Northern Pike

The company I work for was under a giant DDOS attack from a Bot net yesterday that was kind of odd, took down the network until I left for the day. Mondays are normally a good art day for me but yesterday I was having problems working up the motivation to do anything so I ended taking a day off. 

Art

Goal for the week 19.25hrs

Today

work on the figure with the Anubis make

make clay

Animal

Photo by Paladin27

Mythology

On a personal note when I was younger I thought that a Northern Pike and a Muskie were two different species of fish, I had then been informed they were the same and the different names were a regional thing. I now find out that I was right back then Northern Pikes and Muskies are different species, same genus though. For several cultures the northern pike (Esox lucius) is a preferred form for water spirits. The Russian water spirit the Vodyanoy often took the form of a pike and was often placated by fisherman with tobacco to bring fish. In their native form the Vodyanoy is described as a naked old man with an greenish algae covered beard with fish eyes and tail they also had a tendency to break dams and steal the souls of drown persons. There was also a Russian wise old pike which can grant wishes to anyone that catches it so long as it is released. In Norse mythology the dwarf Andvari took the form of a pike. At one point Loki caught him in the net of the sea goddess Ren and extorted gold from him. Andvari cursed this gold heavily but Loki used all of it to pay a wergild and avoided the curse. For the Potawatomi the Northern Pike was assoicated with the god Kinoje a water deity. In Estonia in the village of Lemmaku dried Pike is eaten around the equinox near March 25th to sustain the luck of fishermen.