Category Archives: true life 2002

It's too early for this. (for what? for anything!)

I’ve got the Sealab 2021 themesong sloshing around in my head. I haven’t been watching Sealab, I’ve been watching Buffy. I know that Buffy predates 2021, but the Buffy themesong makes me think of a late 80s hairmetal band cover of the 2021 theme. I know that the True Buffy Believers will bust me for claiming that a song that came first is a cover of a song that came later, so I want to know this: is the 2021 theme an update of the Sealab 2020 themesong from the 70s? Or should I just remember to skip over the title sequence and stop thinking about this? I could look this up, but I’m tired and lazy.

I was up until almost 4 a.m. and looking forward to sleeping in. Best laid plans and all. It would appear that my next door neighbors hired the world’s noisiest interior painters and they got started very, very early today. Very early.

Sometime before 8 I gave up on the idea of ever sleeping again. Looking on the bright side: by 10:30 I’d paid my bills, decided not to read the paper, consumed coffee, run errands, consumed coffee, ritualisticly buried an opossum, consumed coffee, taken a 3 mile walk with my neighbor, consumed coffee, practiced the drums, consumed coffee, planned Bunny’s basil garden and purchased the seedlings, consumed coffee, and churned out the first draft of a book review.

Now I’m drinking coffee, because I’m still not fully awake.

Buffy Mania

I’m fairly impervious to popular culture and marketing ploys. Usually. Something in my brain malfunctioned and I had to have the DVD set of the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think my students wore me down. I finally bought it yesterday. I never even really watched this show, so I can’t explain my madness. It came in handy last night when I couldn’t sleep, cause you know, I couldn’t just read a book or something.

“I’ll just watch one episode and then go to bed.” Yeah. We all know how well that works out. Eventually you reach that state where you can barely stay awake and yet you’ve just got to watch one more episode, just one more episode and then you can go to bed.

Yup. I’m tired today.

good eats

Specialists in different biological fields organize the world in different ways. Generally this boils down to romanticizing the critters you study and denegrating all other critters. Passion should drive your career choices, I’m not saying this is necessarily a horrible thing.

Well, sometimes it is. A case in point would be psychologists who romanticize primates as a way to pretend that all negative human traits are learned.
“Look! The chimp is smiling at me!”
“Smiling?”
“Chimps know perfect love.”
“Smiling?”
“Look at those teeth. Look at that innocence.”
“Smiling?”
“He’s such a noble creature.”
“Yeah, he’s smiling all right. Why don’t you get a little closer, it’ll make it easier for his noble ass to rip your face off.”

But I digress…

I realized recently that I also have my own handy little way of categorizing nature. My categories are simple: Tasty. Not Tasty.

Basically, I’ll eat anything. Once. (Let’s be reasonable and work on the assumption that by “anything” I mean “anything prepared in a safe manner.” I’m not going to try 5 day old roadkill prepared in the back of a van). Anything shrimpy is out of the question. I’m allergic to those slippery bastards.

I’ve eaten all manner of insects, reptiles, sea creatures, land animals and flying beasties. I haven’t tried Fugu (puffer fish) because it seems a little crazy to me, and also because there’s some question of cross-toxicity for shellfish-allergic individuals. My neighbors tell me I’m not really missing much.

What I find a little odd is that I find eating insects less creepy than say, eel. A termite looks like a termite. I know exactly what I’m getting. It’s a termite. This is what it looks like alive. This is what it looks like dead. A piece of eel only hints at what the sucker looked like alive and allows my imagination to run wild and creep me out.

Having said that, the cricket incident still ooks me out a bit.

At the end of some event or another I’ve long since forgotten, a dignitary from a country in Africa that’s changed names so many times I’m not even sure what the proper name is came to my office to thank us for our assistance. I think he was assassinated later, but probably not because of his generosity with snacks.

He brought us a present. A big bag of crickets. These weren’t chocolate covered crickets. These were crickets. Dipped in a sugar syrup and flash-fried. They looked like crickets. Big crickets. Big, big crickets.

We didn’t want to create An Incident, so we all had to be polite and eat a cricket. Even the vegetarians. Trying to explain vegetarianism to a man from a country where people are starving is a losing, not to mention arrogant, proposition.

I managed to pretend I enjoyed the crickets a little too well and he insisted I take the crickets. All of them. I called Husband and told him I had a surprise for him and took the bag home. When I got there, Husband had a surprise for me. His Excellency the Cricket Man had paid him a visit too.

We gave one bag away, but we were stuck with the other one. We just didn’t have the heart to throw it away. Eventually I put it in my in-laws refrigerator while we were housesitting.

This has been a test of the MT blog management system. It is only a test. In the event of a real post there would have been something even less-lucid here. That is all.

Even my test-posts are too wordy. Sheesh.

Lumbricus rubellus; Or, our friend the garden worm.

Seems lots of folks have lots of time on their hands these days to share with me the many gospel truths they know about annelids. I’m not in the best of all possible moods today. Consequently, I’ve decided, just for shits and giggles, to blow this all out of proportion. Now, let’s be clear. I don’t give a hoot about any of this, but obsessing over worms is harmless and amusing. In the event you missed the post that started the whole worm fracas, it’s here.

This morning, I collected worm specimens. One from each arbitrarily defined location. It wasn’t the best sampling technique, but the NSF isn’t exactly funding my blog so what do I care?

After I got to work, got my coffee, and made an initial identification of my worms, I marched over to the bio lab for secondary conformation from one of those learned types. I love my colleagues – they don’t even question why I wish to know for sure that these specimens are, indeed, Lumbricus rubellus and not Lumbricus terrestris or Helodrilus caliginosus. You know, this was the first time I’ve been back in this particular lab since I graduated. What’s scary is it hasn’t changed much. It was fun. Made me want to dissect something. Or someone, but that’s just a further indicator of my mood.

So, for your dining and dancing enjoyment, here’s a generalized response to what I learned from this week’s silly mail:

I’ve learned that a worm is a worm is a worm.
Nope. There are over 12,000 identified species in the Phylum Annelida. They are devided into three classes, Polychaeta (marine, roughly 8000 species identified), Oligochaeta (primarily earthworms, roughly 3,000 species identified), and Hirudinea (leeches, which are fresh-water critters and therefore distinct from the marine Annelids). Today, we will concern ourselves with Oligochaeta.

I’ve learned that, since a worm is a worm is a worm, and there are millions of them in my yard going down to depths of hundred of feet and growing to lengths of several feet so I shouldn’t worry about them.
Well, for starters, I’m not really that worried. I would, however, be worried if this small worms (average length being way less than even a foot) suddenly grew that big. Beyond that, your numbers are pretty goofy there, particularly since the critters in question like to stay pretty close to the soil surface. There’s quite a horror movie in the scenerios presented to me as the gospel fact though, come to think of it…

I’ve learned that earthworms are native to North America.
Don’t tell them that, most species found in North America they think they were accidentally brought over from Europe.

I’ve learned that all earthworms and grubs are benevolent.
Don’t tell the researchers investigating the potential threats posed by earthworms to both the biodiversity and long-term stability of the hardwood forest ecosystems in the Great Lakes region. And grubs, grubs are nasty things that do lots of damage. And it’s not like I’m poisoning them or something. If I find a grub, I feed it to the birds. I’m not out there hunting them.

I’ve learned that earthworms are immortal.
Um, no, when I squash them with my trowel, they stay squashed. Try this experiment at home: Take a worm, your choice – just pick a worm. Take a trowel (a hammer will do in a pinch). Give the worm a good wack. Observe. Still dead? Keep observing. Still dead? Keep observing. I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, at which point it will still be dead. And it will probably smell bad, too.

I’ve learned that earthworms multiply by being chopped into bits, at which point all the parts grow into new worms.
Don’t tell the worms, you’ll ruin their fun. Although many species are apparently hermaphroditic (including our friend L. rubellus), they seem to think that they need to mate in order to produce eggs. You see, when one annelid loves another annelid verrrry much….Actually, Physiology of Annelids, (ed. P.J. Mill, London: Academic Press, 1978) has a rather fascinating chapter on reproduction. Well, fascinating to me, anyway.
Some annelids can, under optimum circumastances regenerate lost segments – generally this tends to be posterior segments. You know, the tail. This can occur if predators such as birds or moles (who, incidentally, can and do eat three times their weight in worms each day) don’t get them while they’re injured, if they haven’t regenerated often in the past, if they haven’t lost too many segments, if it’s not too cold out, and if they’re one of the 10-30 (estimates very and this seems to be slightly controversial) species that regenerate. Oh yeah, and if they aren’t flattened.

If you’re really that obsessed with worms, I suggest a visit to Another Can of Worms, which is the clearinghouse for Annelid research, hosted by the University of New Orleans.

Personally, I find worms boring. I always preferred spending my time with the insects. I’m not a working biologist, I know very little about annelids in the grand scheme of things. I just have years of biology courses somewhere in my distant past and a generalized irritation with people who think that watching a few nature films when they were in 8th grade makes them Charles Darwin.

I’m tired and you’re being condescending. Sorry.

To keep this annelid-related, I’ll tell you about the Medical Leech Museum in Charleston. (that’s not much of a link, but it has the address). Leeches are loads of fun. I’m tired and so perhaps we’ll talk leeches another day.

I should add one final note for those twitching and fussing: No. This isn’t about you. Unless you sent me a snarky email about worms. Then it is, in fact, about you.

I told you I’m not Martha Stewart, you didn’t listen.

Weeding is a crap shoot because I can never tell which are the wildflowers and which are the weeds until they start blooming. Really, you could argue that all wildflowers are weeds – and sometimes I do just that rather than tend a bed.

One bed, for those playing along at home, is about 40 x 2, the other is about 15 x 3. There are no fancy patterns or clever design elements. They’re wildflower beds. I don’t understand why people put in wildflowers and then try to do precious things with them.

Now here’s the thing you have to keep in mind: gardening stresses me out. Gardening is not relaxing to me. Not the planting part, anyway. It’s all rather violent, if you think about it. When you plant seedlings you have to pull them out of those little plastic pots, you can break their little roots. I get very distressed about that.

And then there’s the digging. You have to dig little holes to put in the plants.

And there are earthworms in the ground. I get so upset if I injure an earthworm. I make little offerings to them to appease their gods, but I still feel bad about it.

I don’t feel bad about fishing with worms though. Fishing with worms is different than mowing them down in a drive-by trowelling accident while you’re planting phlox. Don’t ask me why. It just is. I’m the arbitrary sort-of Buddhist.

Grubs are another story. Again with the arbitrary rules…I toss the grubs I find to the cardinals. Nasty things. The grubs, not the cardinals. From a distance I must look like Snow White out there, with my cute little flock of birds following me around and singing happily to me. It’s the grubs. Make no mistake, those birds only love me for my grubs. I always feel bad about the grubs later though, because they’re immature scarab beetles and all – but they’re destructive, and I like the way the cardinals sing to me. It soothes me a little bit as I go about my unholy rampage of worm-decapitation and mayhem.

Since I was working out back I didn’t run into Walter, which is good, because there’s a whole other set of arbitrary rules for our friends the snakes. When I encounter a snake I try hard to repatriate it into the wild (okay, the neighbor across the street’s yard) but if they startle me I can make no promises. I know they’re beneficial, but I hate them. Walter lives in my next door neighbor’s front yard. Sometimes he comes over and suns himself on the rock border around my herb garden, even though he knows he’s not supposed to. He and I have discussed this, you see. He’s very pretty, actually – a brilliant emerald green.

Next time I catch him on that rock though it’s into the shoebox with a one-way ticket out of town. I didn’t encounter any snakes yesterday so I don’t know how I got off on this tangent. Oh yes, so here are some of the new kids: Scabiosa (pink mist). I have to admit, I’m a little worried about this one. It’s an import (from England) and my least favorite exotic invasive, English Ivy, is, well, English too. (I know. I’m a hypocrit. Let’s not talk about the bamboo, okay? I’m not perfect). What makes me particularly wary of this one is the prohibition from propagation that I found both on the tag that came with the plant and at Heritage Perennials. I don’t know if that’s a patent issue or if this plant has some potentially unsavory quality like English Ivy.

Nevertheless, I planted it anyway. The Scabiosa, not the Ivy. I’ve been waging war on that damn Ivy ever since I moved in here. (And this task is made all the more difficult because I react to English Ivy the way most people react to poison ivy). English Ivy is tangible proof that evil exists. Do not plant English Ivy in the United States. There are native groundcovers that will do the job. English Ivy is invasive and it wants nothing more than to damage your house and your fencing and to kill everything in it’s path. You will understand this if you ever have a 40 foot tall tree lean over your house the day after you buy it because it’s been weakened by Ivy. Then you have to pay a lot of money to have what was once a perfectly good tree removed. If I ever catch you planting Ivy I will personally come to your house and remove it. Are we clear on this?

Good.

I added a few more Coreopsis grandiflora (early sunrise variety) because they’re so darn cute. They self-sow nicely but I only had them in one bed so I bought a couple more to fill out another bed. I liked that this bed was all blue and purple flowers but it was a bit too cute that way. Eh, if it looks bad they can always be moved. Butterflies really dig these flowers.

At the back end of this bed I put in some lupines because the Hummingbirds like to have little orgies with them. There are few things as enjoyable as sitting quietly, drinking tea, and watching a hummingbird frenzy. Hummingbird feeders attract ants. Lupines don’t. Well, if they do, you have other problems.

The perfect edging plants for this kind of wildflower bed (read: unkempt and sort of Darwinian) are Alaskan Shasta Daisies. Neither Alaskan, nor daisies, I suspect. They are identified at perennials.com as Chrysanthemum weyrichii ‘White Bomb’. Okay, whatever. They’re cute, they don’t take over, and I can ignore them once they’re planted.

I filled in a few spots with some annuals, Gazanias. Some people claim that they can keep these going as perennials. Yeah, maybe in southern Africa, not here. These are really cute because at sunset you can watch their flowers close up, and then in the morning you can watch them open again. This enables you to deny that you’re just sitting and staring into space.

“Don’t bother me now, I’m watching the flowers.”

Gloriosa Daisies are another handy filler. They don’t always self-seed the way they should, but they’re easy to replace and they like to be ignored. I like that in a plant.