but the ants, invasive slugs and a harvestman do not.

mainly mongoose (South Africa)
Fears and neuroses, rainbow skinks and flat lizards, and a giant plated lizard — some spectacular photos of creatures that obligingly emerge on their own from underneath rocks.

Chicken Spaghetti (Connecticut)
A frog and a possible banana slug.

Wanderin’ Weeta (British Columbia)
A whole lot of nothing, but then paydirt: spiders, flies, sowbug, snail and… rabbit pellets?!

Rock, Paper, Lizard (British Columbia)
The first piece of Rock-Flipping Day fiction, as far as I know.

_Cabin Girl (Northern Minnesota)
An African antelope with a beard and horns? No, but close.

Thanks to Susannah Anderson for collecting and distributing these IRFD 2011 links. Let’s do it again next year, shall we?

That’s right, folks: it’s time once again to gird your loins, polish your cameras, and vulcanize your boots. The world’s largest annual rock-flipping blog carnival is almost upon us! British Columbian nature-blogger Susannah Anderson at Wanderin’ Weeta (With Waterfowl and Weeds) has volunteered to be the point-person again this year, which means that all blog links should be emailed to her, and she will then assemble, publish, and keep updating a list of participants, which all other participants will be encouraged to reproduce on their own blogs so everybody links to everybody, and we all have a rockin’ good time seeing what’s under everybody’s rocks. Er, you know. It’s actually a very family-friendly exercise in nature education, assuming you can pry the little wombats away from their video games and mobile devices long enough to go outside and flip a few rocks.

If you’re new around here, you may be wondering what this is all about. Please go read Susannah’s post and all should be made clear. (You can also browse past IRFD posts here at Via Negativa, where it all got started five years ago.) If you’re on Flickr (whence the cool badge in this post, courtesy of Jason at Cephalopodcast), please join the International Rock-Flipping Day group and add your photos and videos to the pool next Sunday (or Monday, if you have other things going on that day). We do allow schoolteachers only to adjust the date and participate on either the preceding Friday or the following Monday. Everyone else should do their rock-flipping on Sunday. If you are a religious Christian and are wondering if this kind of activity is permitted on the Lord’s day, Jesus assures me that it is.

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In other blog carnival-related news, the latest Festival of the Trees is up at Slugyard. It’s a back-to-school edition: Slugyard University. As Dave Barry would say, I swear I’m not making any of this up. Here at Via Negativa, slugs, sowbugs, and other creatures that live under or around rocks are held in high esteem. As indeed they should be. Jesus said they are going to inherit the earth.

Imagine you’re Godzilla, out for a stroll through the neighborhood. Curious about what the neighbors might be up to, you lift the roofs from their houses and peer inside — though to be honest, this isn’t always terribly illuminating, due to their lamentable penchant for scurrying back and forth in a state of panic, eventually remembering to grab the children and head for the exits. Still, it’s fun finding out who lives where and how funny-looking they all are. You’re careful to put each roof back, and try hard not to crush any of the soft, squirmy, grub-like inhabitants.

That’s kind of what International Rock-Flipping Day is like. Now four years old, this timeless holiday — celebrated this year on Grandparents’ Day — is fun for the whole family. Remember to wear gloves, watch for scorpions and poisonous snakes, and replace all rocks exactly the way you found them. Bring a camera, sketch pad or notebook and record your findings, then post the results to your blog and/or the official Rock-Flipping Day Flickr group. Any and all forms of documentation are welcome: still photos, video, sketches, prose, or poetry. Email your blog link to the coordinator, Susanna at Wanderin’ Weeta: wanderinweeta [at] gmail [dot] com.

You can flip more than one rock, but you should flip them on Sunday, Sept. 12 — unless this is a classroom exercise, in which case we’ll accept rock-flipping results from Friday or Monday. If you don’t have a blog, you can set one up in a couple minutes using the dead-simple Posterous or Tumblr platforms.

Susanna will compile and post a list of links, which participants will be encouraged to re-blog for maximum international rock-flipping camaraderie and link-love. If you’re a Twitterite, the canonical hash-tag is #rockflip. We encourage the sharing of links on Facebook, but would prefer IRFD posts to be fully public on the open web. For more information, read the official announcement at Wanderin’ Weeta.

International Rock-Flipping Day is changing dates and coordinators this year. It’s going to be on Sunday, September 20th. Bev Wigney and I passed the baton to Susanna Anderson at Wanderin’ Weeta blog in British Columbia, who was kind enough to volunteer. See her announcement post for complete details.

Please direct all rock-flipping correspondence this year to Susanna: wanderinweeta [at] gmail [dot] com (email spelled out to foil the evil robot servants of the spam lords). Bev and I had a great time being IRFD coordinators the first two years, and we’re sorry we can’t continue,* but I’m sure Susanna will do a terrific job. Please help spread the word about the new date. Happy flipping!
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*In case anyone is interested in our lame excuses: With all that’s going on these days at qarrtsiluni and the other sites I manage or attempt to contribute to, my online time is already pretty much spoken for. And Bev is in even worse shape time-wise, having just sold and moved out of her house and being on the verge of a new “journey to the center.” We both do plan to get out on the 20th, though, and flip some rocks!