Tag: mr. nature

What Are Slowworms?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi, kreeg-ah, Mr. Nature here. I have been asked, “What are slowworms?” Well, the little fellow in the picture is a slowworm, lapping up a drop of water.

Slowworms are small legless lizards from Europe. You might wonder how you tell them apart from snakes, but once you’ve seen them, you’ll appreciate the difference.

Slowworms are a nice bronze color with engaging little faces. They make good pets, if you can keep them supplied with live food in the form of slugs and earthworms. WARNING: Slugs and earthworms pick up any pesticide that’s been tossed around the neighborhood, which makes it easy to poison your slowworms. I learned that lesson the hard way.

Slowworms tame quickly, they learn to recognize you and take food from your hand, and if nothing bad happens to him, a slowworm can live for up to 50 years. And of course, large-scale habitat destruction throughout Europe is whittling away at their numbers.

Still, here we see again that God knows how to put good things in small packages.

Sanity Medicine: Johnny the Octopus

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi, Mr. Nature here.

I don’t know how many of you have ever had a pet octopus. I never did, although I’ve heard they’re very popular in certain quarters.

Anyway, the interesting thing about an octopus is how smart it is. The one in this video was hauled out of the water by Alaskan shrimp fishermen. It had gotten into their shrimp trap through a three-inch hole and proceeded to eat the shrimp. Then it unscrewed the lid from the jar containing shrimp bait and ate that, too.

Really–how can an octopus figure out what a jar is and how to open it? It’s not like they get a lot of practice. If you had never before seen or heard of a screw-top jar, how long would it take you to discover how to open it?

The fishermen in this video allowed the octopus to escape back into the sea. They could have eaten him. They could also have named him Johnny and made a pet of him.

What would you have done?

Very Rare Animal! Long-Eared Jerboa

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Is this little guy for real?

Hi, Mr. Nature here, with something to wash out the bad taste of the last news report. You’ve seen jerboas (Old World jumping mice) before, but none like this.

The long-eared jerboa has never been filmed before, and we’re lucky to have this clip. When they say “long-eared,” they’re not kidding. I can’t think of any creature that has bigger ears than this, proportional to its size.

Are we sure we’re not looking at a special effect in a movie?

The work of God’s hands–endlessly wonderful and fascinating.

Sanity Break: Squirrel at Play

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi, Mr. Nature here!

I’ve seen this going on in my yard many, many times, but I still get a kick out of it–a squirrel playing with a stick. Maybe you’ve seen it, too. They do this when there don’t happen to be any other squirrels around to play with. This little game with the stick argues for imagination, intelligence, and a certain joy in living on the squirrel’s part.

God’s stuff works!

Thanks for Your Prayers

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Thanks to all of you who have weighed in with prayers for my health. I believe in the power of prayer and the sovereignty of God.

Meanwhile, I hope you’ll be delighted with this brief video of an even briefer animal, the pygmy jerboa. It’s a sort of jumping mouse. The more  closely you look at it, the more you’ll wonder if it’s really real.

Another one of those cool animals God created,,,

Today’s Final Video, Starring a Spider

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Ladies and gentlemen! For your edification and enjoyment, we proudly present [trumpet fanfare] a spider chasing a laser pointer light.

But not just any spider! Nosireebob–this here is a genuine jumping spider. If you look closely, you’ll see she has two rather large eyes, plus a bunch of smaller ones you probably can’t see. That’s what makes jumping spiders unique in spiderdom: they can see! They hunt their prey by sight.

Still, there is one thing that defeats our most concentrated mental efforts–

What does this spider think she sees, when she sees the laser light?

The Sparrow is OK

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi, Mr. Nature here.

A couple of hours ago, my wife found a sparrow sitting on the sidewalk, not moving–sick or injured, we reckoned. A foot away we found another one, dead. I thought this might have been the result of a bird-fight: I’ve seen sparrows in action, and they are pugnacious little fellows.

All we could think to do was for me to put on some latex gloves, because wild birds can carry all kinds of germs, gently pick up the bird and put him down where no one would step on him and where the hawk wouldn’t easily see him. On the ground, this bird was just about invisible.

Just now, I went outside to check. The sparrow saw me, got up, hopped around a little–and flew away. That made us quite happy.

They’re little and cute, but I think they sure do love a fight. I’ve seen them gang up on the hawk to chase him away. Seen ’em gang up on each other, too. Oh, well. Not a sparrow falls without the Father. I presume God likes them. Probably a lot.

Winter Ain’t All Bad

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi! Mr. Nature here, with a comforting thought.

Don’t be entirely down on winter: because, if you’ve got cold days and colder nights, snow on the ground, ice hanging from your gutters, and teeth chattering, there’s one thing you absolutely, positively, don’t ever have to worry about. Not ever.

Army ants.

Watch these bugs devour everything in their path, and reflect on the fact that a nice big snowman would stop them in their tracks.

So much for life in the tropics!

The Sea Lily Walks

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi, Mr. Nature here, with our first video of 2016.

Here is an animal which most people, looking at it, would think was a plant. Scientists call it a crinoid. Some people call it a sea lily. These are very commonly found as fossils, but as you can see, they’re still around today.

This footage was taken by a camera on the deep bottom of the sea. Hey, is that the flower’s stalk dragging after it? Yes, that’s what it is. Imagine seeing that in your garden: a tulip crawling along, dragging its stalk behind it. Except, of course, the crinoid is an animal, related to the starfish. And it can detach its stalk from whatever it’s clinging to.

Doesn’t God make cool stuff? I mean, really, if you were creating the world, would you have ever thought of crinoids?

 

Monarch Butterfly Crosses the Atlantic Ocean

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Here’s another fragile butterfly: this one has survived a cold snap.

Hi, Mr. Nature here, celebrating the wonders of God’s Creation.

What could be more fragile than a butterfly? If you handle one, the wings might crumble in your hand.

But in 2012, crowds of bird-watchers in Dorset, Southwest England, gathered around to see a monarch butterfly with a tattered left wing–a butterfly that could only have gotten there by crossing the Atlantic Ocean ( http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-19557711 ).

Okay, so he had a little help from the wind. Most likely he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Nevertheless, there he was. Scientists reckon he got caught in the wind, swept up into a high altitude, and blown clear across the ocean.

Monarchs don’t take root in England because milkweed doesn’t grow there and that’s what the monarch caterpillars need to eat. (It makes them toxic to predators.) But on the rare occasions when they do make it to England, at least they seem to find the flowers to their liking.