Brett Ortler

@gutenfrog.bsky.social

744 Followers 621 Following

I'm a naturalist, a writer, and an editor based in the Upper Midwest. Acquisitions editor for AdventureKeen. Author of popsci books. Poet and literary journal editor (prosepoems.com). Moths! Sometime tardigrade wrangler. For more, visit brettortler.com

A parody version of the Terminator movie poster, but with THE POLLINATOR across the top and Arnold's head replaced by a pollen covered bumblebee body and the gun swapped with goldenrod
A magazine spread from the MN Conservation Volunteer article about tardigrades with a large digital rendering of a tardigrade on the right hand side
A tiny black and white striped pseudoscorpion against a wall, zoomed in to show maximum pinceryness
A wan brown, engorged dog tick under visible light in a sterescope
A mostly gray Cecropia moth with a wingspan of five inches, but with bright pink to white teardrop shape markings on its hind wings and forewings and bright lines of pink, white, gray and black along the edges
A green and white book entitled Curious & Fascinating Facts Minnesota, with a loon, an agate, the northern lights and Bean and Bear Lake in MN
A white-tailed deer peeking its head up from behind a stream bank, surrounded by green grass and forest behind.
The crescent Earth as seen from the moon, which is in the foreground. Taken by Artemis II astronauts aboard Integrity. Credit: NASA
Tardigrades Eagerly Await the Great Nematode Migration In an almost unbelievable scene reminiscent of the famous salmon runs of the American West, where Brown Bears wait for an unsuspecting meal to leap into their mouths, I discovered something incredible last night while peering through my microscope. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, also apparently reenact this scene in miniature: Nematodes (aka roundworms) while wiggling and thrashing amid the wild waters of the Petri dish, thrust themselves into the air, and into the waiting claws and stylets of the hungry water bears. Of course, the scale of this natural wonder is minute, which is why it was only discovered recently, on this very April First. Image features a river rapids scene with two GIANT tardigrades waiting for similarly huge nematodes, which are wiggling out of the water. At the top there are large images of a nematode and a tardigrade.
A tardigrade under a compound microscope, glowing slightly pink under UV light
A No Kings protest with about 5000 people in Anoka, MN with folks lining the streets for a number of blocks
A screen shot of an AI detector indicating that the note reference was likely produced by AI
A photo of a 1984 softcover book Mr. t’s Be Somebody or Be Somebody Else’s Fool, from 1984 with Mr. T in gold chains and jewelry with a blue denim outfit and with wild, brought colors in the cover
A cover of the first edition of Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton with a black silhouetted T rex on the cover over a white background
Image of an Io Moth (yellow, with black eyespots on hindwings) Are You a Lamp? Because I’m DRAWN to YOU! Happy Valentine’s Day! (Io moth) Image of a brownish grasshopper with huge eyes. You make me very HOPPY! Happy Valentine’s Day! (Grasshopper) Image of an American black bear lying on the ground. I can BEARLY stand how much I like you! Happy Valentine’s Day! (American black bear) A close up image of slime mold sporangia; they are pinkish and kind of look like Q-tips. Happy Valen-SLIMES Day! (This is a slime mold.) An image of a morel mushroom, which looks a bit like a brain. It's yellow. You take up so MUSHROOM in my heart! Happy Valentine’s Day! (Morel mushroom) A fluffy bee fly (which resembles a bumblebee) on a purple coneflower. You FLY right into my heart! Happy Valentine’s Day! (A bee fly; not a bee!)
An adorable moth with fuzzy-looking scales, clinging to a petal of grass, as if to say "please may I have some lamp?" Possibly a Unarmed Wainscot
Prose Poems issues 11-12 cover, with an image of the vigil for Renee Good in Minneapolis, with haloed streetlights and a street of people. January 7, 2026. Featuring poetry by Erika Zambello, John Levy, R.W. Thorne, and Sydney Lea. With a guest poem by Brett Ortler.
Pieces of lefse, with the words "From my cold dead hands" superimposed over it; a satirical post about Chris Rufo's recent attempts to blame Scandinavians for the resistance to ICE efforts in MN
The most common ancestries (reflecting family or generational ties, regardless of one's birthplace) reported by Minnesotans in 2018 were German (1,801,700 people), Norwegian (810,300 people), Irish (516,500 people), Swedish (429,800 people), English (290,200 people), and Polish (248,000 people). About 58,800 Minnesotans reported Somali ancestry in 2018. Many Minnesotans do not report ancestry or simply report "American." From mn.gov Immigration & Language
A dog, Ted!, with white fur and brown spots and ears, lookjng up in anticipation of THE TOY with mouth slightly open
Parody star wars screenshot featuring THERE'S TOO MANY OF THEM, with THEM blocked out and with US superimposed on top of it, in reference to there being more folks against ICE than with them
To Build a Fire, title page, by Jack London. It's about trying, and failing, to build a fire in desperately cold temperatures, when wet. (Existentialism, amirite.)
A fake newspaper, with a parody cover of FrosTED flakes, featuring a dog's face (that'd be Ted!) superimposed on Tony the Tiger. The box says "They're MEAT" and instead of cereal and milk in a bowl, it's hot dogs and hamburgers. The top of the box says "A good source of BRENKFASTES" which is how we imagine Ted to say "breakfastes."
A weather report for Mars as of Jan 7, 2026: High of 43 F and a low of -47 F.
A slideshow about tardigrades and how to find them
A man and a woman wearing winter gear with thousands of people marching in support of their neighbors
An early submission for the MN State Flag (with blue horizontal bar on top of a thinner green one, with light blue beneath) with a white star in the left top corner and a common loon in the middle with a red laser coming out of its eye and the words Don't Tread on Us below.
A long grayish black pet slug stretched our in a jar
An iNaturalist screen of 100 organisms
A gray t shirt covered with a variety of mushrooms including an Amanita, an inky cap, a spiny puffball, a black trumpet, a morel, some spore prints, and a coral fungi
An image of a paper title and syllabus: Entomopathogenic Fungi from Minnesota are Virulent Against Emerald Ash Borer...Colin Peters, Nickolas Rajitar, and Robert Blanchette. Post reads: COOL! Insect-killin' fungi may be able to help against Emerald Ash Borer, those ding-dongs.
THE MESSENGER But thou shalt wander obscure even in the house of Hades, flitting among the shadowy dead.—Sappho The joke, of course, is on everyone. Hermes, despite winged shoes, cellphone, pager, semaphore, telegram, homing pigeon, and a team of gesticulating First- and Third-base coaches from the Savannah Bananas, is incommunicado. He whirls to one person, then the next, only to receive the same repertoire of responses: slight smiles, shrugged shoulders, half stares, half smirks. Frustrated, he pulls up a café stool and taps some numbers into his Cassio pocket watch calculator—frantically scribbling calculations onto a used napkin. Someone ought to speak Greek! But after a century of wandering through stadia, bustling ports, bazaars, airport departure and arrival terminals, train stations, the god of boundaries is silent. Perhaps heaven is a place of reunion, but also a place to forget—lines on a map, pain, mother tongues, and it may be that the answers to heaven’s questions are obvious, but cannot be spoken at all. for Andrew
Silver Medalist. People the Planet Needs Now: Voices for Justice, Science, and a Future of Promise. By Dudley Edmondson. Adventure Publications, Cambridge, MN Page through this book, and you’ll see nothing but black and brown faces. These are indigenous individuals and people of color who are working towards solving environmental problems. Some of the 25 individuals profiled in the book work on issues involving clean air, safe drinking water, and open spaces. Others strive to provide opportunities for outdoor experiences. Still others are research biologists, science and environmental educators. Dudley Edmondson allows each to tell their own story. We learn about the challenges they and their communities face, how they’ve met those challenges, and their determination to create a better world.
A red shimmering curtain of the northern lights over Minneapolis
A northern lights photo without a long exposure, showing faint reds and wispy greens
A giant column of pink light in the northern lights
The northern lights in bright pink and green
What the Dead Tell Us About the Edmund Fitzgerald "We are holding our own" —the last transmission from Captain Ernest McSorley It's true for a moment, or a week, or a decade, then the radiologist finds a mass, gray and grainy as a photo of a moon rock or a friend starts forgetting, first the little things, movie plots, appointments, but soon she can't remember her favorite movie or slip loose of her seatbelt. Eventually, she doesn’t remember her children, her husband, her own face in the mirror. Living like this must be like trying to read from a burning book—the lucid moments are a page or two, but the paper is already browning around the edges and words are falling into ash as fast as you can read them. Now imagine that’s your wife: standing fast with the water sweeping over the rails, the ship listing, both radars gone, the great black wave approaching and the only way to go is down. For Joyce
A tardigrade under a microscope; its brownish, with long claws on its legs, and protuberances on the front of its mouth; like a Milnesium species
A plump flying squirrel at a bird feeder, glowing pink under UV light
An image of bright green northern lights in a curtain-like shape just over the horizon through suburban Minneapolis trees
A dorky white guy with a cape, fake vampire teeth on his front teeth, a stethoscope, and a nametag that says Dr. Acula, Hematology
Area Dads Issue Warning: ALL CANDY COULD BE POISON AND MUST BE TESTED (BY DADS) FIRST! Candy poisoning is a very serious potential threat. Consider the image at left: This seemingly harmless Mounds Bar had an Iowa-Class Battleship in it, a F-106 Delta Dart and the Pyramids of Giza in it! By carefully eating around those objects, the heroic father below sucessful protected his family. These candies must be carefully tested by area Dads: Mounds Almond Joy Butterfingers M&Ms (only the peanut ones) Count Dracula launches new tourism campaign "It's actually pretty nice here! Stay for free at our castle!" Images of a Mounds Candy bar, opened up to reveal an Iowa-class battleship, a F-106 Delta Dart, and the Pyramids of Giza, with a heroic dad shown below. The Dracula ad has the first-edition cover of Dracula, along with a goofy dad dressed up as a vampire.
A yorshire terrier wearing a sweater and a tiny cardboard crown
A centipede in amber
A rotund groundhog prepping for winter.
A striking yellow, pink, and orange leafhopper perched on a window screen
A print of Violets by Marion Sheehan.
A moth print showing a large sphinx (I think) moth with red and black underwings. And atop it, a living moth that landed there.
A brown elephant weevil with an incredibly long rostrum (snout)
A vividly green-and-black striped sharpshooter on a white background, photo taken in Minnesota
A Russula mushroom glowing green under a UV light
A orange and black monarch butterfly in Michigan