September 19, 2007

Top Ten Ways A Pirate Is Greener Than Your Average Landlubber

Ahoy! Today, September 19, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, matey. So I thought I'd share with ye the Top Ten Ways A Pirate Is Greener Than Your Average Landlubber over a jug o' grog:

(10) Pirates used rain barrels on deck to collect drinking and washing water

(9) Pirates recycled and reused bottles for their rum, passing messages and as weapons in bar brawls. Then they went back for refills.

(8) Pirates spent as little time on land as possible, helping avoid spreading invasive species

(7) Pirates commuted less and bought local. While merchant vessels carried goods far and wide, pirates took what was nearby, supporting local towns and pubs.

(6) Pirates repaired things instead of buying new versions. They mended sails and damaged ships instead of upgrading immediately. When they did upgrade, they generally "bought" used.

(5) Pirates were kinder to animals (parrots, monkeys) than they were to people.

(4) Pirates kept it simple, from what they wore to how they navigated. No need to launch expensive satellites into space for GPS units to work when the stars are right above your head.

(3) Pirates went paperless. Their codes were generally not written down, because they might be incriminating. Most of their contracts were verbal.

(2) Pirates used wind power to sail the seas

(1) Pirates rarely bathed - that's water conservation for ye.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

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May 7, 2007

Critter Cake

We celebrated my 30th birthday on Cinco de Mayo this past weekend. I decided to try my hand at cake decorating, and of course I wanted something ridiculously advanced - an Amazing Amazon Cake. I know this has little to do with wildlife photography, but this is my blog, so I'm posting about my cake. It's also the reason I haven't posted here all week. It took that long to make the cake!

cake1.jpg

Inside the Cake

The filling was a moist carrot cake from Mich Turner's cake book Spectacular Cakes. It was made from mostly organic ingredients including coconut, walnuts, carrots, rum-soaked golden raisins, orange and lemon juice, flour and sugar. I got the recipe from a cake cookbook - the recipe was once used for Pierce Brosnan's wedding cake. Then the cake was split and frosted with a layer of orange buttercream frosting, covered with home-made marzipan to seal it for freshness and frosted again with orange buttercream.

Decorating the Cake

After that, I had to decorate the cake. With my short attention span, I knew I had to break up the work over a couple of days or I would start getting lazy and sloppy. Even tackling it this way, it was a lot of work each day. So after reviewing everything I needed to do, I planned my individual tasks:

Day 1: Buy remaining fresh ingredients
Day 2: Weigh fondant (sugar dough), flavor and color portions, ziplock
Day 3: Bake cakes, Cool, split and ice layers in orange buttercream
Day 4: Make marzipan, cover cakes, allow day to set. Sculpt animals
Day 5: Ice w/buttercream, assemble cake. Photos. Eat cake.

Sculpting the animals, including the elephant, lion, tiger, zebra and monkey (arguably a bear), took several hours alone. Each was about 5 inches high. We modified the plans to include tusks on the elephant and various other little touches. The fondant sugar paste is edible, but not very tasty. The only person interested in eating one was our young elementary school friend Jarod, who claimed the monkey.

Eating the Cake

This cake tasted nothing like a store-bought carrot cake. It was built more like a fruit cake, but since I hate fruitcake, its hard to explain why it was good. It was very moist from the citrus syrup you pour on it after you cook the cake, and then sealing it with marzipan. All the flavors - the cake, the syrup, the marzipan and the icing all mingled so well together, you didn't need to serve it with ice cream, etc. The cake recipe is for a wedding-like cake, and it looked and tasted like one.

Yum!

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April 30, 2007

Gripes About Stripes: Stripes Do Not A Tiger Make...

How Many Prongs Does A Fork Have?

Most people, when asked, will not hesitate to say four. I, on the other hand, want more information.

What kind of fork are we talking about here? A tuning fork, for example, has two prongs, whereas my mother has cocktail forks with three prongs, and dinner forks with four. I've never seen a 5-prong fork, but with the wonders of the world wide web I find that there is a five-prong manure fork for cleaning out farm stalls. I won't be forgetting about this use case anytime soon.

I have always valued this quirk of how my brain works. It makes for interesting conversations and, I like to think, has made me more receptive to change. I am less likely to believe that there is only one "single" answer, the only correct one. Lucky for me, I also learned early to tune my answers to what the poser of the question wants to hear - a lesson that allowed me to do well on standardized tests and such, despite thinking that many of the questions were foolishly narrow.

When I am the one posing the questions, I am often greatly dismayed by the lack of creativity shown in the answers. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, assuming they know of the other possible answers, but choose the one most likely to appease. However, when I follow up with asking for additional answers, what I get are blank looks.

So, what does this have to do with animals? Well, several times in the past few months, I've had frustrating conversations with people about animals.

I was sitting in a fabric store the other day when a fellow patron came up to me with a giant bolt of black and white striped fake fur.

"Do you think this looks like tiger fur?" she asks.

The fur is clearly meant to be zebra. It even says Zebra on it. I think to myself, well, it could be a white tiger, the cross-breed made famous by Siegfried & Roy, but I ask what it's for.

"My daughter's going to be a tiger in the school play," the mother says.

Now I know I cannot recommend this zebra fabric to this woman. It has to be stereotypical tiger stripes or the audience will be confused...Unless the audience is truly unaware of what a tiger looks like. Yes, it sounds unlikely, but then two other recent discussions pop into my head.

The other day, I was down watching the sea otters again when a family including three children (~13, ~10 and ~8 yrs old, with their mother) walk up to one of the otters sleeping on the beach. I'm sitting there glaring at them and shaking my head as they approach, but they ignore me. After scaring the otter back into the water by shouting at it and trying to touch it, they walk back by me (now rather pissed off) and my husband and I catch their conversation. They thought the otter was a seal. A seal??? How one can mistake a fluffed up otter for a seal, I don't know, but all four of them thought that's what it was. I kept hoping the nearby ranger would bust them, but she didn't. I had foolishly expected the mother to keep her kids in line, and by then it was too late to intervene.

Another friend, a mother of two young children, often looks at my pictures. Recently she told me that she loves my tiger pictures and mentioned how cute the tiger cubs are. I start racking my brain, when did I put up any tiger cub pictures? I don't think I have posted any of those recently... only to realize she's talking about my African lion shots from Kenya. The first time I corrected her, I felt like a hypocrite, telling her that the easy way to tell was that lions don't have spots or stripes and tigers have spots. Cheetahs and leopards have spots. Something easy so she learns a bit about telling big cats apart. I would have forgiven her for confusing leopards and cheetah, but lions and tigers? Even with habitats a continent apart, people still get confused??

Sometimes, these mistakes are charming. I get a little chuckle from the grade school kids who write me about where to find out more about the tusks of the elephant seals and such. Other times, like the otter-seal incident, I am shocked. Still, I'm cannot help but think to myself: young lions DO have spots and stripes. They fade as they grow to adulthood.

LionSpots0001.JPGLionSpots0002.JPG

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April 17, 2007

Responsible Rabbitry: You Bought A Bunny, Didn't You...

Belated Easter Tidings.

Just about every year, in some form or another, I post dire warnings about not buying your kid a bunny for Easter. Instead, I plead with you to get them a chocolate bunny instead. Unfortunately, this year I was out of town and I didn't get around to posting my tirade. I just know you did it. You went out and got yourself a bunny. And now you have no idea what to do with it. So this year, as a responsible rabbit-owner I'm going to post a couple of hints for you.

A Dozen Tips For Responsible Rabbitry


Oh, and one last thing. Do not pick up a rabbit by its ears or even the scruff of the neck. You should always scoop them up under their belly. If they're struggly, put a hand over their eyes to calm them and then pick them up. Bunnies are best held in your arms like a baby. If you're worried about getting nibbled (biting is the sign of a scared or unhappy rabbit), then hold the bunny with its head up on your shoulder, against you, as if you're burping a baby. This way the bunny can see around it and you can control its wiggling.

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April 16, 2007

Limb-Loving Lizards: Crocodile Bites Off Hand But...

I was browsing through National Geographics week in pictures over the weekend when I suddenly stopped and my jaw dropped. Behind me, my husband stopped talking and started gawking at my screen.

The amazing picture of a big crocodile with a bloody fist in its mouth looked surreal. It took me a good few seconds of staring at it before my husband nudged me to look at the follow-up picture of the smiling vet waving at the camera after his hand was reattached hours later.

Veterinarian Chang Po-yu was reaching through iron bars to remove tranquilizer darts before treating the 440-pound (200-kilogram) reptile when the inadequately sedated animal bit the vet's forearm off.

But for the vet, it wasn't quite a farewell to arm.

After being shot at twice, but apparently unhit, the croc dropped the arm. After seven hours of surgery, doctors successfully reattached the appendage...

More At: National Geographic Week In Photos: Croc Bites Off Hand

That's some amazing surgery. I hope they meant shot with a tranq, not killed, but somehow I doubt it.

Find out more about Nile Crocodiles in our African Field Notes.

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April 12, 2007

Animal Aging

I am posting this on the very moment of my birth. Luckily, I now live in the same time zone as the one when I was born which made it easier. I think it would be perfect if we hadn't changed our daylight savings policy this year. Oh, well. It's for our own good.

Anyway, I had great plans on talking about animal aging. I was going to calculate my age in human, dog, cat and any other animal years I could calculate. However, I was in for a surprise. The dog years thing is basically completely untrue. It's not a 7-to-1 ratio like I was always told.

So basically, I'm 30 (+/- 1 hour) and I've been living a lie.

I came up with a new plan: I was going to estimate animal ages myself based on my knowledge of certain mammal's weaning age, sexual maturity and lifespan. Like, for example, elephant seal years. But it's not as easy as I thought it would be since males rarely live past 14yrs but females can live to 20. But they reproduce basically until they die, and human women generally don't. Also, I would have to determine the sexual maturity of humans, and at 30 (+/- 1.25 hours), I am not quite sure I'm there yet.

Laurie's Very Scientific Aging Table
CreatureWeaned AgeSexual Maturity AgeLifespan
Northern Elephant Seal28 days~3 years~20 years
Sea LionUp to a year~4 years~20 years
African ElephantUp to 2 years~10 years~70 years
Me1.5 years~30 years (~12 if you're being precise)~80 years

Blast. So there goes my idea of estimating my relative female northern elephant seal age. I can safely say I'd be over 5 and under 18, and probably more like.. 10 because I'm basically in the middle of my plausible breeding years, so to speak.

Animals certainly age, but as you can see, its pretty complicated. Mammals like dogs and cats relative "years" vary greatly by breed, but its mostly about the size of the animal. Genetic diversity, especially regarding inherited defects and diseases, also play a significant role.

So a mouse's lifecycle is going to be shorter (and therefore faster) than a dog's. Dogs are a terrible example, though, since many of the breeds suffer from inbreeding and congenital disorders. Irish Wolfhounds are considered one of the largest (tallest) dog breeds but they have very short lifespans (7 yrs) whereas the yappy little Jack Russell Terrier lives an average of 14 years. Why? Jack Russell gene pool is strong, and they haven't suffered from heavy inbreeding, whereas the Irish Wolfhound suffered from a genetic bottleneck during the 1800's.

Live To Breed

One of the other issues with age estimation is that most animals do not age linearly. They rapidly reach sexual maturity and stay there. Life expectancy is different in the animal kingdom, where one is hunted. You want to grow up fast and perpetuate your species.

Weaning age varies greatly amongst species. We wean our children at various ages from just after birth through childhood, depending on our life plans, our class, our culture, and the available food. The Northern elephant seal weans her pup after about four weeks, whereas the sea lions nurse their pups for up to a year.Why so different? The elephant seal mother fasts while she nurses, her food source is far away. The sea lion nurses her pup for a few days, and then goes hunting, coming back and nursing more. Incidentally, this difference in behavior explains why vocalization is so much more important for sea lions - when mom comes ashore, she has to find her pup amongst all the others, whereas the elephant seal mother-pup bond is mostly (but not exclusively) due to proximity.

Let's look at something bigger. A female African Elephant may live to be more than 70 years old, if she's not poached first. It takes over a decade for her to reach sexual maturity, but she can reproduce until she's almost 60. She may let a calf nurse for upwards of two years if she does not have another calf right away.

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January 27, 2007

The New Elephant Seal Business Card

AnoBusiness.jpg

Needed something to give out to people when I'm out checking out the seals, so I made a cute little business card. Whatcha think?

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October 26, 2006

Cat Cloner Closed & Dog Duplicating Discontinued

P0001684.jpgFollowing their cat cloning going-out-of-business sale where they discounted cat clones from 50k to 32k, the pet cloning biotech firm Genetic Savings & Clone announced that they would be closing their doors at the end of the year.

People love their pets, but not enough to clone them. Perhaps the daunting price tag convinced them to go adopt a homeless animal in need instead. Long story short, the company has determined that pet cloning is just not commercially viable just yet. Over the past seven years, they've cloned 5 cats, but only sold two of those.

Just who considers cloning their pets? According to Genetic Savings & Clone's Client Overview, "In general, our clients are intelligent, articulate, and well-informed." That's an innocuous statement if I ever heard one. Imagine this was a bank, and they said that in general, their clients were law-abiding citizens. Sorry, but I had a good chuckle there.

Checking out their website and specifically the cats they cloned, I was surprised that CC, the calico they cloned from Rainbow, did not resemble her genetic donor very much.

CC's genetic donor, Rainbow, is a calico domestic shorthair, while CC is a white and tiger-tabby domestic shorthair. What gives? Shouldn't CC be a calico too? The answer to this question sheds light on a fascinating and less-than-fully-understood issue called "X-linked inactivation."

First of all, calicos are almost always female, which means they have two X-chromosomes (versus the male's XY). One of these X chromosomes contains a gene for orange coat color and the other contains a gene for black coat color (white patches are specified by a different set of genes which are not relevant here).

For reasons which are not fully understood, as the embryo develops, a phenomenon called "X-linked inactivation" occurs, in which one or the other X-chromosome in every cell in the Calico embryo becomes randomly inactivated. If the specific X-chromosome containing the gene for orange coat color becomes inactivated, that cell will go on to produce black coat color (assuming it becomes a coat follicle cell). The inverse is true if the X-chromosome containing the gene for black coat color becomes inactivated.

Given that the inactivation is random, one would expect a very fine distribution of orange and black hairs within the coat, but for reasons which are not germane here, the inactivation occurs in larger patches of orange and black.

"Mosaicism" is the term for distribution of different cell types within a single organism. Mosaicism is three-dimensional, meaning that the inactivation of orange or black-producing genes occurs within cells throughout the calico's body regardless of whether the cells have anything to do with production of the animal's coat. Thus, even the specific cumulus cell used to clone CC would have been inactivated for either orange or black coat color.

If the nuclear transfer process were to reset the inactivated X-chromosome the way it resets the nuclear differentiation, then one might expect to see a calico clone with a calico coat. On the other hand, if nuclear transfer does not reset X-activation then one would expect to see a clone with a black coat if the donor cell used had an orange coat gene on the inactivated X-chromosome, and conversely one would expect a clone with an orange coat if the donor cell used had an black coat gene on the inactivated X-chromosome.

The fact that CC has no orange in her coat is consistent both with the theory that nuclear transfer does not reset X-activation, and also that the cumulus cell used had an orange coat gene on the inactivated X-chromosome.

More at: X-linked Inactivation

While this may explain the scientifics behind this occurence, it probably did not help with the company's business plans and customer satisfaction.

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April 1, 2006

Flora & Fauna For Fools

tongue.jpgAhh, April Fool's Day, a favorite of pranksters and children alike. I cannot tell you how upset I was to find that Desktop USB Fondue Set was vaporware.

I thought this year, instead of tricking you, I'd share some nature-related April Fool's hoaxes throughout history. Some of these are beyond anything reasonable, but others are amusing in that they may actually come true some day. Either way, I hope you enjoy!

A Vermonter's Nightmare: The Exploding Maple Trees (2005)
NPR's All Things Considered followed how the declining maple syrup industry of the North East had lead to untapped maples exploding from an excess of sap. They had a great interview with a farmer and Vermonters got a good laugh at the nation's expense. As a former Norwich, VT, resident myself, I found it all greatly amusing. You can listen to it here.

Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer (1995)
Discover Magazine reported on a new Antarctic species called the Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer. A bony growth on its head, fed by blood vessels, allowed the animal to melt holes in the ice in order to hunt for prey, like penguins. Supposedly, the magazine received more mail about this article than any other in their history.

Mountus Eruptus: Mount Edgecumbe (1974)
The residents of Sitka, Alaska were used to living along the Ring of Fire, but they had been under the impression that their particular volcano, Mount Edgecumbe, was a dormant one. However chaos ensued when they woke up to black smoke billowing from it's cone. The town clown, a Mr. Porky Bickar, was later found burning tires up on the summit.

Tender But Juicy: Whistling Carrots (2002)
Tesco, a Brit supermarket, published an advert for the genetically enhanced whistling carrot. The carrots had natural airholes, which caused the veggie to whistle when they were properly cooked.

Swarms and Swarms of Em! (1949 & 1994)
No one likes bug storms, after all. Back in 1949, a New Zealand DJ announced that a huge mile-wide swarm of wasps was approaching. He urged listeners to protect themselves by wearing their socks over their trousers to leave honey traps outside their doors. Hundreds of people dutifully heeded his advice. About 45 years later, in 1994, Arizona residents woke to find bright fliers posted around town warning of "Operation Killer Bees" and the aerial spraying later that day to eradicate a killer bee population. On the bottom of the flier the name of the sponsoring agency: Arizona Pest Removal Information Line (For Outside Operations Listings), the acronym being "April Fool", but few people noticed.

The Michigan Freshwater Shark Experiment (1981)
The Herald News reported that a government study of fresh-water sharks was underway in three nearby lakes. Two thousand sharks, including blues, hammerheads and a few great whites, had been released into the lakes for the study despite safety concerns of local public officials.The fish were also to be protected, and fishermen could not catch them.

Don't Disturb the Squirrels (1993)
A German radio station Westdeutsche Rundfunk (WDR), Europe’s biggest broadcaster, reported that Cologne passed a new city regulation requiring park joggers to run no faster than 6 mph in order to avoid disturbing the mating squirrels.

Tasmanian Mock Walrus or TMW (1984)
Floridian pet owners were featured in the Orlando Sentinel hoax about the Tasmanian Mock Walrus, TMW for short. The cute little four inch long mini-walrus purred like a cat and had the cuddly temperment of a hamster. Even better, it was easily house-trainable and liked to eat cockroaches - a serious problem in Florida. The clincher was that while several TMW's had been smuggled into the country, local exterminators were pressuring the government not to allow the animal for fear of losing profits. This caused quite a few people to search out their own TMW before it was too late. The picture was actually that of a naked mole rat.

Surrogate Mother Elephants for Woolly Mammoths (1984)
The Technology Review reported the efforts of some Soviet scientists attempting to bring back the woolly mammoth from the ice age by inserting its DNA into elephant cells. The cells were then placed in elephant mothers. Interestingly, this might actually happen someday, since according to the February 9th, 2006 edition of Nature, the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Mammuthus primagenius has been determined.

White Lions Need Washing More Often (1860)
In late March, Londoners began receiving invitations to view the annual washing of the White Lions at the Tower of London. In centuries past, the Tower had housed the Royal Menagerie. The crowd gathered at the White Gate at the appropriate time, but nothing ever happened and so people slunk away. This particular joke was a long-standing one often played on unsuspecting visitors to the cit, even so far back as the late 1600's!

Dino-Dragons: Smaugia Volans (1998)
Nature Magazine reported the discovery of "a near-complete skeleton of a theropod dinosaur in North Dakota." The newly discovered dinosaur, aptly named Smaugia volans, was special because researchers believed the dinosaur could have flown. Smaug was the name of the dragon in JJR Tolkein's The Hobbit.

PETA's Tournament of Sleeping Fish (2000)
Even the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has a sense of humor. PETA warned that would sabotage the bass fishing tournament in East Texas's Lake Palestine by putting tranquilizers in the lake before event, thus putting the fish to sleep.In their words, "this year, the fish will be napping, not nibbling." The feds took this threat seriously and dispatched a number of rangers to guard the fishes.

And Going and Going: Viagra for Hamsters (2000)
The Independent reported that a Viagra-like pill called Feralmone had been designed to treat sexually frustrated pets, including hamsters, since there are few things as sad as a pet suffering from feelings of sexual inadequacy sitting idly in its cage. Hamster owners were instructed to sprinkle the drug into pet food and also advised them to lay down some newsprint on the floor of the cage for once the pills began to take effect.

You can read about quite a few of these hoaxes and others at the Museum of Hoaxes: The Top 100 April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time.

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March 12, 2006

The World Was Not Enough: Google Mars

mars.jpgFirst we had Google Maps, then we could whoosh around the world with Google Earth. Now, global isn't good enough. Google has gone galactic with Google Mars.

Google Mars is actually quite interesting, even for someone who generally prefers to look to Earth as opposed to the stars. Instead of trying to find your house, you can check out the surface of mars, by elevation, visible light, or with infrared. There are also named indexes for the various land forms like mountains, canyons, dunes, plains, ridges, and craters - just click on the Acidalia Colles and it will take you straight to the hill formation on the map. You can also see where all the spacecraft, rovers and such, have landed, as well as their status. Lastly, there's a great index of articles that refer to specific locations on Mars. What a great little learning tool that leverages technology already available in other Google apps. Check it out!

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March 9, 2006

Fewer Swans Aswimming...

When I was little, we lived in Zürich, Switzerland, while my father completed his postdoctorate work. It is there that most of my earliest memories originate. [Warning, musings ahead]

On cold, snowy days in winter, my mother would drag me to the market on a sled and then on the way home, the sled would be piled high with me and the groceries. When we went to pay the rent, the landlord, a rather odd fellow, would always give me a chocolate bar from his freezer chest and pinch my cheek. I ate countless pears off the tree in the back yard without washing them and played naked in the summer under hoses and on the Alpine mountainsides without fear or censure. One of the first things I learned to speak in Swiss-German was how to call for "More Beer" when we would eat out (the beer wenches always thought I was precious) and there are several pictures of me as a toddler, grinning and drooling into an empty beer bottle. In an effort to be frugal, my mother baked and decorated dozens of sugar cookies for our otherwise ornament-less Christmas tree, only to have to do the same again the next day after my father and I had pilfered them off the tree and spoiled our appetites. Later, she would make beautifully decorated homemade chocolate lollipops for Halloween, enough for every trick-or-treater who might come to the door.

Now you better not be getting horrified at this point. I am sharing these HAPPY memories with you to illustrate how things have changed in the 25 years since these events occured. Now I think about how today's kids won't have some of these memories. Well, if they do, their parents might be accused of terrible parenting or end up in jail. Oh, sure, they'll have different memories I never could have had. Hell, my kids will probably have memories of mommy and daddy helping them get past Level 3 on Final Fantasy XVIII. Already our friend's read the text for their kid's GameBoy games for them. I am a bit saddened by the loss of those simple pleasures I grew up with. Will my kids suffer from the lack of them?

It seems as if several factors are converging at once but fear, backed ironically by science, seems to be the main culprit. It all comes down to the dreaded statistics - we hear about every single bad thing on the news every night. The odds are frightening to the point of causing parental paralysis. It's better to keep your kids indoors playing on the Playstation than, heaven forbid, let them outside and out of your sight - they might pick up some germ or get kidnapped or worse. You can Trust No One. Kids don't play naked at the beach anymore for fear of catching the eye of a child molester; you wouldn't dare let your child have a sip of beer for it might stunt their growth or promote future alcoholism. Baking cookies from scratch costs five times more than the ones bought in stores and I won't even start on trick-or-treating. That dying tradition has all the kids in our neighborhood going to the mall on Halloween. It's just f***'n weird.

Back when I was a kid, which really wasn't THAT long ago, these things were relatively harmless. That's not to say that bad things didn't happen - they did. But still, the majority of us turned out ok, except now we're the neurotic parents. It makes me want to know, what are today's simple pleasures? What are tomorrow's?

Today I was listening to a Slate Explainer podcast entitled "Why Are Swans Dropping Like Flies?" about why H5N1 (Avian flu) is killing the swans all over Europe. It reminded me of one of my earliest memories in Zürich. Whenever we would have pancakes for breakfast (it was my favorite, of course, especially when my mother would make Mickey Mouse shaped ones), my mother would make extra pancakes. Later, she and I would walk down to feed them to the swans. Not that the swans really deserved it. They were mean and nasty, always trying to bite us, but they were very pretty and I enjoyed throwing pancakes at them.

Nowadays, I'm always seeing the signs not to feed the birds. I've seen a gull land on a kid's head and gobble up their ice cream cone next to one such sign. It was actually quite traumatic, except the bird. It's pretty clear that feeding birds can often be bad for the for all involved, the birds suffer from eating human foods, it causes unsanitary conditions, blah blah, and now, with bird flu, many parents are downright afraid to allow their children near a bird. Well, at least, if it still looks like a bird - I haven't heard of Happy Meal sales dropping, although after that horrible cartoon in Super Size Me, I haven't been able to make myself eat a McNugget since (I was happier not knowing, you know).

I read a book once about how a genetically-engineered tomato got a disease which virtually wiped out the human race. The survivors were deathly afraid of tomatoes, even at a distance. Even though the disease was long-gone and no one was at risk, people would freak out when one of the red fruits showed up anywhere in their vicinity. The bird flu panic reminds me of this. And so many of our holidays and traditions have bird-themes - from New Year's peace doves to Easter eggs, barbeque on the 4th of July, then Thanksgiving turkey to Christmas goose. Talk about a poultry-industry nightmare. And don't forget that Thursday is inevitably Chicken Nugget day at the school cafeteria (Friday is always Pizza day). It seems weird to me that people would not feed the swans, but they don't really have too many concerns with the fact that your average school cafeteria serves lower-grade meat than most people can buy at the local supermarket.

I guess I feel like people spend so much time worrying, but aren't willing to spend more time just being cautious. And by this, I mean active caution. If you're worried about bird flu, read up on the details, cook your food properly and wash your hands. If you don't feel comfortable letting your kid outside alone, go with them. How many of these problems would be solved if people spent more time getting out their with their children? Despite the fact that we live in a society that allows us the freedom of mobility and communication, fewer and fewer of us know our own neighbors. We have all become strangers. Perhaps that's the real problem, because when things do go wrong - whether it comes in the form of a hurt child or a flu pandemic - you're less likely to get a helping hand from a stranger than you are from a friend.

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December 28, 2005

Happy Holidays!

rhinoxmas.jpg

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November 16, 2005

Funny Phrases & Silly Searches

Checking my website statistics is fun and occasionally addicting. One of my favorite things to do is read the search phrases people use and somehow manage to end up on perlgurl.org. Today, I thought I'd share a few... just for kicks.

platypus.jpgPuggles - The Baby Platypus
Puggles
baby duck-billed platypus
platypus babies puggles

frog.jpgFreakish Frog's Fate Foreboding
goliath frog
goliath frog predators
goliath frog pet

Gator Gluttony: A Python's Fatal Mistake
fatal gluttony
python eating sheep
pythons killing owners
show photos of python attempting to eat a man

turtle2.jpgThe Turtle With Two Heads
two headed turtle
seven headed turtle
two headed animals mutations
two headed snake coloring pictures

gull200.jpgMilitary Bases Benefit Birds
military environmental conservation
we’re going to need a bigger conflict

Biting Back Against Invasive Species
fried south american rodents

squirrel2.jpgRodent Radiation: Squirrels Get Sassy
squirrel tails recycling

gws.jpgPERLGURL.ORG Podcast Episode #1: We're Going To Need A Bigger Boat - Great White Sharks
hiding places of great white sharks

sheep.jpgCreepy Creature Camouflage
pictures of a camouflage sheep

Posted by sorsha at 4:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 17, 2005

Harr, Matey! I'm Addicted To Sid Meier's Pirates!

imacutepirate.jpgI'm not much of a gamer, especially since I really suck at what Shane calls the "button mashers" - or games which require quick reflexes and memorizing button combinations or smashing random keys a lot and hoping for the best. But every once in a while, I'll find a game I really like and am good at. I used to play the LucasArts Monkey Island series, and now I've become addicted to the newest version of Sid Meier's Pirates

Chomper McDarcey is my boy. He's a smooth talking pirate duke who's married a beautiful French Governor's daughter but still romances all the lovely ladies of the caribbean anyway. He's defeated all the other notorious pirates and enjoys recruiting the able-bodied men in a town, sailing away and then quickly turning back and plundering that city for its loot. Captain Chomper sails the fully loaded frigate aptly named the 'Megalodon'. Chomper McDarcey has a special taste for big, fat Spanish treasure ships, and the Spaniards have put a hefty bounty on his head. Chomper is friendly with the natives and enjoys sending them after Spanish colonies.



Chomper Prefers Hanging In The Taverns

Blackbeard Was No Match For Chomper McDarcey!

A Typical Sea Battle

Chomper Becomes An English Duke!

Chomper Dances With His French Wife

Chomper Duelled With His Bride's Former Intended

Trixy Chomper Loves Land Battles & Sneak Attacks

Chomper Enjoys Flying the Jolly Roger Over Recently Vanquished Towns



Posted by sorsha at 3:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 11, 2005

The Ins & Outs of the In-N-Out Menu

innout.gifIt's a good thing that the nearest In-N-Out Burger is about a 45 minute drive from where I live, because otherwise, I'd be a big fat cow. I don't particularly care for fast food and I don't really find myself tempted to go to Taco Hell, Heart-Attack In The Box, Barfer King, or McDoh's Golden Arches. But, In-N-Out I, and many other relatively health conscious Californians, have remained steadfastly loyal to, despite the hidden bible quotes all over their packaging.

When someone from out of state comes to visit, we always make a voyage over the hill to an In-N-Out. Sure, we might take in San Francisco or Yosemite, but we almost always manage to hit up the big I-N-O in the process. Seeing the ultra simple menu with 3 meals, fries and drinks often results in our guests giving us some initially skeptical looks followed by very surprised moans of pleasure a few bites later.

In-N-Out represents all that is good in fast food - it's fast, it's cheap, they're friendly, they use high quality ingredients, and their stuff tastes 100x better than the other chains. When you ask for lots of ketchup, you get it (Very important to Laurie, as fries are just a vehicle for ketchup).

And did I mention that they have a secret menu? Only a really cool restaurant confident in its business model would dare to have a secret menu. Over the years, I've learned more about various items and tried them, all with delicious results. Today I thought I'd share some of them, as well as some others I have yet to try but shall work on:

Burgers
Flying Dutchman - Two patties with two slices of cheese only.
Grilled Cheese - Two slices of cheese, plus condiments, on a bun.
Veggie/Wish Burger - Condiments, on a bun.
Double Meat - 2 patties, plus condiments, on a bun.
3x3 (MxC) - M patties stacked with C slices of cheese, plus condiments, on a bun.

Condiments & Cooking Requests
Animal Style - Grilled onions, sauce, pickles, mustard fried into meat.
Protein Style - Replace the bun with a lettuce wrap.
Meat Doneness - "Medium", request "well done" or "medium-rare".
Regular Onions - warmed raw full slice of onion.
Grilled Onions - chopped, grilled onions.
Whole Grilled Onions - a whole slice of onion grilled until soft.
Raw Onions - cold raw full slice of onion.
Chopped Raw Onions - cold raw chopped onion.
Chopped Chilis - adds some mild peppers.
Extra toast - toasts the bun longer.

Fries
Cheese Fries - Fries with melted cheese on them.
Animal Fries - Fries with cheese, sauce and grilled onions.

Fry Requests
"Double-Fried" or "Well Done" - Crispier version.
"Light" - Less Cooked version.
"No Salt" - Don't salt the fries.

Drinks
Neopolitan Shake - Vanilla, Strawberry, and Chocolate Mixed Shake.
Strawklette Shake - Strawberry & Chocolate Mixed Shake.
Choco-Vanilla Swirl Shake - Chocolate & Vanilla Mixed Shake.
Rootbeer Float - Half Vanilla shake and half rootbeer soda.
Lemon-Up - Mix of lemonade and 7-Up.
Tea-ade or Arnold Palmer - Mix of Iced Tea and lemonade.
Root Beer Special - Mix of Rootbeer and Dr. Pepper.
Any Mix of Sodas - Coke & Dr. Pepper is a nice one.

Drink Requests
Extra syrup - Add Extra Chocolate or strawberry to a shake.
Large & Extra-large Shake Sizes - Uses the soda cup sizes - 1.

Check out the In-N-Out Burger website for more info. Also, Wikipedia has some rather interesting info on the chain as well.

Lastly, in college, my housemate and I attempted to perfect a home bbq'd version of an In-N-Out burger. We found that Thousand Island dressing made an excellent substitution for the special In-N-Out sauce.

Posted by sorsha at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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