I’m sure Blanche and his family have ways to take care of velvet in less messy ways, but it’s still pretty gross.
I’m sure Blanche and his family have ways to take care of velvet in less messy ways, but it’s still pretty gross.
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It´s like a car crash. You´re disgusted, but you just can´t look away.
I mean, they’ve got hands, they can just peel it all off in one go rather than having it dangle until it catches on something just right to fall off.
If you want to make a real mess out of it …
https://www.skindeepcomic.com/reader-questions/february-reader-question-30/
On a somewhat more serious note … they’d better. Imagine Blanche going to school and his medallion suddenly “thinking” that it’s something akin to tattoos that it should let “shine through” the disguise …….
“Why are you wearing a diaper on your head?”
“Y’kow, some people spend a LOT of money to buy this stuff.”
Umh … “this stuff”? The antlers, the velvet, the friggin’ blood, some combination of the above? Unless we’re talking about just-antlers-as-you-can-simply-pick-up-from-the-floor-a-couple-months-later … WHY?!? 8-C
(Yeah, sue me, I’ve never seen the appeal of buckhorn knife handles, either. Or exotic woods. Open-worked metal shells FTW!)
Deer antler velvet us nutrient rich and consumed as a protein supplement. When abused, it’s basically a naturally occurring steroid. One kilogram sells for hundreds of dollars.
Now make it magical antler velvet and you’ve got some heck of a black market product.
… me and my big questions-spouting mouth … 8-|
https://www.deernz.org/assets/Deer-Facts/DeerFact_FeedingOptimalVelvet_V7a_Web.pdf
That kilogram of (dried) antler velvet would come from the antlers of at least a dozen deer, unless you’re dealing with something like a “patriarch” bull elk, with antlers that reach back the full length of a large body.
P.S.: Good thing that the sheer pain distracted Tony back when he tried to snip his feathers if he’s that icked by bloodshed … is it?
I mean, I think “ewww” would be a lot of people’s reactions, at least internally. Blanche and Tony just have a close enough camaraderie for Tony to say it out loud.
Isn’t nature just beautiful? /davidattenbourough
Reminds me of my then-date-now-married back when: Eeeeew! Puppy poop! How do people DEAL with this??
Now: Yeah, he had a mess, wasn’t his fault. I took care of it.
Sometimes we aren’t grown yet in our early 20s.
Anthony, just wait for your first molt when you’ll be shedding your feathers all over the place!
Depending on how harpy molts work, it could range from gradually molting a few feathers at a time until they’re all switched out over the course of months or even years, or dropping them all almost at once like penguins do.
I’d expect it to be at least as embarrassing, in any case! ;-)
Oh God, all the red on white just makes it worse.
I suspect they go to the equivalent of a “barber” and it gets taken care of neatly and cleanly.
Does he shed antlers too? Collect them like lost teeth? Are there other Avalon folk who have deer-style antlers? (Not horns)
He must have shed his previous ones to have this new growth!
Do deerfolk species risk osteoporosis like elk, etc. do bc of the antlers?
At least nowadays, sapient cervines have the option of taking megadoses of calcium supplement while their antlers are forming. Before there were bottled supplements available, they may have used cruder methods that were probably less effective.
Wild deer routinely scrape the velvet off on tree branches when it’s ready to come off (it probably itches). The brown and tan colors of the mature antlers are actually transferred from the branches.
I would expect sapient cervines to use long-handled brushes to remove the velvet as the antlers mature. I have a mental image of a salon service “antiquing” bone-white antlers. (That’s an arts-&-crafts technique of covering an item with a dark colorant, like burnt umber paint, and wiping it off while it’s fresh, leaving traces in the surface texture.)
The hypothetical antiquing service would of course have no appeal for a white stag, as it would add unwelcome pigment, lasting for several months.
Right. And the “goth”-inclined ones would bring bright red nail polish instead. :-P
Only the tips get painted red. Blood red.
I’m just glad he doesn’t eat it like regular deer seem to. Yee-uck.