We have snow in our forecast for tomorrow. I hope it’s true. I could use a nice, calming snowfall. Just five inches or so.
For the time being, here’s video of some deer feeding after a snowstorm in Iowa. God’s stuff. Enjoy watching them peacefully going about their business. No political hysteria for them.
Occasionally we get to see deer in our own neighborhood. I hope to see some tomorrow.
Freshwater jellyfish aren’t rare, but Mr. Nature has never seen one. Another reader reports, “I grew up on a lake that had thousands and thousands of these living in it.” Here we have them in an aquarium.
They’re roughly the size of a dime or a penny, they eat microscopic plankton, and are totally harmless as far as human beings are concerned. I don’t know about you, but I find it quite soothing to watch them. We don’t know exactly how this happens, but they can unexpectedly appear in abundance in bodies of water that never had them before. Some fish do this, too. Birds seem to be involved somehow. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they?
I wouldn’t surprised to hear that many of you had never heard of any such thing as freshwater jellyfish and find the whole idea surprising. That’s God’s stuff for you. There’s always something new to discover in Creation.
My wife said, “You’ve gotta see this,” so here it is. And what can I say but “Holy moly!”?
Anastasiia Tyurina is only seven years old, but here she is, soloing with a Russian symphony orchestra, playing a melody called Valenki on her balalaika–from memory: she isn’t reading music.
The introduction’s in Russian, so I can’t read it–but really the music speaks for itself. Look at the talent God gave this child!
It’s proof He’s never far away.
Jambo! Mr. Nature here, coming to you from Brazil.
What is that? Is it a fox on stilts?
No, it’s an animal few of us in North America have ever heard of, the South American maned wolf. It’s not a wolf, it’s not a fox, it’s just a weird canine that lives in South America. As you can guess by the people calmly watching it, the maned wolf is no threat to human beings. Actually, there aren’t that many of them left.
They don’t bark and they don’t roar: their vocalization sounds like a little bit of both. It seems like it’s safe to leave out table scraps for them.
God’s stuff: endless variation on the basic themes.
This video reminds me of a snowy egret who used to keep us company at the house we rented, for vacation, on Long Beach Island. Actually, she was attached to the owner of the house, who lived downstairs. But she liked Patty and me, too.
Every year she flew down to Florida for the winter, but she always came back in the spring and stayed all summer. Often she used to perch in the owner’s boat when he went fishing. Or she joined us on the dock while we fished, or on the deck when we watched the sun go down. We always had some bits of squid for her, or a minnow or two. She would have joined us in the living room if we left the door open, but for the rug’s sake we never did that.
Snowy egrets nearly went extinct in the 19th century, due to the demand for its feathers to decorate lady’s hats. When the demand went away, the egret recovered.
I never saw another wild bird half as friendly and sociable as this egret. We loved her, and it was always a treat to find her still there when we came down for two weeks in September.
And her snowy feathers surely looked better on her than on some silly hat.
No more nooze today. Here’s some of God’s stuff instead.
Baby turkeys–I’ve never seen baby turkeys before, I had no idea they were so cute! They look like cuddly little stuffed toys. Perfect little turkeys! If you can’t fall in love with these, better make sure you can still fog a mirror.
Here are five animals who show off their Creator’s handiwork by the way they cope with winter.
God’s stuff works!
Mountain goat–they climb like flies on glass; pronghorn–60 mph; fox hunting for field mice under the snow; grizzly bear and cubs–she knows when an avalanche will hit; fuzzy little pikas stocking up a winter’s food supply safely underground: well, yeah! Our God is an awesome God!
And the things we can see tell us much about those things we can’t see! St. Paul was right about that.
Jambo! Mr. Nature here with more of God’s stuff, which is thousands of times better than man’s stuff and always works (as opposed to our freakin’ computers!). Today our safari takes us to Indonesia and the Philippines to meet the colugo, aka “the flying lemur.”
It isn’t really a lemur, although it seems to be more closely related to lemurs than to anything else. It’s sort of a primate, but not quite a primate. In other words, zoologists really don’t know where to put this creature.
But if you put it up a tree, it can easily glide to another tree 100 yards away. Kinda of like a flying squirrel, only bigger–two to four pounds.
And now I have to duck out of here before the computer blows up or something.
Yesterday we posted a video of an opossum fooling two dogs by playing dead–“playing possum.” The act can fool humans, too.
But voila! Here’s a harmless little snake that does the same thing. If he feels threatened, the hognosed snake will put on a fierce threat display; and if it doesn’t work–well, then it’s time to play dead. Upside down, tongue hanging motionless: he’ll even release a chemical that makes him smell dead.
Hognosed snakes in zoos and homes stop playing dead because they don’t feel threatened anymore. As the top item on their menu is live toads, I don’t recommend them as pets. But it’s cool that God gave two such widely unrelated animals the same almost-unique from of self-defense.
Jambo! Mr. Nature here–with a reminder that even though our key social and political institutions can be debauched and broken by human wickedness and stupidity, and stolen out from under us by Democrats… God’s stuff still works.
Behold the flounder, which most of us know best as fillets in the seafood section of our supermarket. Many of us have caught them on hook and line. But how many of us have ever seen them change color? Well, not many, because it happens underwater.
But change color they do, like the chameleon, like the octopus; and being flat, with both eyes on the same side of the head (the top side), helps them to hide in the sand. Oddly enough, when they’re born, the eyes are on opposite sides, like they are in other fish. They migrate as the flounder matures. Actually I think that’s even more remarkably odd than the color-changing.
All these weird little things about the flounder–put them all together, and you have a very successful fish.