Dr. Free-Ride: So, you know how sometimes you have nightmares?
Younger Offspring: Yeah.
Dr. Free-Ride: I had a nightmare the other night.*
Younger Offspring: What was it?
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, I was supposed to be picking up snakes with two sticks and moving them from one place to another.
Younger Offspring: Why?

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It’s been awhile since the Free-Ride offspring have shared their artwork. Today, we offer some of their drawings of animals.
From the younger Free-Ride offspring:

Tigers. They may look cute, but you don’t want to get near them when they’re hungry.

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The elder Free-Ride offspring, always a fan of mustelids, has lately taken a particular interest in ferrets.
Given that Casa Free-Ride is located in the great state of California, this interest in ferrets has also spurred an interest in state law. In California, it’s illegal to keep ferrets as pets.
According to the elder Free-Ride offspring, there is much to appreciate about ferrets:

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Longtime readers of this blog may recall that the elder Free-Ride offspring has a fondness (occasionally verging on obsession) for Pokemon cards. This means I had no choice but to involve my offspring in Dave Ng’s Phylomon project:

[W]hat can we do to get kids engaged with the wonderful creatures that are all around them? They obviously have the ability and the passion to care about such things, but it appears misplaced – they’ll spend a ton of resources and time tracking down fictional things, when they could easily do the same with the very wildlife around them. As a bonus, if they do learn a little more about biodiversity, they will hopefully appreciate their surroundings a little more, not to mention the possibility of just being outside a little more.


In any event, this is why I’m please to share with you a project coming out of my lab, that will hopefully do a small part in tackling this challenge. And, with the help of a rather large group of young students, we have decided to call it the “Phylomon Project.”
What is this? Well, the website describes it as follows:

…it’s an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full “character design” wonder. Not only that – but we plan to have the scientific community weigh in to determine the content on such cards (note that the cards above are only a mock-up of what that content might be), as well as folks who love gaming to try and design interesting ways to use the cards. Then to top it all off, members of the teacher community will participate to see whether these cards have educational merit. Best of all, the hope is that this will all occur in a non-commercial-open-access-open-source-because-basically-this-is-good-for-you-your-children-and-your-planet sort of way.

So, here are the elder Free-Ride offspring’s preliminary thoughts about the project:

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Dr. Free-Ride: What have you been learning in science?
Younger offspring: I’ve been learning how to make fossils, and imprints.
Dr. Free-Ride: Tell me how.

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(Not the post title I’d have chosen, but the sprog in question is sitting right next to me.)
The younger Free-Ride offspring likes to draw, and seems to have a fondness for marine mammals. Today, we offer two drawings of otters.
Here’s an otter with a sea urchin.

I’m told the otter plans to eat that sea urchin.
This is an entirely different otter (which the younger Free-Ride offspring tells me is the baby of the otter in the first picture), and a dolphin:

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