The sign clearly says that “Into the Wild” is to the right. Yet he is facing left.
He got in to our house through the woodstove pipe, possibly under the mistaken impression that it would be a good place to nest. He bumped around inside the pipe for about 24 hours. Then, when I was sure he had died, my son opened the stove and out he came! He was so shocked by his experiences that I was able to pick him up in my hand and let him outside.
You’ve heard of hoarfrost … which is cool enough by itself … but have you heard of …
“You’re not a ‘medical’ doctor, sir?” asked Morse [of the suspect].
“No. I just wrote a Ph.D. thesis –you know how these things are.”
“On?”
“Promise not to laugh?”
“Try me.”
“‘The comparative body-weight of the great tit within the variable habitats of its North European distribution.'”
Morse didn’t laugh.
“Original research, was that?”
“No other kind, as far as I know.”
“And you were examined in this?”
“You don’t get a doctorate otherwise.”
“But the person who examined you — well, he couldn’t know as much as you, could he? By definition, surely?”
“She, actually. It’s the — well, they say it is — the way you go about it — your research.”
Colin Dexter, The Way Through the Woods: An Inspector Morse Mystery, 1992, pp. 173 – 174
To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found swarming with allusions to a popular character called a Cave-Man. So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about …
In fact, people have been interested in everything about the cave-man except what he did in the cave. Now there does happen to be some real evidence of what he did in the cave. What was found in the cave was not the horrible, gory club notched with the number of women it had knocked on the head. [It was] drawings or paintings of animals; and they were drawn or painted not only by a man but by an artist. They showed the experimental and adventurous spirit of the artist, the spirit that does not avoid but attempts difficult things; as where the draughtsman had represented the action of the stag when he swings his head clean round and noses towards his tail. In this and twenty other details it is clear that the artist had watched animals with a certain interest and presumably a certain pleasure. [I]t would seem that he was not only an artist but a naturalist.
When novelists and educationists and psychologists of all sorts talk about the cave-man, they never conceive him in connection with anything that is really in the cave. When the realist of the sex novel writes, ‘Red sparks danced in Dagmar Doubledick’s brain; he felt the spirit of the cave-man rising within him,’ the novelist’s readers would be very much disappointed if Dagmar only went off and drew large pictures of cows on the drawing-room wall.
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (orig. ed. published 1925), pp. 27 – 30
The Wyoming Toad lives only in Wyoming. It was once thought to be extinct in the wild, but now it is coming back, thanks to a large number of people who have been working on it for ten years. This team includes the City of Laramie, private landowners, Fish and Game, University of Wyoming, and several zoos and wildlife organizations.
I find it heartwarming that large numbers of people, who are clearly superior in every way to toads, would devote so much time and effort to save this ordinary-looking toad. Some of them have donated land. Others have invested their entire careers in this little animal. Clearly, they love the toad just because it exists, not because it does anything special for them.
So, I came out of my house the other day, only to find, lying in wait on my porch …
Tumbleweeds! Dah-dunn! Can you see them?
I had no choice but to deploy Neanderthal woman …
This is Neanderthal Woman, a.k.a. me.
This is the tree
that came down this June
in the yard of N.W., a.k.a. me.
This is the tree
that came down this week
in the yard of N.W., a.k.a. me.
This is the weather
in our favorite State:
90, then freezing, then 90 again.
This is the sunflower
that grew in my yard,
now killed by the weather
in our favorite State.
This is a small
price that we pay
to live near the mountains
in our favorite State.
Ordinarily, I’m leery of genetically engineering animals, let alone releasing them into the wild. But in the case of dengue- and Zika- bearing mosquitoes, I’ll make an exception.
“750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in the Florida Keys“
Out of Babel Books 