Post Office pets
I was at the post office today and bought a set of stamps. The choices I was offered consisted of the basic one, and then a set of trucks versus a set of pets. Pressed for time, with a line … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Nature
More fall photos
More photos from Fall 2016 in New England, taken by me with nothing more fancy than my cell phone camera. This one could be any season (except winter), although the leaves on the ground are a giveaway, I guess: It … Continue reading →
Another great Frost quote
This one: ”We go to college,” [Frost] wrote, ”to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven’t learned in high school.” He dropped out of both Harvard and Dartmouth, and married his high-school sweetheart with … Continue reading →
Ode to a Frog
My ex-husband has been going through his papers, and yesterday he found something I thought had been long lost—a poem I had written as a 14-year-old sophomore in high school. How it came to be in his stuff I don’t … Continue reading →
Fall is just about here
I’m looking forward to it. The leaves are starting to turn. There’s a nip in the air, especially at night. And it’s time to reprise a few of the photos I took last year, on a memorable trip north to … Continue reading →
Which comes first, the duck or the chicken?
On the “literally” thread, commenter expat asked a burning question: Maybe you can help me figure out whether the duck who lives with my cousin’s chickens is literally transspecies. His egg was abandoned by his mother in the creek that … Continue reading →
A parasite is named in Obama’s honor
And it’s not the first: Baracktrema obamai isn’t just any parasite. It’s so distinctive that it represents not just a new species but an entirely new genus… B. obamai is a flatworm that infects black marsh turtles and southeast Asian … Continue reading →
Eliminating the mosquito: is it nice to fool Mother Nature?
Apparently we have the ability to completely eliminate that very common pest, the mosquito, through genetic engineering: Powerful new gene-editing technologies could allow scientists to program mosquito populations to gradually shrink and die off. Some efforts have gained enough momentum … Continue reading →
Today is National Dog Day
Give your pet an extra hug. I have a friend who’s putting his dog down today, and this photo-essay touched me. I’ve always loved dogs, although I’ve only owned two in my life. Even as a young kid who could … Continue reading →
Greenland sharks live 400 years
Yes, you read that right: 400 years. If you call that “living.” We actually don’t know all that much about shark behavior. But here’s my first introduction to it, courtesy of Herman Melville in a Moby Dick passage that made … Continue reading →
Monkeys on a plane (and in life, music, and movies)
[Hat tip: Instapundit.] Apparently there was some disturbance on a Frontier Airlines flight last Tuesday involving a monkey. But not to worry; it was a monkey with a job: The monkey that reportedly got “loose” on a Las Vegas-bound Frontier … Continue reading →
I think the beaver…
…was just protecting his namesake lake: A 67-year-old woman says she was attacked by a beaver while paddleboarding on a lake named after the rodent in North Carolina. Betsy Bent told the Citizen-Times of Asheville that the beaver knocked her … Continue reading →