I was born in 1985, which is a bit of an awkward year, culturally. I’m technically a millennial, but I was a bit too old for most of the fads that swept through the millennial generation. I never owned a Bratz doll. I missed the brief yo-yo boom. And I never played Pokémon, in game or card form. That’s not to say I was too cool for that sort of thing as a kid; I was a total geek. Heck, I had a dragon deck before the Onslaught block made tribal decks cool (that would be Magic the Gathering, for those who have no idea what I’m talking about)—I just wasn’t quite the right age at the right time to be hit by the Pokémon craze. I had never tried to catch a Pokémon until last week, when my boyfriend and roommate convinced me to try Pokémon Go. It’s… addicting.
A few days later, I was already one of “those” people, glued to my phone as I paced up and down Kohou street. THERE! I stopped abruptly as I engaged a Tentacool that appeared on my screen. My eyes narrowed as I gently flicked my Pokéball at the cp179 Tentacool perched awkwardly on the hood of a parked car. After a few rattles, the red and white ball became still, emitting the “Gotcha!” stars, and I did a slightly embarrassing victory dance (my friend once dubbed it my “T. rex dance” because of my jilted arm movements). As a box jelly scientist, I had been keeping a keen eye out for these jellyfish Pokémon for days, but I had only seen them off in the distance, some three footsteps away. Frustrated, I finally had decided to go hunting near a local canal on my way back home from running errands, hoping I would find these water Pokémon near, you know, water—a tactic that paid off. My goofy grin quickly changed, however, when I was awarded a metal for catching my 10th “Poison-type” Pokémon. “Poison!” I actually exclaimed aloud. “Jellies are venomous!”
Continue reading “Ask Professor Willowcox: Are Poison-type Pokémon Really “Poisonous”?”
