Shameless Agitator

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Weeds, The Whole Blah Damn Thing

Gilbert

We have a resident toad.

A month and a half ago, I was filling a watering can. I noticed that I was being watched. I picked the toad up to show my daughters. It chirped away at me and peed. I didn’t know toads had big bladders. I put it back under the deck.

Then one morning, a few weeks ago, I caught my puppy Lily playing with a toad on the deck. I thought she’d found it and brought it up on her own. Thankfully, the toad was just playing dead. It looked like the same toad. I put it back under the deck in the same place.

Now, every night for the past week, when I take my dogs out to potty before bed, I have found the very same toad sitting in the same place on the deck by the sliding glass door.

My youngest daughter named it Gilbert and is begging me to get a terrarium so she can keep it as a pet. I told her no, Gilbert lives outside, is a wild creature and should stay that way. I also remind her she has two pets, Lily and Jezzie, our dogs.

I wondered out loud about the life span of toads. So off to Google. Bufo americanis, the American toad.

Random facts about toads: Toads dig backward into the ground and hibernate during the winter. Toads are mainly nocturnal. Males have dark colored throats, of black or brown, while females have white throats and are lighter overall. (Yikes, I think Gilbert may be a girl!) Tadpoles that have completely metamorphosed are called toadlets. Older toads shed their skin four times a year. In the wild, toads don’t usually survive more than a year or two, if they are lucky to make it past toadlet stage. Some toads in the wild have lived more than ten years. One captive toad is reported to have lived 36 years, and might have lived longer if it hadn’t been killed by mistake. One American toad can eat up to 1,000 insects a day. Toads do not drink water, they soak in it and absorb moisture through their skin. American toads have warty skin that produces a milky fluid that is poisonous. The fluid is only harmful if swallowed or gets in the eyes, and can make an animal very sick. Toads do not give you warts.

Grossman, S. 2002. “Bufo americanus” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed July 19, 2008 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Bufo_americanus.html

So, I guess (1) it is good that Lily didn’t try to eat Gilbert and (2) I’ll be checking Gilbert’s throat during our visit tomorrow night.

This evening, when I found Gilbert, I let him/her sit in a dish of water for a bit. It looked like he/she had been eating bugs near the dryer vent, as there was some lint caught in his/her mouth. To get up to the deck and sit by the sliding glass door, Gilbert must hop up the ramp that my husband built after our dog Katie had knee surgery in 2003.

Poof

What worried Mr. Shameless most, with the collapse of IndyMac, was the run on the bank.

Lines of people demanding to withdraw their money. The realization that FDIC only covers the first $100,000. Wondering if my banks are healthy.

A friend speculates that the dollar has been overvalued for quite some time and therefore its recent fall is a correction of sorts. (See here, here and here, and do a Google search for more info.)

My response: We just lost the middle class.

Poof. Gone.

T. Boone Pickens

Continue reading T. Boone Pickens…

Fireworks of all kinds…

The next few months are shaping up to be very interesting, indeed.

Independence

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Continue reading Independence…

How to save 1 million barrels of oil a day…

Drive 5% less.
Slow down.
Inflate your tires.

CNN reports “Those three steps would reduce U.S. oil consumption by 1.3 million barrels a day immediately.”

Which is approximately two times what drilling in ANWR would produce per day.