Sue Silva has a lifetime of experience with bugs. In some ways, she is a bug whisperer, as insects seem to flock to her side and her greenhouse, and she is often sharing with me the more interesting and unique ones that cross her path.

This is one that I can really sink my teeth into!

It has all the elements of a great story — an unusual find, a link to the past, a creature of epic proportions, and did I mention colossal choppers?

It is hard not to get excited about the mammoth megalodon and even more difficult to deny its dental distinction.

Now I know better.

Throughout my childhood, I only recognized cranberries as that deep red gelatinous blob that came out of a can on Thanksgiving Day.

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have been onto something when he defined happiness as “a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.”

I guess two out of three ain’t bad! After a two-week vacation in Italy and France (and a few stormy days stuck in Falmouth to boot), I can count my blessings to have the two latter, even if the former took a hit.

Why write about pinkletinks — also known as spring peepers everywhere but the Vineyard — at this time of the year? We are all preparing for winter by getting out our winter clothes, shutting storm windows and turning on the heat. Frogs cannot do those things, but they have other ways of surviving the winter.

After the spring chorus ends, the pinkletinks abandon the ponds and migrate to nearby uplands. There they establish territories that may be 18 feet in diameter.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac, which claims its forecasts are 80 per cent accurate, predicts that our winter weather will be colder and drier this year, with below normal snowfall. They predict it will be colder than normal in November and December, coldest from Christmas to early January, with another cold snap between early and mid-February. It will be snowiest in mid-December and again in mid-to-late February, and warmer than average from March to October.