Funny! ;))
… you follow the trail of ants carrying bits of cat food from the kitchen into the crack in the wall 50 feet away and then watch them for a while, admiring their cooperation as they take turns carrying their burden.
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… You wish these actually existed – and are already thinking about what sort of macro setup you would use to best show the details!
… you’re very disappointed when you find that you won’t have much time to identify on your trip
… you forget both your bug collecting jar and your bug spray at home, and you’re way more annoyed about the collecting jar…
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As a tree guy, this really messes with my suspension of disbelief for enjoying a film. A lot of stuff is filmed in california, but set in the eastern US. Needless to say, there’s a big difference…
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…you find yourself WALAT-ing (thanks again @molanic!) or as I call it to myself now: gardenatting clutching your phone/camera and realize you are chanting silently in your head like a protester, “No new photos!, Until you make your obs! No new photos!, Until you make your obs!” So, you’ve reluctantly stayed inside and left all moth lights darkened tonight. No more 345 observation backlogs allowed (not exaggerating).
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Just 345? :-p
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… you look at the list of user thumbnails on a forum post, and immediately know who everyone is!
… you are trying to make an observation every day for as long as possible, and often remember at the end of the day that you haven’t made your observation(s) yet. you usually end up coming to the same “filler” species (White Clover, House sparrow, Common Dandelion, etc.) and always think “I wish I could find something more interesting!”
… you are never completely satisfied with your origami models – “the white on this eagle’s head doesn’t extend far enough down” “woodlice have more legs than that” etc.
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I have several thousand photos of backlog at the moment so I totally feel that! It’s a serious issue though.
Also, - when you like iNat so much you find a discord server for it.
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Several thousand photos backlog is totally my baseline. 345 obs with multiple photos sitting in the app waiting to upload? while not terribly uncommon for me, made my phone useless.
see: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalist-using-lots-of-storage-on-iphone/3316/7 for help with that if anyone needs it
(…you need no further information to follow this discussion with ease)
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Oh gotcha! I think my worst was about 800 on my phone all in the app but not uploaded yet. Definitely makes the phone run a little slow! Haha
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… when your doctor tells you you have to avoid hiking for several months, and your first thought is “but what about all the observations I’ll miss?!”
…Then your second thought is “I guess now I’ll have time to work through the million-species ‘needs ID’ backlog”
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…daily eBird? What eBird?
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So. Many. Hours.
…Or a relative says that on a family outing…
…When you run over to the BACK side of all the signs to check for critters, to the point that your friends feel it’s necessary to point out that the words are on the front…
Also,
… When your neighbors think you are locked out, because you’ve been taking photos of moths and spiders near your door for 20 minutes.
… When you ask your husband to go for a hike, and he responds "Is it a HIKE hike or an iNat “hike”? (…and you remind him that it’s always an iNat hike…)
… When you plan all your family trips, including your honeymoon, based around visiting new places and finding new lifers
… When your aunt visits and sees you holding millipedes, tarantulas, and other “creepy crawlies” and asks “What happened to you?”
… When someone asks about a type of animal (snake, millipede, banana slug,…) and you pull out your phone because you have a full album of photos of different types of that thing. But when they ask about family members, you have to dig through hundreds of animal photos to find a human photo.
… When you delay sleep and/or computer updates because you have 50 tabs open of all the iNat posts, observations, lists, and forums you want to pour over.
… When you think you’ll just check iNat or the iNat forum for “a minute or two” but then 2 hours later, you’re still there and have found dozens of things you still want to look at.
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When someone offers to help you find what they think you lost when in reality you were taking a picture of a cool beetle.
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Yes, this all the time. There’s a rare plant that grows in some of our city parks and every time I’m out surveying (i.e. walking around looking at the ground) someone asks if I’ve lost something. I started carrying around little cards with photos of the plants and my email address to recruit more observers.
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lol, I hand out “iNat cards” with my email address, and so far I’ve only had one person get back to me!
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I went to our local arboretum yesterday, and as I walked in the gate, the assistant curator comes up to me and says “you’ll know… we have something strange under the microscope…”. He carried on talking, but I don’t know what he was saying… he had me at “under the microscope”. I can recall at some point he commented “you and I had very different upbringings”, and I recall talking about at least 10 different taxa that had some (at times obscure) connection to the Siphanta acuta egg mass that he had on the stage… And I was only going there to photograph plants!
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… you watch a butterfly laying her eggs, carefully collect the eggs, watch the caterpillars grow and pupate, carefully register every step, and post it all on iNat. When suddenly diagnosed with a serious heart condition and scheduled for angioplasty in a few days, your main worry is if you’ll be able to see the butterflies emerge, and wonder if you could maybe reschedule the procedure, just to be sure.
(It all turned out well: 3 of 4 butterflies emerged right before the procedure, so I was able to register those. Oh, and yes, I’m fine now! :D )
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I think I can safely say on behalf of the community, We’re so glad that you’re okay and the butterflies, well, we’re almost as happy about that too ;) !!!
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Thank you!.. 
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