Welcome To Tuesday
Hello and welcome to the next step in your week.
I was digging through my phone’s memory, and recalled that I’d intended on posting this up;
Snails – nature’s RVs:
Hello and welcome to the next step in your week.
I was digging through my phone’s memory, and recalled that I’d intended on posting this up;
Snails – nature’s RVs:
I haven’t seen a snail in quite a long time 🙁 We used to have HUGE ones here in Italy when I was a child, then the big ones started to disappear, and now it’s been a while since I last saw even a small one. I wonder if humanity really realizes how the world’s diversity is dying and what it means to the whole planet…
There was a petition some time ago to save bees; they are apparently disappearing, too, due to pesticides and stuff… that means no more impollination – need I add more?
The petition was here http://www.avaaz.org/en/ ALL the petitions on this site are absolutely worthy and just, please subscribe and sign for everything they do!
From the research I’ve seen there are other (though probably still manmade) reasons for the bee die off than pesticides. Far more interesting to me is the fuzzy-nose disease hitting bats. Check into that, Mac.
But the snails? That is all on the French. Have you seen a French dinner menu?
The bat situation really disturbs me – the fact that we don’t even have a decent guess as to what’s going on is pretty horrifying.
From http://hubpages.com/hub/What-Can-We-Do-To-Save-New-Englands-Bats:
“The Forest Service estimates that at least 2.4 million pounds of bugs will go uneaten this year, because of the die-off from WNS.”
There are some shaky links links to cellphone signals but that seems to be the villain of the moment in a lot of circles.
Italians used to eat them, too, especially during the war and post-war period – basically, out of hunger… :-/
I’l check the fuzzy nose thing, thanks. Now that you mention it, I still haven’t seen my bats this year…
” I still haven’t seen my bats this year…”
Haunted house, bats, Mac’s life gets more and more interesting.
;-P Well, bats are just part of nature in this case, no supernatural events when they arrive, just bad news for bugs and mosquitos 😉
By the way, have you ever had the interesting experience of having a bat in the house that can’t find its way back out? It’s only happened once to me so far, fortunately, but it was pretty intense… inside a room they go totally bonkers, probably because of the radar waves that bounce back from all directions and from too short a distance, and they really panic. Plus the fact that they are freakin’ fast and very unpredictable in terms of direction, so it’s a real challenge to try and scare them out. It took me forever to get rid of it…
I’ve had this happen to me twice – once when I was very young, at an Uncle’s home, and in the end my Uncle killed the bat in his (panicked) attempts to get it out of the house.
The second time was in my own place, after we’d moved out to the country. We had a long thin room we used as a combination dining room/sitting area/play-space, (it ran the length of the house – maybe a hundred feet?)
Anyhow, a bat flew in one of the windows and spent a good ten minutes wheeling back and forth along the length of the room. At first we were in a bit of a tizzy over it, but soon we realized just how graceful its flight was – we ended up just blocking the other exits, leaving the window open, and watching it till it departed.
It was oddly beautiful.
Yikes – we’ve discussed the bee situation on FlashCast a few times. I think Jessica May was saying part of the problem was the willy-nilly transferring of workers between hives, which allows for the spread of disease to the native populations.
avaaz.org seems to be chalk full of great causes, I’ll definitely be looking into it.
Please do, they have already obtained several meaningful victories, if you subscrive they send you an email when a new campaign starts and there’s no obligation whatsoever.
I should also mention that a commenter on twitter threw me this fantastic nugget:
The lifespan of snails varies from species to species. In the wild, Achatinidae snails live around 5 to 7 years and Helix snails live about 2 to 3 years. Aquatic Apple Snails live only a year or so. Most deaths are due to predators or parasites. In captivity, their lifespan is much longer, ranging from 10 to 15 years for most species. On occasions, snails have lived beyond this lifespan, up to 30 years.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Life_span_of_a_land_snail#ixzz1MdGNSc5j
Ask JRD what his opinion is in regards to eating snails… 😉
That’s actually pretty cool! Who would have thought you could get a shot from INSIDE your skull! Just kidding.