My wife has been trying to grow cucumbers for years. Her thumbs are as green as the fuzzy layer of mold on my tent after a month in the Ghanaian rainforest, and yet the fickle plant had refused to produce any reproductive structures for years. Until now. Yesterday she harvested her first, beautiful cucumber from…
Month: July 2012
Sharp spines, strange sex
I know many arachnophobes; in fact I live with one. But being afraid of spiders of the genus Micrathena is about as rational as being afraid of a diamond brooch. These animals are jewelry come alive, harmless, and each more ornate and vividly colored than the other. There are about 100 known species of Micrathena (Araneidae),…
How to swim on dry land
Namibia is one of the driest places on the planet. It is home to the Namib Desert, the oldest perpetually dry place on Earth, which has endured arid conditions for at least the last 55 million years. Most places in the Namib receive less than 10 mm of rain per year, some even less, and…
Devil’s got a pretty face
Many things have bitten, pinched, stung, or jabbed me over the years, but the absolute champions in delivering the most memorable, painful experience are pretty little insects known as the slug caterpillars. They are larvae of equally handsome moths, members of the family Limacodidae. The body of most limacodid caterpillars is covered with long, brittle…
Wax-tail hopper
One day last year, when I was in Costa Rica’s Barbilla National Park, the manager of the park came to me and said that he had just found the strangest “mariposa nocturna.” What he showed me sitting on one of the beams of the station’s building was indeed strange, but it wasn’t a moth –…
The eventual usefulness of stuff
I admit it, I am a pack rat. Or at least it may appear so to the untrained eye. I hate throwing things away, but empty orange juice bottles can be used to make great flash diffusers; one of the dozens of loose, mismatched screws will eventually prove itself priceless by fixing my tripod head;…
The Smaller Majority 