Category Archives: humor

Nature Red in Claw and Sting

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Yes, I know the quotation is “nature red in tooth and claw” and it refers primarily to beasts that have those appurtenances, like lions and tigers and bears. But those don’t scare me much, because I seldom run into them in my day-to-day life.

(There was the time, years ago, when a group that should have known better brought a baby lion to the mall and offered to take pictures of people holding it. I couldn’t resist. They handed me the bundle of joy, which weighed at least 50 pounds. It proceeded to lick my ear. Afraid that the lion was just testing whether I was tasty enough to eat, the handlers swooped in and grabbed the lion, but not before they took this picture. But I digress.)

I will readily admit to being afraid of bees – an apiphobe (which, despite appearances, does not mean someone afraid of apes. That would be a pithecophobe.) If a bee gets near me, I freeze and scream until someone braver shooes it away. If it lands on my drink or my person, game over. Even the gentlest of bees terrifies me. My husband swears that carpenter bees don’t sting humans, for example. But I know wasps do, and one once got into the house while Dan was away. Now whenever Dan sees a flying insect in the area, he tries to convince me it was a butterfly or a dragonfly.

In fact, some people will tell you that’s why I got married – so I would have someone who could defend me from airborne attacks. And it would be hard to deny. When he wasn’t home and a wasp got in, I had to hit it with a shoe, then scoop it into a bottle with a lid and take it outside where, if it lived through all that, it could choose a different victim.

Ironically, I took beekeeping in college, in hopes of overcoming my fear. It didn’t work. I was okay during lectures, when we looked at diagrams and tasted samples of honey. But I had to take Valium to go to lab, where we interacted with real, live bees.

But now we have new threats. First came the killer bees, also called Africanized bees, that somehow lost their way and were invading the US through Mexico, last I heard. I think a border wall would have been sensible then, not later, when human beings were the supposed threats. Somehow they never made it to Ohio – at least that I know of. (My husband may have been censoring the news.)

Then came the 17-year locusts. (I’ve had to endure these twice in my life.) I don’t know if they actually bite or sting, but they have a terrible reputation. If they can be a Biblical plague, I might as well be scared of them. As far as I can see, though, the most harm they produce (to people, not to crops) is to drop down from trees in massive numbers and make an icky squishing sound when you happen to step on one, which is unavoidable. Seventeen years ago, I knew a woman who carried an umbrella to protect herself from the falling ones, though I don’t know how she avoided the squooshing noises.

This past year came the murder hornets. I could never steel myself to even read anything about them, but I assume they tied people up, stuffed them in the trunks of cars, stung them, then rolled the bodies down the nearest ravine. At least, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.

What will come next? Serial killer scorpions? Kidnapper tarantulas? Predatory lady bugs that look all cute and harmless until they attack? By now, I don’t trust any insect (or arachnid) to stay in its place, which is at least ten feet away from me. Not that I would want to touch them with a ten-foot pole.

 

There’s a Redbud in My Shower!

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I love plants and flowers. I really do. As long as they stay outdoors, where they belong, as nature intended. Or sit politely on windowsills, if indoors.

What I object to are plants and flowers that refuse to know their place.

I really shouldn’t blame the botanical specimens for this. What I object to is my husband putting them where they don’t belong. My husband brings home rescue plants.

(Both of us believe in adopting rescue animals. Adopt, don’t shop is our motto. We have adopted dogs and cats (mostly cats), all the way from Dumpster divers to pets that adopted us. But I digress.)

Dan gets these wayward plant specimens from work. No, he doesn’t work at a nursery, but a big box store. They do have a gardening section, though, and in it they have plants. And when the plants look the least bit discouraged or haven’t bloomed in a while, that’s when my husband swoops in and carries them off. Occasionally they make him pay a buck or two, but usually they were destined for the Dumpster (making Dan a Dumpster diver, too, I guess).

Sometimes the plants he brings home have little ceramic pots – often chipped or cracked. Other times, he brings home plants with tiny bare roots or ones with potting soil clinging to them. Fortunately, Dan has a robust collection of dark green plastic containers that he uses for the pot-less orphans.

It’s not the actual plants I object to. Dan has brought home some truly gorgeous ones – orchids and African violets and night-blooming jasmine and leafy green things that threaten to take over wherever they’re planted.

And unfortunately, where they’re planted is often the bathroom. When we had a regular tub, Dan used it as a potting table (or trough, really). He thereby acquired the chore of scrubbing out the tub.

Now, however, we have walk-in showers with lots of little ledges designed to hold soaps and shampoos and exfoliants and loofahs and such. They are instead filled – you guessed it – with plants, from the flourishing to the bedraggled to the defunct. (He claims he was experimenting to see whether plants would grow under the bathroom’s LED lighting. They won’t.) He waters them by the simple expedient of showering with them. (We have two walk-in showers, and so far the greenery hasn’t invaded the second one.)

They also show up in other places – in the sink or hanging from the towel bar, for instance. I swear I once almost wiped my ass with a philodendron leaf from a plant that was completely obscuring the toilet paper roll.

Nor has Dan stopped with taking over the shower and the windowsills. (I grudgingly allowed him to place one small, easily-cared-for plant on the windowsill in my study.) A number of his botanical friends seem to have taken root on the coffee table. Well, not taken root, actually, but you get the idea. This is his temporary repotting station. He claims he’s going to set up a real one in the basement. (I’ll believe it when I see it and I haven’t seen it yet.)

I shouldn’t complain too much about the rescue plants, I suppose. The seed catalogs have started to arrive and Dan will most assuredly negotiate his orders with me.

Can I spend $200?

Can you keep it down to $75?

$150?

$75 now and $25 more when we get paid again?

At least those will mostly be planted outside, unless he has to store them in the refrigerator till the ground unfreezes. Or unless they need potting in the aforementioned shower, sink, or living room. Then it’s time to offer up fervent prayers for no more freezes.

Freeze is also an issue in the fall, when Dan needs to bring in the potted plants that adorn the front stoop. I gather daily weather reports and hold the door open for him as he brings in banana trees and other large specimens, being vigilant about our rescue cat door-darter. (At least the foliage doesn’t have that bad habit.)

I must admit that the plants and flowers add a certain ambience to the house. Just not to the bathroom.

 

Dressing for Work

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Of course, since I now work at home, I wear pajamas. Or maybe scrubs, as my latest pair of pjs looks like I could walk into any doctor’s office and riffle through their files. I wouldn’t be caught unless someone noticed that the cute sheep in hats and scarves were saying Baaa Humbug.

But that’s not what I’m here to write about today. Once (or twice) I worked in a regular office where I wore regular clothes – skirts, blouses, sweaters, slacks. If I was lucky or awake that day, they even matched. I was also fond of drop-waist dresses. I had at least four, in solid colors and florals.

But that’s not what I’m here to write about today either. Once I was assigned to interview a woman for a temporary job. She answered my questions shyly and monosyllabically. Desperate, I asked her a version of one of my go-to questions, “If you could dress up as anything at all for Halloween, what would you be, and why?”

(This was a version of a question I always swore I’d ask an official giving a press conference. Once I was able to ask my remedial English students to write a paragraph on the topic, and they all wanted to be birds of prey or cats of prey. Once I asked Jenny Lawson this question and she said “a tapeworm,” because she wouldn’t have to walk around and people would feed her, which I guess shows you how her mind works. But I digress. Again.)

Back to the drab woman I was interviewing. When I asked her my Halloween costume question, she instantly lit up. “Oh, Cinderella,” she said with sparkling eyes. “The ball gown and the shoes and the carriage and the whole thing.” She waxed rhapsodic for several minutes. She didn’t get the job, but I learned that it’s sometimes the goofy question that can unlock a person’s personality.

Our office did dress up for Halloween, though. One memorable year, the accounting department wore white sweatsuits with black spots. Then they each put a newspaper outside their doors, colored part of it yellow with highlighter, and deposited a tootsie roll on each one. The 101 Dalmations cosplay was cute, if disgusting.

My costumes were a bit esoteric and usually no one “got them.” One year my mother had made me a floor-length nightgown in a camo pattern (my mother could be whimsical). I asked her to make a matching nightcap, powdered my hair, and went as Rambo’s Granny. No one guessed what I was. I had other notable non-successes. Once I dressed as a pirate and the office guessed I was a motorcycle mama.

One year they understood what I was, but all stepped away from me and didn’t make eye contact. I was “Indiana Jan,” complete with bullwhip. If anyone was brave enough to ask me about the bullwhip, I replied, “Oh, this old thing? We just had it around the house,” which did not detract a bit from my reputation for oddity.

Then, every Halloween, rain or shine, we had a march around the outside of the building, led by an employee who called herself the “Grand Poo-Pah.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it should have been “Grand Poo-Bah.” Those were the days!

Now, of course, I shun Halloween and all its trappings (https://wp.me/p4e9wS-Yu). This year, if I answer the door at all, I’ll probably wear the Baaa Humbug scrubs.

 

Mysteries I Love and Hate

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Cozy mysteries are a thing, and I do not like them. As all my friends know, I am a mystery lover – I’ve even written one, which is now making the rounds of agents.

But cozy mysteries have gone too far. These are the kinds of mysteries that take place in bed and breakfasts or bookstores, that have chefs or weather forecasters as their sleuths, and exhibit little to no blood, despite the crimes. They are called cozies, I suppose because you can cuddle up with a cup of tea and read them, safe in the knowledge that nothing really bad will happen.

And the titles! Most of them are puns – usually lame – based on whatever setting they have. I just can’t bring myself to read something called Chilled to the Cone (bakeshop), Premeditated Mortar (fixer-upper), Absence of Alice (garage sales), or The Malt in Our Stars (literary pub). The “detectives” are never real police officers, obviously. And most often the (supposed) humor and (artificial) quaintness fall flat.

I must admit to reading several cozy series many years ago. These were usually ones that had a setting I was interested in or characters that were well-rounded and well-drawn, or contained cats (sometimes as the sleuth). Susan Wittig Albert did a series based on an herbalist. Diane Mott Davidson did a cooking series, complete with recipes that I never tried. There was a series, the Amanda Pepper mysteries, that was set in a Philadelphia prep school, and the Kate Fansler series, set in the English Department of a college.

One that I used to read devotedly, but finally gave up on in disgust, was Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who mysteries starring retired newspaperman Jim Qwilleran and his two cats, Koko and Yum Yum. (I also like Mikado references.) The first three came out in the 60s, but there was an extensive hiatus until 1987, when the series reappeared and continued yearly until 2008, with The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers. I gave up in 1991, with The Cat Who Moved a Mountain, a dreary, supposedly amusing book set in the Potato Mountains, concerning a conflict between two clans known as the Spuds and the Taters. It was just too cozy for words.

Some writers are able to switch gears and write both cozies and grittier novels. Linda Barnes, for example, started with the Michael Spraggue mysteries set backstage at a theater but switched to the much more robust Carlotta Carlisle series when, as she said, Spraggue ran out of friends and relatives to be killed off. Carlisle, a former police officer, drives a cab in her off-hours but encounters plenty of hardened criminals and deaths. These I read whenever Barnes writes a new one.

The other cozy mysteries I read are the Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman. They are typical in that when you read them you know that nothing terrible will happen to any of the main or even subordinate characters (who are colorful, if unbelievable). The thing that attracts me about the Mrs. Pollifax books, other than the goofy premise that she is a grandmother who works for the CIA, is the extensive travelogues of wherever her handler sends her: Mexico, Albania, Turkey, China, Zambia, Hong Kong, etc. I find her novels soothing rather than irritating, the sort of thing I read when I’m stuck in bed with a really nasty flu.

Cozy mysteries no doubt have their place in the pantheon of mystery novels. They’re certainly popular, at least. But for the most part, I’ll take Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone or Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski over Reel Murder any day. I want believable plots; well-drawn, interesting characters; crimes that make you care what happens; and real danger. Give me early Robert Parker (before he started phoning them in) or John Sandford or Laura Lippman or even the original Nero Wolfe series, for when I want vintage mystery fiction.

Of course, I read other kinds of fiction (Gregory Maguire and Handmaid’s Tale come to mind), but mystery novels hold a special place in my to-be-read list. Let’s not mess up the genre with The Good, the Bad, and the Lemon Tart.

 

New Year’s Sweaters I Have Known

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Christmas sweaters, both ugly and pretty, have come and gone for this year. But for me, sweaters are inevitably evocative of New Year’s. Let me explain.

Once upon a time, I worked in an office that didn’t go in for Christmas sweaters. The telemarketing department wore Christmas sweatshirts, mostly handcrafted. My department, fortunately, left the exercise to them. I’m not at my best with hot glue, sequins, and ribbon. Not to say I end up wearing the appliques, but let’s just say they adhere to something other than the sweatshirt.

Later, I did work in an office where Christmas sweaters were a Thing. (Ugly sweaters were not a Thing. Yet.) Everyone, it seemed had a closet- or drawer-full of festive holiday wear.

I had exactly one handed-down-from-a-friend Christmas vest. That was fine, as far as it went, but it didn’t go very far. Everyone else had complete wardrobes of Christmas sweaters, perhaps not one for each of the 12 Days of Christmas, but enough for the entire week before. I had a hard enough time fitting in with the work crowd, so I decided I would play the sweater game too.

Being frugal (that is to say cheap), I saw no point in paying good money for a sweater or multiple sweaters that I could wear only once a year. I had a dilemma. The answer soon came to me. I would shop on New Year’s Day, when the Christmas sweaters had all been put on the clearance sale table. I scooped up about five, including one I particularly liked. Instead of being red or green, it was dark blue, a night scene with Santa and his sleigh flying over rooftops and across the moon. I tucked them away in a drawer, anticipating how I would wow the office the next year.

Inevitably, and given my luck, I was let go before the next Christmas season. I went freelance, which meant that my usual work clothes were pajamas. My beautiful sweaters languished in a drawer and so did my snowflake and wrapped presents earrings (I picked up some of those too at the sales). One year I tried to be festive and dressed up for Christmas, but no one at the Chinese restaurant was impressed.

I did have one other adventure involving New Year’s sweaters. One year, some of my friends and I were determined to crash a fancy party in a local hotel. I did have a black sweater with gold and silver beading around the yoke. (I forget why. Maybe my friend, she of the Christmas vest, gave it to me.) At any rate, it was simple enough to buy some shiny gold fabric and ask my mother to sew it into a simple skirt. My friend had a similar outfit, and the guy accompanying us rented a tux, which I thought was overkill. But it was fun to stand next to him in my white faux fur coat and shed all over him.

We had it planned just right. We wandered into the hotel ballroom precisely at 11:30 p.m., when no one else was expected to arrive, and mingled. (We knew one of the band members and decided to claim we were with him if challenged.) Then we indulged in the open bar (this was many years ago, when I sometimes indulged in dodgy behavior) and I spent part of the evening necking with one of the waiters. (He was trying to convince me to take a hotel room. I declined.)

Afterward, we went to a nearby diner in our finery and sobered up on coffee and waffles. We tried to hold down our obnoxious glee, but I suspect we failed. 

This year for Christmas, my husband presented me with an assortment of sweaters – the kind meant to keep one warm. Not a sequin or reindeer in sight. He did also give me a pair of Christmas earrings (cats in stockings), which I made sure to wear when we went to the store to pick up a bottle of champagne for our New Year’s celebration. Maybe next year I can get him to dress up as a waiter.

Getting Into the Movies

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While I admit it would be terrific if my mystery novel finds an agent, and then a publisher, and then becomes a wildly popular best-seller, and then gets made into a big Hollywood movie, that’s not what I’m here to write about today.

In one of the Facebook groups I belong to, someone posed the question, what thing in a movie is a deal-breaker for you? There were all kinds of answers. One of the most interesting was someone who said the “10% of your brainpower” film, in which one person suddenly gains the use of all 100% and acquires superpowers. (That whole thing about using only 10% of your brainpower is a crock anyway. Have you ever heard anyone say, “He was shot in the head, but fortunately the bullet only hit the 90% he wasn’t using”? But I digress.)

I had two and a half dealbreakers. The first one was any movie with Sylvester Stallone. At least Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have a sense of humor about himself. 

Another thing that keeps me from being able to enter into a movie is when the POV (point of view) character is a pre-teen or teenage boy. This puts “A Christmas Story” out of the running, as well as “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.” I understand that both of those movies are wildly popular, but I just can’t get into them the way I can “All That Jazz,” “Contact,” or anything with Kris Kristofferson in it.

The half a deal-breaker was superhero movies or anything based on a comic book. It’s only half a deal-breaker because I have to admit that I like the Deadpool movies. But they’re sort of outside the typical superhero movie. Breaking the fourth wall much?

The other thing that keeps me “outside” a movie, I hate to admit, is my husband. He has a habit of leaning over to me and whispering softly in my ear, “I think I know how those space ships work,” or “Do you know a guy named Elliot?” or “I think I have a pimple on my back. Can you look?” There’s no coming back from a mood-killer like one of those.

I’ve been working on him, though, and I’ve almost convinced him that when I’m staring in rapture at the screen, eyes glazed over, barely breathing, is not the right time to tell or ask me anything other than “The theater (or livingroom) is on fire,” and then only if it really is.

Then he slips. I’m watching an engrossing DVD that I haven’t seen in years, and he sits down beside me and asks, “Did you hear what Trump just did?” And then looks offended when I shush him.

One time when he did get the hint was when we were watching the third “Lord of the Rings” movie in the theater, and when the ending came, I was curled up a ball in my seat, with tears cascading my face. Even if he did have a comment to make about what kinds of swords everyone had used or how much he liked the actress who played Galadriel (who, since he can’t remember the character’s name, he always refers to as “the elf witch,” which is not even close, but by now I know who he means), he restrained himself. 

And he does know not to talk to me when I’m watching a film I sing along with, like “The Mikado” or “Pirates of Penzance” or “The Wizard of Oz” or “Cabaret.”

So what are films I enter into? In addition to the aforementioned, “An American in Paris,” “The Three (and Four) Musketeers,” “The Goodbye Girl,” “The Big Chill,” and “The Commitments,” among others.

I’m sometimes tempted to wait until he’s watching  “My Favorite Year” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” and ask him “Who’s that guy playing Potter? What else have I seen him in?” But I don’t. Because I’m a good wife.

 

Sorority Daze

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This is a picture of the pledge paddle that my sorority “Big Sister” decorated for me. (For you kinksters, these were symbolic only and never used for hazing. And for you bros, we never had pillow fights in our shortie pajamas. But I digress.) The paddles were decorated to reflect the interests of the “Little Sisters” and mine was painted with a Lord of the Rings theme, which was somewhat trendy as a book trilogy before it ever became mega-trendy as a movie trilogy. (That’s Gandalf and two hobbits at the bottom and the Doors of Moria in the middle. Luby was my Big Sister’s nickname.)

For those of you who know me now, it may seem difficult to believe I ever belonged to a sorority in college. But I did, for a year at least, until I found out it didn’t suit me, which I should have known from the beginning.

It was really fear of housing that led me to join. First-year college students lived in the dorms. After that, dorm preference went to seniors, then juniors, then sophomores. (I don’t know who devised this system, which seems silly to me.) But first-time sorority sisters (sophomore pledges) got first crack at rooms in the sorority house. So, after “rushing,” where I understand my application was controversial, I joined Delta Phi Epsilon.

D Phi E, as it was known, was not one of the more glamorous sororities. We were more of a quiet, studious house, not running with a frat or wearing spiffy designer outfits. (We did have gold and purple t-shirts, our house colors, after “the lovely iris,” which was our symbol.) It was also known as “Dogs, Pigs, and Elephants” by most of the fraternities, which was fine with me, as it meant they didn’t pursue us or invite us to rowdy parties where, if you drank the punch, you peed blue. 

At any rate, I was a lousy sorority sister. I wore my floppy leather hat for my official photo. I once threw a boot (not a shoe, a boot) at someone who opened the door to my room without receiving a reply to her knock. (It was 6:00 a.m., an ungodly hour for getting up on a weekend, for some pledge activity, and I was merely trying to reinforce proper civility. I mean, you’ve got to have some standards, especially if you’re living with 30 other women.)

The chapter house had an interesting history. Legend says that it was built in prohibition days and had a secret stash for a bottle of booze, which none of us ever found, in the stair newel post. Instead of a house mother, we had a president (we were very independent), and a cook, who packed lunches and made dinner for us. I never convinced her that a single cup of yogurt qualified as a lunch, but it was a very popular choice. On Sunday, we had “Week in Review,” a New York Times joke that meant we were having leftovers. My husband and I still use this saying.

I “deactivated” after my first full year there, having found group housing and sisterly activities less enchanting than I thought they would be. (I had the bottom bunk; two other pledges, Sue and Cindy, had the top bunk and the single bed.) The next year I found a basement apartment in Cayuga Heights, which was very solitary, except I had to share the bathroom with a guy who lived in the smaller room. I never had to throw a boot at him. 

Later, after I graduated, I severed my ties further, so I wouldn’t get the sorority newsletter all the time, soliciting funds and talking about women I had never met. I recently found one of my old roommates online, though.  And I kept that pledge paddle all these years. I guess sorority life did mean something to me after all.

 

Peanuts and Politics

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Things get vicious during election season. Yard signs. TV ads. Facebook posts. Tweets. Even memes. These things are expected and I can ignore them, share them, change channels, or whatever seems necessary, depending on whether I agree with what they say.

What really bugs me, though, is the use of beloved comic characters in political memes. It’s like when politicians use various rock or country songs at their rallies without the permission of – or paying royalties to – the artist. It’s rude. But more than that, it’s illegal. Creators need to be acknowledged for their work and not have it used without permission.

It doesn’t bother me so much when Hollywood stars are used in memes, for some reason. Sam Elliott, for example, appears in memes, usually with the tagline, “You must be some special kind of stupid.” I figure Sam Elliott is big enough to take care of himself, and if he or his agent objected to this use of his image, they could sue, or at least distribute a letter, counter-meme, tweet, or other communication objecting to the use of his image.

No, it’s the beloved icons of our childhood being used for political purposes that gets my goat (or donkey or elephant). The Peanuts characters, for example, appear in memes representing both parties. You see Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, and suddenly it’s a metaphor for some legislative policy or promise or position. Linus carries a protest sign with a political message on it that was never there in the original strip.

We (or at least I) don’t know what Charles Schulz’s political leanings were. Would he object to half of these appropriations of his characters? All of them? Which side, if any, should his estate sue or want to issue an injunction against? The answer is far from clear. But I, for one, would prefer to remember Peanuts the way they were in my childhood – naive, lovable Charlie Brown; trusting but insecure Linus; crabby Lucy; talented Schroeder; imaginative Snoopy; lovable Woodstock; and all the others.

In fact, the only remotely political thing I remember from the comics is that the three things one should never discuss with others were “politics, religion, and the Great Pumpkin.”

One set of comic characters you never see misappropriated, though, are Disney-owned ones like Mickey Mouse. Disney is notoriously litigious and goes after anyone who infringes on their copyrights. Even a school that used Disney figures in an unlicensed mural received a cease-and-desist letter and the threat of a lawsuit. Most creative types don’t have Disney’s vast power and considerable finances behind them. It may seem unkind for Disney to be so prickly about the use of their work, but they are merely exercising their legal rights.

If only all creative types could do so. I like to think that there would be fewer political memes starring Peppermint Patty or Calvin and Hobbes, and more original humor regarding political sentiments. I just wish the “wits” responsible for them would create their own cartoons and leave our childhood ones alone.

Magical Magnetic Noses

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My cat has a magnet in her nose. My husband does not.

Dushenka is a wanderer. She wandered into our lives one day and decided to stay. Occasionally, the wanderlust still seizes her and she gives the phrase “Door Dash” new meaning. We’ve tried chasing her, with no success. She always comes back after she finishes with whatever she’s doing and strolls right into the house, where we call her “Naughty Grrl” and she remains completely unrepentant.

Then we moved, to a little apartment in a medium-sized complex. For six weeks, Dushenka showed no interest in the outdoors. Then one day, when our groceries were delivered and our attention diverted, out she raced. Naughty Grrl.

This time was even more panic-inducing. We had been in the apartment for only six weeks and we were quite sure Dushenka didn’t know her way around the neighborhood. Besides, it was 90 degrees outside and I pictured her lost and melted into a pitiful calico puddle somewhere, panting and expiring from heat exhaustion.

Imagine our surprise when 20 minutes or so later, she showed up on the doorstep (where I had put a bowl of water). I opened the door and Naughty Grrl strolled right in, as usual.

Admittedly, this story is not as dramatic as the ones about dogs whose families move away and track them down across the country. But it did get me to wondering. How did Dushenka find her way back?

Apparently, it has to do with the magnet in her nose.

Note that we didn’t put a magnet in her nose. It seems it was there all along. Scientists have discovered that various animals such as trout and migrating birds have in their nasal cells a mineral called magnetite, which, you might have guessed, is magnetic. Evidently, it allows them to sense magnetic fields such as those surrounding the Earth. How do salmon find their way every year to where the bears wait for them? Magnetic noses. (“Magnoreceptors,” if you want to get technical.)

Dushenka’s nose is tiny and pink (I have only ever seen one tinier and pinker, on a cat named Julia). You’d think there wouldn’t be room for a magnet up there. But apparently, it’s standard equipment.

Human beings ought to have the same sort of device lurking up their nasal passages, but we seem to have evolved away from that. There are tiny magnetic particles in the ethmoid bone in a person’s nose, but not enough to make a difference. Or at least not for some people.

Despite the fact that men are supposed to have a better sense of direction than women, my husband can’t find our car in a parking lot, or do that thing where you make three right turns to get back to where you started, or read directions in reverse in order to get home from an outing. He used to be embarrassed by this, but I think it’s comforting for him to know that he’s merely magnet-deficient and therefore (probably) more highly evolved. Or I as I think of it, topographically challenged.

Why don’t I get him a GPS, you ask? I did, but he never even installed it, much less used it. No, he prefers a human GPS (i.e., me) to go along with him whenever he has to trek to somewhere new. The magnets in my nose seem to work just fine, even though they can’t give directions in the voice of Han Solo.

Soon we’ll be moving back into the house where we lived when Dushenka came to us. I feel confident that when she inevitably makes a break for the great outdoors, her marvelous magnetic nose will bring her right back to us. Where we’ll tell her yet again that she’s a Naughty Grrl and she’ll flop down to rest up until her next expedition. I just hope Dan doesn’t get lost trying to chase her down.

Beware the Deadly Cow Farts

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You may not have noticed, but that bastion of social liberalism and cutting-edge science, Burger King, has taken on the issue of global warming, by directing its attention to the proliferation, not of carbon emissions, but cattle emissions.

Cow farts. (And cow burps, lest we forget.)

How does that work, exactly? It all goes back to methane, a notoriously stinky gas. Human farts are largely nitrogen, with at most a 10% content of methane. Cow farts, on the other hand, according to a Danish study, produce “enough methane per year to do the same greenhouse damage as four tons of carbon dioxide.” That’s one hell of a lot of farts. And they’re 21 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide is. (Carbon dioxide is also a component of human farts, but not enough to make a difference. See how educational this blog is?)

Actually, as an article in the well-respected journal Gizmodo tells us, the methane produced in the intestinal tract of cows may contribute even more to greenhouse gases than the transport industry.

How do cows produce the methane that escapes from either end? It all starts in the cows’ first stomach (they have up to four, depending on how you count). Cows chew their cud (wadded up grain or grass) and send it on down the line to stomachs two, three, and four, and then out into our atmosphere.

“In actuality it’s not as much the farting that’s the problem,” the Gizmodo article continues. “Cows’ burping and manure contribute more methane gas than flatulence.” But cow farts make better headlines. Even the Burger King ad mentions farts first. And it’s the first time I’ve ever seen farts called out in a commercial. Oh, they’re implied in gas relief product ads, but Burger King has taken a giant step by actually naming the problem. After all, isn’t that supposed to be the first step in solving one?

BK proposes a possible fix – changing the cows’ feed. Some suggested solutions have been attempted in other places, such as jacking up the cows’ feed with garlic (to be honest, I don’t know if this is what Burger King intends to do), which seems like it would at least alter the aroma and maybe make their burgers taste … well, different; and housing cows in giant plastic bubbles, which was dismissed as inhumane. (I’m not making this up.)

This is not a new problem. Back in the 70s, when I took Carl Sagan’s class at Cornell, he told us that greenhouse gases were produced in large quantities by “the rumen of ungulates,” which is delicate science-speak for cow burps and farts. As freshmen, we thought this was hilarious. (Why was Carl Sagan, who was teaching astronomy, talking about greenhouse gases? Because he was Carl Sagan. But I digress.)

It’s sobering to think that that noxious barnyard odor is not just repulsive, but also harmful to the environment. It’s also sobering to think that Burger King has been seriously contemplating the problem of cow greenhouse emissions. And I’m not sure how long the ad agency that produced that commercial will last with them. Though I, for one, would be curious to see a follow-up commercial on how their strategy is working out.

I would also be fascinated to be driving through farmland and see a herd of cows roaming the fields encased in giant plastic bubbles. How would they eat? What would happen to the methane when the cattle were released from their containers, as surely they must be at some time, if only to shovel their solid emissions.

I guess we should all just be grateful that the average cow diet doesn’t contain a lot of beans. Good for your heart, maybe, but not for the atmosphere.

 

If you want more details on the subject (though I imagine you don’t, really), go to https://gizmodo.com/do-cow-farts-actually-contribute-to-global-warming-1562144730