kototyph

beau–brummell:

Bridget Holmes (1591-1691) was a domestic servant at the
English royal court during the 17th century. As a “necessary woman”,
her jobs included cleaning the royal apartments and emptying and scouring
chamber pots. She lived through the reigns of seven monarchs (Elizabeth I,
James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II, William III and Mary II), the age of
Shakespeare, the age of discovery and the age of revolution. She served five of
the Stuart monarchs (Charles I, Charles II, James II, William III and Mary II)
and was considered to be a bit of a fixture at the court. She was so
well-respected and regarded with affection, as a lady of great age and of great
loyalty to the Stuart kings, that James II commissioned this portrait of her in
1686, probably painted by John Riley and John Closterman; an extravagant
commission but one certainly to James’ credit as this is one of the first
pre-eighteenth century portraits of a working class person. In this portrait,
Holmes teasingly brandishes her mop at a Page of the Backstairs, and the set-up
of the portrait treats her with great dignity.

Bridget died in 1691, at the age of 100. One of the longest
serving royal servants in history, she is buried in Westminster Abbey and there
is a monument noting the monarchs under which she dutifully served. This
portrait now resides in the state apartments of Windsor Castle.

sans–seraph:

vetstudentlive:

drferox:

So, I was chatting with my good friend Satan the other day, who is an unstoppable punster, and I may have accidentally been a little too literal when asked a question.

The question, in case the image doesn’t load, was “What do you call a fly with no wings?”

The desired answer was “A walk.”

Instead the vet brain jumped up and down because it was excited to remember something from second year parasitology that it thought was cool at the time and proudly declared “A KED!”

Melophagus ovinus, the humble sheep ked, is a fairly useless insect. It’s a fly that took  wrong turn on the evolutionary tree and somehow ended up losing its wings to instead live its entire lifecycle on the backs of sheep, eating their blood. It’s a fly trying its darnedest to be a flea. It is the Fly That Does Not.

They’re also apparently almost extinct in places, because they live on sheep their entire life cycle and widespred use of ivermectin has been very effective at controlling them.

I’d be kind of sad to see these sad little creatures go extinct, but they’re not exactly a high conservation value species.

So here’s to the Keds, the flightless flys, while they’re still with us.

And to me completely not realizing a question was a joke and making it awkward.

I’m so glad this doesn’t only happen to me. My vet humor has ruined many jokes and family dinners

I always thought they looked suspiciously arachnid. I’m not sure if fly-that-doesn’t is better or worse.