- Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.—Gravity’s Rainbow
‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.—The Third Policeman
Tag Archives: fauna
Strays
Messing around with Google Chrome again. “So what?” you say? You’re right—so what.
Five male robins were rummaging around in the dead leaves under the front porch and shrub this morning. It looked like they were looking for food. The leaves were flying left and right, and one of them made an angry open-mouthed gesture when [...]
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Bioduress
Just as a neighbor and I began talking seriously about putting up a bat house to attract these amazing mosquito-eating creatures to our mosquito-infested backyards, we learn that, like the honey bee, the bat is in trouble. It may not be for the same reason(s), but it’s disturbing nonetheless:
“This is the worst crisis I’ve ever [...]
CDB
The bees are dying: one quarter of the US commercial colonies collapsed last year, and news accounts indicate that Europe has the same problem.
Initial speculation centered on cell phones—supposedly the radiation is at just the right frequency to disrupt the bees’ navigation. That hypothesis seems to have few adherents now. So what is it? Pesticides? [...]
“Plavam …”
Martin Strel likes to swim. In rivers. Long rivers. From end to end.
The Danube. The Mississippi. The Yangtze. And now, the Amazon. Never mind the piranha and the candirú.
It’s the Slovenian red wine that keeps him going—he laughs when he says it, but he drinks it as he floats on his back down whatever river [...]
Havoc
While we’re on the subject of insects [ "Spiders aren't insects!" --- "Oh, don't be such a freaking literalist!" ], here’s an urgent message from Physics Today:
In 2005, we all witnessed, via the international media, the devastation that hurricanes caused in property damage and loss of life. Katrina alone almost destroyed New Orleans and flooded [...]
Postcard
Greetings from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where WorldWideWeber (or WoWiWe, as some like to call him) is gradually exchanging his usual subterranean pallor for a more robust brownish cast. He has not seen the “shark” that several others say they saw, so feel free to go in the water, if you happen to [...]
Natural
The neighborhood squirrels like to hide black walnuts in our yard. I’m not sure where the nearest black walnut tree even is. Today one of them left something behind on the deck railing after its breakfast—sort of a nature morte.
The critter’s got a good eye.
Drifting