All Outdoors
Chicken Little would do well to duck and consider taking cover if he were a Martian.
The little green men should definitely watch out and possibly follow his lead. The sky may not be falling, but an asteroid is!
Last week brought the news of a football-field-sized asteroid making a beeline for the equator of Mars. The odds are good that it will hit.
Two plants that merge into one, growing together to the benefit of each other. Sounds strange, but lichens are unique combinations of fungi and algae growing together, yet they are distinct from either of their components. They are abundant in nature, occurring just about everywhere: silvery gray flat patches growing on tree trunks, rocks, roofs and other flat surfaces. Well, most of the time that is what they are.
Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but Americans overwhelmingly (69 per cent) prefer red.
Pink comes in a distant second with 14 per cent, and white last with only 7 per cent. Don’t call up your hairdresser to make an appointment: these color choices have little to do with locks and everything to do with holiday custom.
While it is always good to endeavor to see the forest through the trees, sometimes you just see the trees in the forest.
And that is okay if you are seeing and appreciating the beauty of the trees in winter. Without all of the trees’ green finery, you are left with sculptures in the woods.
Shapes, textures and bits of color stand out in the winter. Some trees become harder to identify, while other practically shout their identity.
The world around us is full of misnomers: hamburgers are not ham, tin foil is actually aluminum, and a shooting star is not a star. Nature has even more: koala bears are not bears, peanuts are not nuts, and a magpie is a bird, not a dessert.
This column is about a hornet that is not a hornet.
Bald-faced hornets are not true hornets. To call them hornets would be, well, a bald-faced lie. They are actually wasps, related to paper wasps and yellow jackets, and are identified by the white pattern on their face, if you cared to get that close.
“And now, here they are: the beetles!” (Insert soundtrack of hysterical screams.)
Don’t faint, and don’t expect to see Paul, Ringo, George, and John — the beetles that I am talking about are the ones you would have had a much better chance of seeing in the past few weeks.