Most of us have heard the tale of the frog in boiling water. If you try to put a frog in boiling water, it will hop out, but if you place it in the water and heat it slowly, it will sit and cook to death. The Republican party has...
frog
Twitter is dragging Jonathan Turley because of attributing a Rousseau quote to the Reign of Terror, but more likely because they mistook him for Jeffrey Toobin. That’s the nature of conservative culture war, making class warfare a struggle more transcendent and less applicable in times of right-wing insurrection. x Since philosopher Jean...
Hi, Hoomans! The last couple of months have been a whirl! All I remember is waking up really horny and cold in the middle of January. “Hey,” I thought to my self, I remember these ponds from before.” At dusk, I heard a dozen male chorus frogs making their crude and...
There’s actually a White House press briefing at 7pm ET. Just in case you’re watching it live. MSM is comparing the use of press briefings already, considering the lies of the 45 Administration. x Tune in for the first press briefing of the Biden-Harris Administration with Press Secretary Jen Psaki....
I’ve seen clips of Trumpies insisting they’ll be at Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. They’ve already booked their rooms and everything! Come on! Of course he can still win! It’s predestined! So here’s MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who looks like the Muppet version of Alex Karras and is also convinced oleander...
Name’s Red. Red Woodman, Major Mammal Crimes Detective. This is supposed to be my last day on the job is I can make it through. Cough. They’ve assigned me a kid nick-named “Lucky” I’m supposed to train to take my place. I’m looking through his resume. He’d flunked out of...
The hummingbirds dash around my back yard, as hard to track as a feathered 3-card monte game; are there 2 or 3 or 4 hummers? Any hummer that sits in our Bartlett pear tree is automatically named Bart. It fights any other hummer using any one of five feeders below...
For six years, tadpoles have morphed into tiny chorus frogs in my backyard ponds. But once they’ve turned into frogs I seldom see them again. For the first few days into July, I find them near their birth ponds. Their default move is to hop back into the water for...
Before Sean Spicer was a fluorescent yellow canary-man who danced like a frog trying to escape from a bucket, he was Donald Trump’s press secretary. x x YouTube Video Remember? Back in the fore-fore times, when we thought maybe Trump would settle down for his nap, but he instead insisted...
Before Sean Spicer was a fluorescent yellow canary-man who danced like a frog trying to escape from a bucket, he was Donald Trump’s press secretary. x x YouTube Video Remember? Back in the fore-fore times, when we thought maybe Trump would settle down for his nap, but he instead insisted...
“Oyez! The Summer Session of Frog Court is called to order, Judge Jeramiah Bullfrog presiding,” honked the Bailiff, who was a Canadian goose. In strode two robed judges, who were six foot tall bullfrogs, trying to walk on two legs, but instead hopping from foot to foot. The third bullfrog...
An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application. In short: Victory! Withdrawn App, how sweet the sound, Saving trees … thirty feet around. They were doomed on this place, but now are saved, thanks to Grace. The nearby neighborhoods’ coveys...
I’m Red Woodman, Senior Investigator for what we call the “Frog Court.” If I can just get through today, I can retire with a pension. But a whole bunch of new cases just hit my in-basket and I came to work to find a guy sobbing over a couple of baby...
Like the DHS and DoJ contractors deployed with the miscellaneous tactical units, a variety of former military are formally and informally at play during the Portland protests. In this case, a rogue element was pursued by citizen activists because these “contractors” were trying to escalate peaceful protests. The Military Industrial Complex...
My prodigal son and his advanced science teaching degree came home awhile ago. While schools are closed, He’d been hiking in the Rockies. His discoveries included a pocket full of cool sparkly rocks and crystals, and some Eastern philosophy. “Hang up these chimes here, “he said when we were out...
Multiple robins have occupied my yard for months now. Somehow their presence seemed to make the Spring come a few days sooner. I cannot tell the boys from the girls. I thought the female were supposed to be drab, but they all look alike to me. They seemed more like...
I reached for the grimy tumbler. It was empty. Not even any ice. I reached for the whiskey bottle. It was empty too. This was the night the bottle let me down, and a savagely bright dawn poured through the dirty windows in my Private Investigator’s office. I stared at...
But just a day or two after Billy Heron, the patriarch of my back yard gardens and ponds left, Cocky Robin brushed aside the murmured objections from the littler birds, and mounted the Sacred Roof Arch for his own announcement. “Listen up! When Billy Heron’s gone, Cocky Robin is the...
Nicolle Wallace expressed perfectly what the right intends to do with Joe Biden. Unfortunately for Trump, they did not count on a pandemic crashing the economy. Did COVID-19 inoculate Biden from the Trump morphing x x YouTube Video Watch the entire episode here. Nicolle Wallace hits the nail on the head. The...
“Oyez, I call Frog Court into session,” rumbled Chief Justice Jeremiah, himself a very large bullfrog. “Bailiff, read the opening Declaration.” The impossibly tall Bailiff stood and began reading: “In accordance with resolution of a civil suit involving a Reagan cabinet member and prescription drugs, The Department of Fish and Wildlife...
These frog eggs sacs presented a vivid image within a few dys of the mating. Shingy white eggs quivered, suspended in a light green jello. Less than one month later, dense algae has covered these once jelly-clear egg sacs. Pond scum’s weight has dragged the sacs to the pond’s bottom. This...
Although evening temperatures skirt 32 F, the native Chorus Frogs of NW Oregon continue to meet and mate. I spotted an single egg sac with 20 eggs two weeks ago, but now I can see 30 egg sacs, some containing 50 or more eggs. The male and female frogs must...
On February 3, 2020, several chorus frogs assembled around my back yard ponds and began singing, successfully, for mates. I dug out these ponds six years ago and frogs began breeding in them immediately. The frog’s numbers have increased every year for the last six years. A few outlier chorus frogs...
I am sure many of you know the fable to the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion needs to get across a stream. The scorpion approaches a frog and says, “If you will take me across the river on your back I will do you a favor later. This is...
I don’t play chess but if I did, I am sure I would equate today’s politics with three-dimensional chess. And in the game, the middle class and the poor are likely to be ill-prepared to win. Centrism has powerful allies. It must be repeated ad-nauseam, the American political game is...
I began tracking the migrations of the Great Egret (ardea alba), when I worked at a golf course near Banks in NW Oregon. An Egret would migrate to the golf course ponds every late Fall, leaving the frozen ponds of eastern Oregon behind for the season. Egrets (and herons) are...
A year ago, I attempted to resurrect a handful of lotus seeds, that had sat, forgotten, on a high shelf, for almost 20 years. I dutifully roughed up one corner of the seed with 30 grit sandpaper, to expose the tip that would germinate, like YouTube told me to. I...
For some Trumpers, not even the spawn is racist enough for some of its followers in 2020. Still early days, but Trumpism may be in the beginning stages of base fracturing among its Christian nationalists and its GOP conservatives primarily on how racist they should be. No Night of the Long Knives...
Some years I stop seeing my tiny backyard frogs by August. The Spring-hatch of tadpoles have all morphed, and the older frogs have dispersed to nearby areas, beyond my vision. This year, however, The frogs ‘ Spring-hatch was plentiful, and I often found 5 or 10 frogs on every morning walk....
I ventured out into a crisp Autumn morning with my camera. This was the first year we’d successfully grew artichokes in our backyard and I wanted pictures. After harvesting a half dozen ‘chokes from the two plants, I cut one plant down to a frazzled stump, and let the other...
Yesterday I went looking for an especially beautifully colored chorus frog that had shown up in my Lamb’s Ear. To my prolonged amusement, this lovely frog hopped from the Lamb’s Ear into a bucket full of rotting pears, and poised to strike the fruit flies that crowd around the pears....
Dozens of tadpoles are morphing into tiny frogs in my backyard ponds. This year, they are morphing busily in late August. In prior years, they usually morphed from tadpoles into frogs around Bastille Day, July 14. I often remember the warm summer nights near the Papio Creek in Nebraska, sixty...
In August, many tadpoles in my hand-dug backyard ponds change into small chorus frogs. For several years now, the frogs have returned to my backyard in March, bred in the ponds, and produced eggs that produced tadpoles that morphed into frogs from Bastille Day (July 14) into August. The Frog Mitigation...
Can you tell the difference from 10 feet? At night? When it’s buzzing right at you? Last year, a large wasp nest appeared under the rafters of my house, near the front door. Black and yellow striped wasps flew in and out, dozens per hour. I’d had Yellow Jacket wasps sting...
The Oregon Junco is a locally abundant genus of sparrow, also known as a dark-eyed junco, and is the only bird sporting the Oregon State Name (Junco hyemalis). Its range includes most of North America, but the range I’m writing about is in my own side yard. I’d noticed a pair...
As the current President (hereinafter Individual-1) strode down the dank tunnels under the White House, on his way to watch 8 hours of Fox news, his Secret Service agents roughly and abruptly steered him down a little-used passage. A few strides later, they met with a cluster of large, muscled men carrying...
For the fifth year in a row, the tiny native Chorus Frogs have returned with the Winter Solstice moon, to breed in my back yard ponds. The new generation of frogs were born as egg sacs on the Equinox moon. And now, they are morphing from tadpoles into full-pledged, if tiny,...
For over a decade, Great Blue Herons have visited my backyard ponds in NW Oregon. They’ve eaten some of my goldfish, driven away all of the hated bullfrogs, and provided many viewing hours of their heart pounding beauty as they strut between the grapes and lavender. My house is in the middle of...
Herons are taking fish and frogs “to go” out of my backyard ponds, for trips to their nearby nests. I watch a heron go after the goldfish in the ponds. It will eat and swallow the first fish, but will “mouth,” and not swallow their second catch, and immediately fly away with the...
Less than 30 days after the chorus frogs began mating on the Spring Solstice in the Frog Mitigation Area. Hundreds of tadpoles have already hatched from their egg sacs. Yet many egg sacs have not yet yielded their bounty. Every back of the envelope calculation shows I may soon have...
For many of us, the loud rapid croaking of peeper frogs fills the Spring air. Varieties of the thumb-sizer peeper, or chorus, or tree frogs occupy a North American range almost from the Arctic circle to the Equator. However often you’ve heard the peeper frogs, it’s unlikely that you’ve seen...
The chorus frogs have returned to the Frog Mitigation Area again this Spring. These tiny native frogs first occupied two small ponds in my backyard five years ago. The males usually arrive by ones and twos in late February. but they didn’t show until early March this year. They set up...
I recently set up a 5 gallon aquarium and germinated lotuses in it from storied seeds. I purchased two Japanese “trapdoor” snails to eat the aquarium’s algae. They just had a half-dozen live young, so I am sort of a grandfather of snails. This covey of snails swiftly ate all of...
This week of dire weather forecasts for the Pacific Northwest saw a year’s worth of snow fall on Seattle in a few remarkable days. Yet the lower elevations of Washington County, west of Portland, Oregon remained chilly, but stubbornly snow-free. Gaia took notice, and dumped hours of hard rain on NW...
The ”Frog Court” originated as result of a sealed court settlement over an unfortunate incident regarding Nixon EPA Administrator Anne Gorsche, prescription drugs, a government limo, and a lost weekend in the early 1970s. The quiet settlement established the Frog Environmental Regulatory Commission, or FERC. FERC’s mandate is the protection...
UPDATE: CNN reports that the big four networks are deliberating whether to give Trump the prime-time slot, but that CNN and Fox News have already agreed to air the speech. *** The major networks balked at first, but they’ve finally agreed to let Donald Trump spew his hate-filled lies across our nation like...
The two brothers looked out from their penthouse at their priceless view of Manhattan, but both watched the clock turn over to 7:15:00 PM, Eastern Standard Time. The afternoon shadows swept in that September afternoon and the sky darkened. “It’s time,” said one brother. They put on coats and got...