Survival can be a strange business. Take, for example, the newly named Geckolepis megalepis, which, when trapped, simply sheds its big scales and scampers away naked. Researchers described the new species in the journal PeerJ.

Scientists knew that all species of fish-scale geckos (genus Geckolepis) had big scales, and they all use this delightfully distinctive strategy. But what they didn’t know was how many species there actually are—because the same thing that helps the geckos escape predators is also what makes them very hard for scientists to catch. Early naturalists used to swaddle the geckos in handfuls of cotton wool to keep them from slithering out of their skins. Today, scientists set up plastic bags with bait inside and wait for the lizards to wander in.

But even a bagged fish-scale gecko is tough to pin down, taxonomically speaking. Reptiles are often identified by the patterns of their scales. Fish-scale geckos shed and regrow their scales so often that any patterns they ever had are often disrupted by the time they’re fully grown. So scientists have started looking at what’s inside instead.

A few years ago, a team of German biologists analyzed DNA from specimens of what were then thought to be all four Geckolepis species. As it turned out, four was a very low estimate. Genetic differences between specimens suggested that there could be as many as 13 different kinds of fish-scale geckos.

The authors of the new paper decided to dig a little deeper. At first glance, the gecko certainly seemed like a separate species; even by Geckolepis standards, its scales were huge. To make sure, the researchers used micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to create super high-resolution, 3D images of specimens’ skeletons. From this internal vantage point, it was clear that the mega-scaled gecko was definitely doing its own thing.

Lead author Mark Scherz, a Ph.D student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Zoologische Staatssammlung München, said in a statement, “What’s really remarkable, though, is that these scales—which are really dense and may even be bony, and must be quite energetically costly to produce—and the skin beneath them tear away with such ease, and can be regenerated quickly and without a scar.”

Running out of ways to say you’re feeling vexed? You’re in luck. We’ve teamed up with our trusty pals at the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) to liven up your livid language. From the Big Easy and New England to the Appalachians and Hawaii, here are 13 regional idioms for “angry.”

1. FÂCHÉ

PO’d in the Bayou? You can say you’re fâché, which translates from French as “angry.”

2. HAVE A BLOOD RUSH

Another Louisiana term. According to the wonderfully titled Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales, “He’s havin’ a blood rush” means “He’s getting angry.”

3. HUHU

This Hawaiian term meaning angry or to become angry is also spelled hou-hou. “No Hu Hu” is a popular song, according to a quote in DARE, and has “appeared on road repair signs” to mean “Pardon the inconvenience.” According to Pidgin to Da Max, an illustrated dictionary of Hawaiian “pidgin” words, the haole or non-native Hawaiian phrase “Relax. Don’t get upset” might be translated in pidgin as “No huhu, brah.”

4. JUMP SALTY

African American vernacular meaning “to get angry,” or to respond “in an extreme or unexpected manner.” Despite its awesomeness, jump salty seems to have died out in the 1970s. From James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk (1974): “He warned me if I didn’t take my hands off him we might never get uptown and then my Daddy might jump salty.”

5. BURN THUNDERWOOD

If you’re raging in Georgia, you might say you’re burning thunderwood. Thunderwood is another name for poison sumac, known for its angry, itchy oil.

6. GET ONE’S CHIN OUT

Nettled in Nevada? You could say you’ve gotten your chin out.

7. ALL HORNS AND RATTLES

This wrathful Western term refers to cattle’s horns and snakes’ rattles, according to DARE. As Western Words: A Dictionary of the Old West puts it regarding someone in an all-horns-and-rattles mood, “Maybe don’t say nothin’, but it ain’t safe to ask questions.”

8. ON THE PECK

Another Western saying, on the peck means irritable, angry, or ready to fight. Peck probably comes from the sense to nag or scold. According to some of the quotes in DARE, on the peck also refers specifically to a bad-tempered cow.

9. CHEW FIRE

Those feeling cross in Kentucky may say they’re chewing fire. The term is a blend of the aggressive idioms “chew nails” (as in a hammer and nails) and “breathe fire.” While the latter means to express oneself angrily, the former, according to DARE, refers to “a very mean person”—in other words, someone “mean enough to chew nails.” Other “mean” sayings involving masticating hardware include “chew twenty-penny nails,” “chew nails and spit rust,” and “chew nails and spit submarines.”

10. CHEW ONE’S BIT(S)

Those storming in the South and South Midland might be chewing their bits. This could be related to the horsey idiom, champing or chomping at the bit. To chew one’s bit also means “to argue or talk too much or too loud,” according to DARE.

11. HAVE KITTENS

This Northern phrase similar to have a cow means to lose one’s composure or become agitated or angry. Variations include get kittens, have a kitten, and pass kittens. A cat fit is a “burst of joy or (more often) anger.”

12. BUST A HAME STRING

To bust a hame string—where hame string is an alteration of hamstring—means “to make a sudden great effort,” with a transferred meaning of “to become excessively angry.” Usage is scattered throughout the U.S. with DARE quotes from the Appalachians, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and New Mexico.

13. FEATHER WHITE

This New England term refers to both an angry sea and an angry person. Maine Lingo: A Wicked-Good Guide to Yankee Vernacular says that a “wind-whipped sea, all whitecaps, is said to be feather white,” and hence, “some degree of agitation in a person: ‘He came all feather white to give me a piece of his mind!’”

If you’re looking for a restaurant that’s off the beaten path, consider The Pearl in Brussels. To eat there, diners must venture 16 feet below the surface of an indoor pool.

According to Reuters, The Pearl consists of a 6-foot-wide underwater pod that’s only accessible after a quick scuba dive. Once patrons climb inside and shed their gear, gourmet grub in air-tight containers is delivered by wet-suited servers.

The menu includes foie gras, lobster salad, and champagne, as well as a price tag to match. The whole experience costs around $106 per person. If you’re willing to spend serious cash to enjoy an aquatic dinner, there are underwater restaurants elsewhere that don’t require their diners to get wet.

[h/t Reuters]

There’s nothing weirder than learning that one of your favorite stories didn’t really happen that way. For the thousands of devoted fans of the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, that problem is particularly acute. After all, the books are based on real events—but events that are also largely fictitious. Where does history end and fiction begin? On the 150th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, here’s a reminder that truth and fiction don’t always coincide.

1. THE INGALLS FAMILY DIDN’T ALWAYS HEAD WEST

From the moment the Ingalls family sets out in their wagon and leaves the Little House in the Big Woods, the Little House books show an unceasing push West. Real life and Manifest Destiny don’t always line up, though, and in fact the Ingalls family tracked back and forth several times before setting down in De Smet, South Dakota.

The Ingalls family’s first stop after Wisconsin was Independence, Kansas (with a possible stop in Missouri), where they built a “little house” on the open prairie. But the land was not theirs to settle: It was owned by the Osage people [PDF] and the Ingalls family, like thousands of other settlers, were squatters waiting for the Osage to be driven out so that the United States could take it over. It’s not entirely clear why the Ingalls family left, but instead of continuing west they went back to Wisconsin.

Next, they went west again, this time settling near Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Then, financial difficulties, illness, and a plague of locusts forced them to move on. They went to visit family elsewhere in Minnesota, but while there, Laura’s 10-month-old brother, Freddie, died after a sudden illness. Then they continued on to Burr Oak, Iowa, where they ran a hotel. The Ingallses then backtracked to Walnut Grove, where Mary lost her vision, then went west again and eventually settled in what is now South Dakota.

Nonetheless, Laura and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who heavily edited and helped develop the first books, decided that the fictional Ingallses should always move West. The result is a sense of wanderlust and movement that gives the series its structure.

2. JACK, LAURA’S DOG, DIDN’T LEAVE KANSAS

Aw, Jack! Laura’s happy little puppy pal! Though faithful Jack tracks the fictional Laura through the books until she becomes an adolescent, Laura revealed in Pioneer Girl, the original autobiography that formed the basis for the books, that he was actually left behind in Kansas when Pa traded him for some horses and ponies. When writing the book, Laura decided to have Jack die peacefully in his sleep—perhaps in a way she could control, as opposed to the uncertain fate of her real-life dog.

3. MARY INGALLS PROBABLY DIDN’T HAVE SCARLET FEVER

Everyone knows the story of how Mary Ingalls contracted scarlet fever and lost her sight permanently. Except she probably didn’t. Dr. Beth Tarini, a professor and pediatric and adolescent medicine specialist, obsessed over Mary’s diagnosis from the time she was a child, then discovered in med school that scarlet fever can’t blind someone.

But viral meningoencephalitis can—and Tarini thinks that Laura and her daughter, Rose, attributed the blindness to scarlet fever either to make the story more accessible to kids or because the disease may have already been familiar from other novels like Little Women. She even published an academic paper about it [PDF]. (In real life, Laura wrote Mary had “spinal meningitis,” which she crossed out and replaced with “some sort of spinal sickness. I am not sure if the Dr. named it.” She also wrote that the blindness was caused by a stroke, but Tarini deemed a stroke unlikely since there were no other signs of one.)

Mary may not have gone blind from scarlet fever, but she did lose her sight. She ended up attending the Iowa College for the Blind, where she could take classes like civil government, botany, and piano tuning. Mary was an adept student and put the industrial training she got there to good use: After Pa died, she made fly nets to help the family earn more money.

4. THE INGALLS FAMILY HAD GUESTS DURING THE LONG WINTER

Houses were small in the pioneer era, but that didn’t mean that they were all devoted to single-family living. During the “hard winter” of 1880-81, the Ingalls family took in a couple named Maggie and George Masters. George was the son of a family friend and Maggie was his new wife, who had married him in an apparent shotgun wedding situation. “Maggie didn’t want the baby to be born at her folks’ and disgrace them,” Laura wrote in a letter to her daughter, Rose. “George’s folks were mad because he married her.”

The Masters family were not the best of houseguests. In her notes to Pioneer Girl, Ingalls scholar Pamela Smith Hill explains that Maggie had her baby in the house without the assistance of a doctor, and the newlyweds ran out of money and kept wearing out their welcome. “Times like this test people,” wrote Laura, “and we were getting to know George and Maggie.”

So why aren’t they in The Long Winter, the award-winning book that relates the story of a winter so extreme, the blizzards lasted six months? Chalk it up to authorial savvy: Laura felt it would dilute the power of a family stuck inside their house, forced to face the elements as a unit.

5. NELLIE OLESON WASN’T A REAL PERSON

If there’s a villain in the Little House books, it’s Nellie Oleson, the snooty brat who torments Laura when they’re girls and tries to steal Almanzo from Laura when they’re young women. In reality, though, there wasn’t a single Nellie Oleson. She is thought to have been a composite of three real-life people named Genevieve Masters, Nellie Owens, and Stella Gilbert. Laura had unpleasant run-ins with all three, interactions she apparently never forgot.

BONUS: “ALMANZO” WASN’T PRONOUNCED AL-MAHN-ZO

Laura gives her beau, Almanzo, a sweet nickname in the books: Manly. (She also referred to him as “the man of the house” in real life.) That’s for good reason—his name was pronounced Al-MAN-zo, not Al-mahn-zo.

The wrong pronunciation apparently took hold through the confounding influence that was the Little House on the Prairie TV show—a polarizing pop culture phenomenon that also introduced inaccuracies and anachronisms like adopted children and basketball into the fictional Ingalls family.