Author: Caitlin Schneider

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and in Longville, Minnesota, dogs gotta walk. At least one dog, anyway.

For the past 12 years, a Chesapeake-Lab mix named Bruno has been regularly walking four miles (eight miles round trip) to downtown Longville from his country home to socialize, collect treats, and hang around. His almost daily commute has made Bruno a beloved town legend.

“Everybody knows Bruno,” resident Sharon Rouse told KARE11 News. “[You] may not know the people, but you’ll know Bruno.”

The pup belongs to Larry and Debbie LaVallee, who took Bruno in after he appeared in a box on their driveway over a decade ago. They tried to keep him tied up, but the dog’s desire to roam was too great, and he started making his way to town every day.

Now, he’s somewhat of a celebrity, with regular stops at city hall, the ice cream shop, and the back door of a local grocery store, where employees help Bruno fuel up with deli counter scraps. People know and greet Bruno, sometimes to the surprise of the LaVallees, who only know a fraction of their dog’s many admirers. His wandering has even earned him the title of “Town Dog and Ambassador,” which is set in literal stone in a Longville statue.

As he’s gotten older, Bruno’s trips down Highway 84 have slowed a bit. According to The Kansas City Star, the canine sometimes even takes a break, settling down right in the middle of the road. It’s no problem though—the town that opens its doors to the rambling pup is also more than willing to drive around him.

To see Bruno in action, check out the report from KARE11 below, and to see updated photos, head on over to the dog’s Facebook page.

[h/t WLTX-TV]

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Iceland is known as “The Land of Fire and Ice” for a reason: the country is filled with geographic features on both ends of the heat spectrum, from glaciers to volcanic springs, all of which contribute to its stunning photo ops.

If you can’t make it out for a vacation anytime soon, you can still journey to (and through) the icier side of Iceland with the video below from Blue Eden, a video series from brothers Patrick and Henrick Shyu. In the four-minute clip, the brothers travel inside an ice cave located near “Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon and Skaftafell in South Iceland, at the base of Svinafellsjokull Glacier,” according to the YouTube description. They traveled there in the winter of 2014, when it was cold enough that the risk of collapse was relatively low. The video is an extended version of a snippet that was featured in a previous timelapse, which showcases even more of Iceland’s wondrous beauty.

Ice cave tours are a common attraction in Iceland. From the Jökulsárlón glacial to the Vatnajokull or Breiðamerkurjökull glaciers, there are plenty of places to bask in the blue light of these stunning ancient bodies.

[h/t Boing Boing]

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The iconic blue whale model that hangs in the American Museum of Natural History is the institution’s crowning jewel—and one that needs to be shined every once in a while.

The 94-foot-long fiberglass and polyurethane replica is getting its annual cleaning this week; a process that takes one man, two days, and a whole lot of vacuum power. When we stopped by on Wednesday morning (September 7), Trenton Duerksen was hard at work vacuuming the layer of dust that had accumulated on the whale over the course of the year. While he was largely focused on the animal’s head at the time, the entire 21,000-pound model will eventually get the soft brush treatment.

Aside from the annual dusting, the blue whale also received some comprehensive surgery when the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life was renovated in 2003. While it’s been an awe-inspiring display since its installation in 1969, the replica has had its issues. It’s hard to believe, but during the time when the project was conceived and executed, few people had seen a blue whale (the first full-body photos of a live animal wouldn’t be taken until the mid-1970s), so specimens from whalers had to be used as models. That led to bulging eyes and other inaccuracies in the shape and color of the mammal.

“In 1969 we’d walked on the moon, but no one knew what a blue whale looked like,” said Melanie Stiassny, Axelrod Research Curator in the Museum’s Department of Ichthyology (a.k.a. fishes).

All that and more was corrected during the early aughts renovation (which Stiassny oversaw), so now the giant blue whale just needs an occasional cleaning.

Duerksen is a first-time blue whale duster, and while it might seem like a pretty straightforward job, a previous cleaner told us the task requires strong shoulders and arms, and a good sense of spatial reasoning. Well worth the effort to keep a New York landmark—and what it symbolizes—shining bright.

“It’s a denizen of the open ocean, it brings the whole ocean together,” Stiassny said. “And everything on the planet depends on the open ocean.”

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