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| © Meidas Touch |
News blues…
The US presidential election is taking up so much mental, emotional, and political space that coronavirus has faded into the background for the moment. Let’s review climbing infection rates:- United States: breaking records day-by-day - 100,000 and more cases of new, confirmed infections - per day!
- Italy: Much of Italy is now under lockdown, after the Covid-19 death toll for 24 hours hit 445 - a six-month record.
- Spain: The total number of COVID-19 fatalities in Spain shot up on Wednesday by 1,623, according to the Health Ministry, bringing the country’s official death toll to 38,118… and 297 deaths confirmed since Tuesday, which is Spain's highest daily jump in deaths since April.
- Canada: battling its second wave of coronavirus infections; public health officials in the country’s western region are growing concerned as cases surge to new daily records. Active coronavirus cases in Alberta have quadrupled in the last five weeks. British Columbia, with 5 million residents, notched up more than 400 new cases.
- France: registered a record 60,486 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, following the previous high of 58,046 on Thursday…
- Brazil: reports 18,862 additional confirmed cases of the virus in the past 24 hours, and 279 deaths from Covid-19. The country has now registered 5,631,181 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 162,015,in the world’s most fatal outbreak outside the United States.
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Healthy futures, anyone?
How does fracking work?Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
After spotting an unusual accumulation of vegetative debris on my doorstep – I took a closer look: it had a caterpillar-like head that retracted as I watched. I waited for the head to reappear and, when it did not, I photographed the critter.
Internet research suggests this unique creature is a bagworm, in the caterpillar stage. Gatherings of bagworms, alas, can wreak havoc on trees.
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Mulberries – elongated blackberries or raspberries that grown on trees rather than bushes - seem to have gone out of culinary fashion. Mulberry trees are classified invasive in the United States, but mulberry trees are alive and well in this neighborhood, and in this garden.
Monkeys are in mulberry heaven.
Monkeys are in apricot-and-plum heaven, too, as apricot and plum trees producing new fruit. But the fruit is still hard, green, and only marginally larger than marbles. Monkeys don’t care: they’re plucking the premature fruit and, usual for monkeys, taking one bite then tossing away the rest of the fruit.
This bite-and-toss behavior upends my general acceptance of evolution: how come, given many generations of monkeydom, monkeys have never figured out that leaving fruit (and vegetables) to mature is a better nutritional bet than destroying them in infancy?
Oh, wait! I forgot. Humans descended from monkeys/apes… and we’re an impatient lot, too. Humans, like monkeys, are unsuccessful at anticipating how our current (stupid) behavior affects our future (healthy) future. (Think climate change denial….)
Monkeys are in mulberry heaven.
Monkeys are in apricot-and-plum heaven, too, as apricot and plum trees producing new fruit. But the fruit is still hard, green, and only marginally larger than marbles. Monkeys don’t care: they’re plucking the premature fruit and, usual for monkeys, taking one bite then tossing away the rest of the fruit.
This bite-and-toss behavior upends my general acceptance of evolution: how come, given many generations of monkeydom, monkeys have never figured out that leaving fruit (and vegetables) to mature is a better nutritional bet than destroying them in infancy?
Oh, wait! I forgot. Humans descended from monkeys/apes… and we’re an impatient lot, too. Humans, like monkeys, are unsuccessful at anticipating how our current (stupid) behavior affects our future (healthy) future. (Think climate change denial….)
