Time is a jail that we’ve built for ourselves, I think as I look at the clock and realize this post is due by some daunting hour of the morning. How could this day have been contained by a big hand and little hand on the face of a clock? Sometimes, or some places, the clock […]
Special series
If there’s a landmass that has them, get off of it now. As you’ll learn in this blog post, the last thing you want to do is find yourself trapped in a confined space with sloths, and I consider a continent a confined space. For starters, the sloth is the only animal listed as one […]
Back in the 1970s, Saturday Night Live ran a skit in which Chevy Chase played a very clever land shark. He selected his victims by going door to door. And because no one would in their right mind would open the door for a shark, he pretended to be other, more benign things: a plumber, a […]
Apparently there’s some television extravaganza going on this week that makes it seem as if the beach is a scary place where a shark could attack you at any moment. Don’t believe it. You want a dangerous place? I’ll show you a dangerous place. A farm. It’s not just the little roosters. If you’re worried […]
Some years back, in search of sunshine and sand, my then-boyfriend (now husband) and I packed up the Bronco II and headed down to the Florida Keys (we love punishingly long and mind-numbing drives). We’d brought camping gear because we hadn’t booked anywhere to stay and, more important, we were dirt poor. The fee to […]
I have noticed a disturbing trend on the internets recently. A series of videos, pictures, and posts have portrayed the duck-billed platypus as an adorable, lovable creature. As if it is some cute little bundle of playful, ticklish fun. They’ve even been given a cute little web nickname of “puggle.” In fact, I might go so far as […]
Welcome to the third annual Snark Week! Every year, the Discovery Channel spends a week reminding us how frightening sharks around the world can be. It’s a week of half-truths, embellishment, and occasional outright fabrication. But man, it’s good TV. But what about all the animals that aren’t sharks? Don’t they want to kill us […]
Three years ago, I wrote a post about having children. I was trying to decide whether I wanted one. I wish I could say that writing that post helped clear the fog of indecision, but that isn’t what happened. I continued to struggle and debate. And when that didn’t lead to a clear answer, I […]