Suzan Bellincampi
Eat, drink and be scary is good advice on Halloween.
To terrify others is perhaps the best suggestion I can give you if you consider what could happen if you don’t invoke fear and loathing from everyone that you meet during the upcoming holiday.
A Scottish saying asks that the
Good Lord, deliver us,
From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night.
Trudy Taylor of Aquinnah has a "hole" lot going on. She called last Saturday morning with an inquiry about a houseplant harasser.
It seems that something is afoot among her flowers. Her houseplants are being disturbed by a dastardly digger! Someone or something has been excavating the soil in her potted plants. The culprit digs a hole and removes the soil, leaving it in a pile next to the pots.
“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly; “Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.”
The webs of funnel web weaver spiders might just be the very prettiest parlors of all, ready for a cricket, ant or grasshopper to drop by for a visit. Announced or not, an insect is a welcome guest to a funnel weaver spider.
Mark Twain had a thing for flies and it was no love affair. Attributed to him are multiple quotes that leave no doubt about how he felt about these flying fiends. In a letter to Albert Paine in 1910, Twain notes that he would prefer to have “ten snakes in the house than one fly.”
Mark did not mellow as he aged. In 1927, he quipped: “Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.”
Americans should be hungry for change.
We, do, after all, waste a lot of food. Every day, our country’s discarded food could fill the Rose Bowl. Conservative estimates suggest that in the United States, at least 25 per cent, and more likely almost 50 per cent, of all food is wasted. We are not the worst offenders worldwide, though; that distinction goes to Britain and Japan. Americans do, however, exceed the global average of wasted food by about 10 per cent.
Mae West cynically noted that “Opportunity knocks for every man, but you have to give a woman a ring.”
An interesting ring coiled around my fingers last week. It was not the kind that Mae had in mind, but it was one that did provide me with a great opportunity to examine one of the more elusive snakes on Martha’s Vineyard: the ring neck snake.