07.13.08
Posted in Adventure, Biology, Critters, Hug a tree, Not just a theorist, behind the curtain at 8:18 pm by CMonster
Earlier this afternoon, I came home from grocery shopping to find a frog hopping across my living room.
By itself, that’s pretty bizarre, even if I do live on the first floor-it’s pretty hard to get even a housefly by my cats, much less anything larger.
Then I realized two things, in quick succession:
1. The frog was furry. (Problematic)
2. Come to think of it, that squat, hopping shape near my pantry was actually a bat- albeit one with the wings folded under the body.
For a pet owner, finding a bat inside your home is a pretty scary thing- there’s always the fear of rabies, and with such small teeth, it’s not always clear when your pet has been bitten. Given that my cats regard bats as “Mice with wings” (aka, the greatest toy EVER), the risk of contact is… somewhat higher.
As for what to do? The good news is that the county I live in offers a free rabies-testing service, and I’ll know in a few days just how much a concern this will be.
The bad news is that my cats (lovable purrballs that they are) are somewhat at the far edge of the timeframe for a rabies shot to be effective- and a quick survey of cat owners I know has suggested that I’m not the only one who’s been slow to renew vaccinations. As I’m now finding out, just keeping the cats indoors isn’t any guarantee of protection. So if you’re reading this, go forth! Make sure your pets are up to date on their medical visits, even if they seem healthy now.
The other aspect of this situation that bothers me is that the actual rabies test is not, in fact, particularly humane- even if I did bring the bat to the humane society for testing. Essentially, it involves examining labeled brain tissue under a fluorescent microscope– and so merely because it wandered into my living room, I found myself owning and signing away the rights to euthanize and test the furry frog.
It’s upsetting on many levels, but as a chemist, I know that there have been some fantastic recent advances in non-lethal sampling and identification of substances in the brain. I’ll have to ask around, but there has to be a better way to do this- executing something just to find out if it has rabies feels too much like the modern equivalent of a witch dunking. And that’s not sitting well with me tonight.
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05.26.08
Posted in Hug a tree, Turtles all the way down, behind the curtain at 6:47 pm by CMonster
Gas prices have gone up by something like 40 cents in the past few weeks here, so perhaps it’s appropriate that the station down the road from me has installed a new digital sign, capable of updating prices in real-time.
I’m very fortunate to live in a city with mass transit, during a season when any sort of outdoor travel is a joy- not just a way to save money. By contrast, my mother lives in a town that wasn’t even on the map until recently (here’s a photo of the downtown area), and even the simplest of errands requires some fifty miles of driving at best. She also drives an SUV.
This made for an interesting phone conversation, because to tell the truth, my feelings on gas prices are very mixed. For those living on fixed incomes, trapped in an economy where selling one’s house and moving isn’t an option- well, this is indeed tragic and wretched.
But at the same time, far rural housing developments like my mother’s were constructed as Arizona’s sprawl peaked a few years ago, and the mere existence of such subdivisions was based on the assumption that fuel was cheap and limitless. Hence the positive aspects (peace, quiet, and cleaner air) outweighed the negative traits (like the requirement for a commute that verges on the masochistic, even by Phoenix standards).
I’ll be curious to see how this plays out, and whether continued high fuel prices in the coming years force us to re-focus and live closer together- to become more accepting of apartments, and to live in a concentration that makes mass transit feasible for the shuttling of office workers to their desks every day. The stereotypical American dream of a house, lawn, and 2.1 children isn’t that old, but it certainly is ingrained.
…Which may explain my (deeply apolitical) mother’s response when I pointed out that high fuel costs were the downside of living so far in the middle of nowhere. Would this economic pressure finally make people put a premium on efficiency?, I asked.
“Don’t go all republican on me”, she said.
And I didn’t have the heart to mention the Kyoto protocol.
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04.16.08
Posted in Cooking, Hug a tree at 10:37 am by CMonster
When content fails, quizzes reign. Today, find out how many cannibals your body can feed- as it turns out, I’m lunch for a mere 11 people.
That’s not a very large group by American standards, and I suspect my recent lack of body fat is partly due to limited time and energy for cooking. Based on past evidence, that in turn suggests that I’m due to begin overcompensating, with scads of new recipes on the way.
It helps to have a theme, though. Following a recent discussion on unusual ways to be “green”, I’ve been considering the effect that my diet can have on the environment. Certainly, delicacies like strawberries in january (or bananas pretty much anytime) probably aren’t natural, and shipping produce from far-off lands during the winter uses a lot of fuel. On the other hand, it’s tempting to keep making the foods that are familiar.
Some people cite purchasing local or “organically” grown food as one possible way to help the environment- essentially, farming in a way that’s sustainable, and without using the enormous amounts of fuel required to get the food here. For me, one extension of this is to consider eating foods that are in season, and thus planning my meals to favor things that might be available locally in the winter. According to the BBC, winter strawberries are just starting to come out; maybe I should make a yogurt-like strawberry-shrikhand for dessert?
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