After a delightful trip exploring the amphibious and bug life in Iowa, from the Devonian to the present, we came home to discover a big bug in our own back yard.
And I was just saying we don’t have nearly the richness of bug life in Oregon.
Pretty, pretty big. Beetle-like wing covers, fuzzy as a tarantula, with horns and bat wings.
A bunch of its body is missing, eaten by ants?
What the?!?? ID anybody?
When we first got an aquarium this summer, it was sold to me (who is seriously done with pets, save for perhaps one cat) as a source of tranquility.
We even discussed the ultimate disposition of creatures that met their timely demise (burial at sea was deemed too undignified). Untimely demise was not even a consideration.
Pretty soon, one aquarium just wasn’t enough. A second tank was brought online with a surprising mix of residents: two guppies (Chloe and Aladdin), a large snail (Bob), and a tiny little African Dwarf Frog.
Oh, how cute! The frog was quickly nicknamed Michigan J. Frog, for the singing Warner Bros. frog. He was alternately named Googly and Arthur.
Too cute for words, and personality galore!
The aquariums are great for teaching young children life lessons. Like asexual reproduction. Bob managed to, uh, impregnate him/herself, and spawned Alex. Discussions were had with the aquarium guy, who acknowledged that snails are considered pests. A Web search produced the helpful advice of smashing the little buggers against the glass with a pencil (don’t use your fingers, lest you get cut and incubate some kind of crazy tropical fish infection).
There were also some suggestions that the baby snails might get eaten by other aquarium dwellers, so maybe it wouldn’t be a problem.
In fact, one tiny baby snail that came after Alex seems to have disappeared. Guppies? Frog? Who cares… At least we didn’t have to do the deed.
Anyway, other than that, it’s been all love and light in the frog tank, with little Michigan J. Frog entertaining daily with his little song and dance routines.
He seems to have grown a bit, and keeps getting wedged behind the heater and the filter tube.
So imagine my surprise late last night to glance into this little ecosystem and see little Michigan J. Frog seeming to struggle with something. I figured he was just wedged again, but a closer look revealed him thrashing Aladdin about, apparently trying to gulp him down.
It was like catching a guard dog killing a chicken or something. Really crazy, I’m telling you.
Since he couldn’t swallow the thing whole (it was clearly dead at this point), he started swimming to the surface with it. He dropped it, and it sunk to the bottom, where it landed, upside down, in a plant, its tattered fins flapping in the current.
Had I glanced over at this point, and not 30 seconds before, I would have guessed the fish just died. Michigan J. was back to his goofy self.
I told Wacky Mommy about this, and she decreed that I must flush Aladdin and never speak of it it to the children. So much for the earlier “no burial at sea” decree.
Of course some more Internet searching revealed that yes, African Dwarf Frogs do indeed eat guppies, particularly their fry (which might explain why Chloe, who appeared pregnant, then not pregnant, then pregnant again, never seemed to actually have any babies).
The things the guys at the aquarium store don’t tell you!
For three years, the AHL team in Des Moines was affiliated with the Dallas Stars. It seemed right to this Iowa boy, who’s first NHL game was a North Stars game at the old Met Center in Bloomington.
But the Dallas Stars got a new affiliate, and the Iowa team was picked up by the Ducks, who decided a re-branding was in order. So… what do people think of when they think of Iowa?
Pork!
Ergo… the Stars have been reborn as the Iowa Chops. I think the logo’s actually pretty cool, and they’re certainly not the first pigs in the league.
…it’s in the Kamloops Daily News.
Greg Drinnan, sports editor of the Daily News, reported the really, really big news that the sale of the Winter Hawks to an Alberta oil magnate is all over but for the formality of league approval.
Drinnan’s sources indicate a total clean-slate approach on the hockey operations side, which means an end of the Ken Hodge era. (General manager and former head coach Hodge was one of the “three amigos” who originally brought Canadian major junior hockey to the states when they moved the Winter Hawks to Portland from Edmonton in 1976.)
The “where to eat” conundrum just got more or less complicated in North Portland, depending on how you see things. Sal’s Famous Italian Kitchen appears to have closed with no notice, leaving the Overlook neighborhood with one less place to eat.
I haven’t heard whether their northwest Portland location is still open.
Why couldn’t Roux close instead? (Maybe they will after they open their downtown location.)
I was looking for a bumper sticker with this message, and couldn’t find one that I liked.
So I made a couple myself.
They don’t make ‘em like they used to. I offer you Eartha Kit in apology for my use of the Stan Freberg version in my time lapse ship video earlier this week.
Si bon, si bon!
I’ve lived in Portland, Ore. for 19 years, North Portland for 8, but this is the first time I’ve seen a vessel leaving dry dock at Portland Shipyard.
This is a time lapse of the 627 ft. tanker Washington Voyager leaving dry dock 3. This is about 2 hours condensed into about 2 minutes, with music by Stan Freberg. Enjoy!
Sources have revealed that the Oregonian is preparing for a major round of cost-cutting, which will include closing all but two bureaus (south and west). Buyout offers are expected in the fall, with the goal of a cutting 50 positions company-wide, including 30 in the newsroom.
As the paper struggles with declining readership and ad revenue along with the rest of the daily print journalism industry, it is amazing that they still refuse to enter the digital media market in a serious way, as every other mainstream media outlet in Portland has. Blame it on their parent company, Newhouse, which has kept all of its papers at arms length from their family of sister companies (like OregonLive) that operate on the Web and publish selected content from the papers.
This kind of stodgy, tentative relationship to the changing media landscape is quickly making the O a living dinosaur.
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