Wullcome, vis'tor, t' Cheeeelacka Caoun'y.

Home o' th' Bottomless Pit and o' course aur vury own Cheelacka Chickadee.

Okay, okay, I'll stop writing the accent. But in all seriousness, this here is Cheelacka County. We're one of the few counties with its own flag, county tree, county bird, and we've got some pretty crazy history.

The name of the county is a butchered pronunciation of a word from the Koasati language, that is, the language of the indigenous people who lived here before colonizers came. It comes from the word "Chilaaka" which is the word for blackjack oak trees, which is now the county tree. Too bad they've all been hollowed out.

There are a lot of saddening but very fascinating stories about how the Koasati people and other indigenous groups of people ended up in new places, by the way. I encourage y'all to do some research.

The county bird's called a longbeak chickadee, but everyone here calls it a Cheelacka chickadee, because it's not found anywhere else. They're pretty closely related to black-capped chickadees, also called Carolina chickadees, but they've got longer beaks (obviously), and longer talons. Apparently Carolina chickadees have a little bit of a language going on. I wonder if that's got any correlation with how complicated sounding our chickadees birdsong is...

If you ever come by, check out the Bottomless Pit. No one is really sure where it came from, or what the point of it is, but it's become a big tourist attraction. Even with all the great things we have (not to brag, haha) you've probably never heard of the county besides news about the Pit. Apparently they've been advertizing it as having shrieking noises coming from it, but I promise you that is just a weird marketing strategy. There ain't nothing wrong it it, it's just a bit weird.

Also there's another... Eh, it'd be kinda offensive to act like it's a whole unique spectacle. It's really not as big of a deal as they'll make you think in terms of culture.

I'll try to cover a little more about our history in the comments and in future images. See ya!

(Happy pixelling!! I promise I will finish the image later, but it's late and I'm tired!!)

#cheelackacounty