Profiles of Nature 49

By now, you’ve determined that there is no way to sneak a peek around the corner of a blog to see if a post really is here without it noticing you in return, so you might as well stop embarrassing both of us with even trying. It’s Thursday, we don’t miss deadlines, and we certainly aren’t inclined to have any mercy and give you a break. Just the thought of it makes us want to double-down on you.

giant water bug Belostoma flumineum Abayomrunkoje and backswimmer Notonecta Hoowanneka none too romantically
This week we visit with Hoowanneka and Abayomrunkoje, seen in the promo poster to their smash hit romantic thriller, Gratuitous Shirtlessness. The critics raved about their on-screen chemistry and steamy love scenes, amusing because they actually detested each other so much that the director was forced to keep tasers on hand for their scenes together, after that one incident with the hedge trimmers. On hearing the public enthusiasm and fearing a sequel (even though they both died at the end but we all know that doesn’t stop Hollywood, Highlander 2 we’re looking at you,) Abayomrunkoje and Hoowanneka decided to have an affair just to bait the paparazzi with a public, messy breakup, preferably in the gardening section of a Home Depot. They consider this a public service, by the way, since without such juicy stories, people might start paying attention to science and medical news instead, a trend that could lead to the upfall of civilization. They are of course both married, and not to each other, but unbeknownst to either they are married to the same person, so scheduling their trysts has been a lot easier – if we were you we’d snag the movie rights to that eventual reveal as soon as arthropodly possible, before some sepulchrally-narrated TV show does. We’re still wondering what happened to Short Round, by the way – this has no bearing on our subjects but we have no place else to put this. Hoowanneka’s favorite airport taxiway is B9 at CCS, which makes Abayomrunkoje’s preferred file compression algorithm of .lz4 hard to comprehend.

In the event of a blizzard next week, the Profiles go on as scheduled, but we’ll include a moment of silence in recognition.