Category: nature

Here Come the Sharks! REPRINT

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From July 26, 2025

Boy, oh, boy! You’re all the way up in Maine, where the water just doesn’t get that warm… and what do you see?

I didn’t think the great white shark was all that fond of northern waters. Then again, I’m from New Jersey and we’ve had our share of lethal shark attacks, over the years. And as you can see from this video, where there’s one great white, there’s more.

Matawan Creek, Beach Haven, Spring Lake–and those were just the sites of the infamous attacks of 1916… again, right here in New Jersey. But if you really want to be sure of not being attacked by any kind of shark… try Kansas.

Kansas? Oops! Never mind. Back in the Cretaceous Period, Kansas was covered by an inland sea just chock-full of monsters. You think great white sharks are bad? Once upon a time there were Mosasaurs. You’d never get through the first verse of “Farewell and Adieu.”

Animals Protect Their Babies REPRINT

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From  June 2, 2018

To this video I must add a small tribute to the mother wolf spider, who carries her eggs until they hatch into tiny spiders the size of a pin-head, then carries the babies until they’re old enough to take care of themselves. If one of the multitude of babies falls off her back, she knows it instantly–don’t ask me how!–and will search until she finds it and returns it to its place.

As Rev. D. James Kennedy used to say, “Ain’t chance grand?”

God’s stuff always works.

Nature Break–Baby Musk Oxen REPRINT

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Hi! Mr. Nature here.

Right now it’s snowing sideways and we’ve already got almost two feet of it on the ground, with more to come. Dig that Global Warming.

But here’s an animal that normally inhabits the northern coast of Greenland and some of the really, really cold parts of  Canada–the musk ox.

The babies are cute as buttons. They will grow up to weigh 800 pounds with very sharp horns, and for big animals, they’re very light on their feet.  In modern times they’ve been introduced to places where they lived during prehistoric times, such as Siberia, where they seem to be doing well.

North coast of Greenland–wow. Who would expect anything to be able to live there–let alone a large herbivorous mammal?

There’s no quibbling with God’s stuff, though. It always works.

Cuscus and Baby REPRINT

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From July 17, 2019

Somewhere in the treetops in the jungles of New Guinea, a momma cuscus grooms her rather hefty child–that’s the big white thing scrunched up in her lap.

Byron the Quokka assures me that business will take off “like a bloomin’ rocket” if I hire a cuscus to assist him him managing my blog contests. He’s up to something, depend upon it.

Well, I remain open to persuasion. Toss in your two cents, anybody, if you want to. I have to get on to some nooze coverage.

Introducing: The Cuscus REPRINT

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From July 16, 2019

I’ve wondered about this animal ever since I saw it in a picture book when I was six or seven years old. It’s called a cuscus–“common spotted cuscus,” if you want to be formal–and it’s hard to look up in the Internet because the computer keeps trying to direct you to “couscous,” which is something altogether different.

The cuscus lives in trees in the jungles of New Guinea and mostly comes out at night, when it’s difficult to see them: they’re very shy. There are also a few in Cape York, Australia. They have prehensile tails, very similar to a chameleon’s.

Byron the Quokka has been dropping subtle hints about being able to do his contest-runner job better if a cuscus might be hired to assist him. “You just want more pictures of cute animals to pump up viewership,” I parry. “So that’s a bad idea?” Well, he’s got me there. Anyway, if you can’t trot out a cuscus or a potto now and then, what’s the point of blogging?

Fantastically varied realms of nature brought to you by God the Father, who created it all.

And They Say We Believe in Silly Things REPRINT

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   From May 15, 2016

Way back in 2004, some scientists–I use the word advisedly–trotted out a theory that Homo erectus, formerly known as Java Man, had a really thick skull, much thicker than ours, because the males had a habit of popping each other over the head with clubs. This cartoon-like image was carefully dressed in the most posh scientific language , but it’s still a cartoon.

Working from scanty evidence, if we might be so kind as to call it that, scientists reasoned (if we may call it that) that Mr. Erectus evolved his thick skull because the other guys were beatin’ on him: in their words, a lot of Erectus’ anatomical features “evolved in response to interpersonal violence.”

I can’t tell whether this is bosh or tommyrot. Are they really asking us to imagine untold generations of Alley Oop conking each other on the noggin until thicker skulls “evolve”?

Yeah, yeah, I know, natural selection and all that: the lads with the thin skulls get clubbed out of existence, and only the ones with the thick skulls survive to make bambinos with thick skulls, chips off the old blockhead. Except DNA can be so uncooperative in that regard! It keeps on reproducing the same thing, unless somehow interfered with. But most of those random mutations are either harmful or totally without effect, so the great humanist god, Chance, is called upon to work miracles.

Loaves and fishes, no. Thick skulls from thin skulls, can you gimme halleluia?

Meanwhile it’s 50 degrees outside today on May 15 and there’s a frost warning on for tonight… and you can bet the house that sooner or later some government scientist is going to come along and declare that this has been the warmest May in recorded history, blah-blah-blah…

And they say we Christians believe in silly things.

 

By Request: Byron’s Baby Picture REPRINT

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From May 29, 2019

While I grow older and vegetate in the doctor’s waiting room this morning, we have a request from “Unknowable” for Byron the Quokka’s baby picture. Always happy to oblige, so here it is.

There is, of course, a whole family album to trot out; but Byron eschews celebrity status. I am not sure he knows what “eschews” means. The last time I used that word, he said “Gesundheit.”

‘We’ll Bring Back the Mammoth!’ REPRINT

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 From February 16, 2017

 

The Original Sin was to disobey God in order, as the Serpent put it, to “be as gods” (Genesis 3:5). That sin is very much with us today.

Scientists have announced a plan to bring back the extinct woolly mammoth by messing about with mammoth DNA and Asian elephant DNA, cutting and pasting and “editing genes” to create a mammoth embryo ( https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/16/woolly-mammoth-resurrection-scientists ). Then they can re-introduce a population of mammoths to the Siberian tundra to combat global warming! Oh–and as an added benefit, they predict these techniques can soon be refined so as to “reverse aging” in human beings.

As much as I would love to see a woolly mammoth, what I would be seeing here would not actually be a mammoth,  but rather an elephant that’s been tampered with to make it look like a mammoth–a counterfeit.

Does anyone honestly expect this to work out as advertised? Do a lot of us need to see Jurassic Park again?

Somehow reading stuff like this makes me feel like I’m getting stupider, not smarter.

Come, Lord Jesus, come–and save us from the folly of our worldly wisdom.

Another Darwinian Fairy Tale REPRINT

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From April 17, 2016

Thanks to Global Warming and all that, says a scientist at the University of Kent, UK, rising sea levels are going to inundate the earth and the human race will evolve to live underwater, complete with gills, webbed feet and hands, an extra layer of fat for insulation, etc., etc. ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3396624/Webbed-feet-cat-s-eyes-gills-Features-just-humans-evolve-deal-water-world-global-warming-second-ice-age.html ) And voila! The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

It’s hard to decide how to label this. Is it poppycock, humbug, or just B.S.?

If a population of human beings devoted themselves, every day for hours at a stretch, to jumping as high as they could and flapping their arms, how long would it take for their arms to “evolve” into wings?

Or, if that’s asking too much of people who just might have better things to do, perhaps we could perform an experiment. Take some bats and don’t let them fly, but rather keep them in a watery environment day in, day out, for as many generations as it takes for the bats’ wings to evolve into flippers. What will we get out of this, other than a lot of wet, uncomfortable, and down-hearted bats?

I mean, is this stuff even science anymore? Our man from Kent relies on mutations to transform the human race into mermaids. That seems like a long shot, to me. But then that’s why the Darwin set insists on millions, or even billions, of years for Evolution to work its magic. Alas, the vast amounts of time involved make observation somewhat impractical. “You just wait a couple million years, and then you’ll see we were right!” What bunk.

And they say we Christians believe in silly things.

 

The Octopus and the Teddy Bear REPRINT

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From June 5, 2016

There’s something very poignant, don’t you think, about the image of a little teddy bear getting washed out to sea. I know, this video’s a set-up all the way: but it’s very nicely filmed, and the music is sweet and relaxing. And in the end, the octopus doesn’t try to eat the teddy bear–a wise move.

What is it with this guy? He keeps showing us octopus videos.

No ulterior motive–I just like looking at God’s stuff. The octopus is an intelligent animal, but they haven’t yet found a way to make him stupid and corrupt.