u/Yeagaabomb

I was thinking earlier of how penguins don’t get cold feet. I mean, they are in freezing conditions and don’t have the same feather or blubber protection on their feet, so I did some reading and I just thought this was a fun fact.

So how do penguins not get cold feet?

They get cold feet.
Penguins are kind of warm and cold blooded. They keep their bodies at normal temperatures but they are able to contract and control the size of the arteries in their feet, so when it’s extra cold, they shrink those blood vessels and reduce blood flow to the feet and maintain a temperature just above freezing

I am scared of getting my hands dirty
Of the pressure of what is me
building up under my fingernails
The dirt,
the reminder that something can be
organic, and not
Alive, and not

I am scared of bugs
The fluttering pulse you feel
when they fly by your ear
The countless legs that have trudged through
Dirt,
Blood,
Water,
Over Rocks,
And trees
And People

But, I loved getting my hands dirty?

The stories you could create from
mud
leaves
water.
Curiosity
Bringing something to life,
Something you don’t pay much attention to,
but you know it’s there
Thats just it. It’s there

And I was never afraid of bugs.
For as long as I can remember,
I was the one called when a “big scary bug”
was flying around your head

I would never kill the bug, though

Butterfly Ant
Spider Dragonfly
Beetle
Centipede
Bee
Caterpillar

Those tiny legs
crawling around my arm raised so many questions
And so,
I listened carefully for cries of a bug,
In hopes to find a new creature to wonder about,
And in hopes it would wonder
The same
About me

Those legs that have experienced
Dirt,
Blood,
Water,
Rocks,
Trees,
People

And out of those all those legs
They were there
And they shared that experience
With me