IMHO

This deer trail follows the human one used by scavengers of the original Ames dump. Fanciers of old bottles with a certain patina rendered by age, earth, and weather gather over there to hunt. It is said a homeless man was murdered nearby.


I wonder if crows gathered to cacophanize him, these deer stepping carefully around those stilled limbs?

This looks like a companionable threesome - a man, his dog, and a squirrel - or is this a rabbit? - walking side by side down the sidewalk until you happen to notice the squirrel/rabbit stepping in the man's tracks (or is it the man stepping on the squirrel/rabbit's tracks?). Even with Obama in office, I guess we'll have to wait awhile to see those lions and lambs lying down together...

These crows were making quite a racket in those trees. Since they are scavengers, I looked for an injured animal, but when I got too close for comfort they flew. The mob of crows, surprisingly, included a large greyish white bird. I expected it to be a hawk, but it may well have been an owl.




So what kind of a relationship was this? Were they mobbing a predator, following a hunter whose leavings might sustain them as well?

Several years after the introduction of growth hormone into the diets of dairy cattle, there is an oversupply of milk. An earmark has been proposed to spend more money (after all, what is the legislature there for but to throw money at our problems)? This money would pay farmers to kill their dairy cows.

The solution is obvious. Ban growth hormone in the feed. This would ensure that the milk is safer for consumers, probably improve the cow's situation (who wants to stumble around the pasture every day carrying twice as much milk as the girls were designed to handle?) and it would solve the problem of oversupply.

Wouldn't cost a dime, unless you count those donated to legislative campaigns all across the U.S. by the manufacturers of the chemical.

So, maybe it is, indeed, very costly...