April Fooling Easter Halloween and More

This year's convergence of April Fool's Day and Easter, with Burger King's 2005 Were-rabbit basket use for April 1/Easter and Halloween. "More" refers to tangential items. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Chuckwalla Lizard Part 2 of 2 (with Walla Segue)

Initially, I intended to have one article that described a chuckwalla in context of a wildlife rescue facility, general info about this species of lizard, and other "walla" items. The previous part, "Chuckwalla Lizard, Part 1 of 2 (at Lindsay Wildlife Experience)" focuses on the common chuckwalla at the rescue facility. This part pertains to general chuckwalla lizard info with segue into "walla". Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Chuckwalla Lizard Part 1 of 2 (at Lindsay Wildlife Experience)

I took pix of a chuckwalla lizard last month when I visited Lindsay Wildlife Experience (LWE), a wild-animal rescue facility that rehabilitates 5,500 animals a year. It was bigger than geckos that I'd occasionally seen in my garage, and not particularly colorful. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Texas Spiny Lizard and Some Kin

Last week during a walk, a critter scampered up a 6' picket fence. It splayed its legs along a picket (6" wide). From the positioning of the head, neck, and tail extending into adjacent pickets, it looked to be up to a foot long. The spikiness, imho, makes it look somewhat prehistoric, like a scelidosaurus, or maybe a dragon. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

So How Cute ARE June Bugs?

Back in late August, I took a pic of a green bug. Was fortunate that a neighbor was able to ID it for me. Well, he sent me a link that was most helpful. The feature hit went to "June Beetle Time!" (from NCSU). Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Texas Black Walnut--Lookalike to Deadly Manchineel

During a walk in the neighborhood in June, I spotted a tree with yellowy fruits that resembled miniature grapefruits. Recently, Yahoo's news feed displayed a fruit with leaves that caught my eye. The fruit strongly resembled the fruit I'd been photographing. When I clicked the link, no such picture showed up. I did find the source article at "The Scary Tropical Tree That Can Kill You", which included the pic. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Orangey Encounter--Monarch Butterfly

During a neighborhood walk, we spotted a flitting butterfly. I know better than to try capturing a still image of a moving object. I recorded it, played with the video, and uploaded a ~1 minute video to YouTube. I decided to create a longer video to accompany this article, which also includes a half-speed clip so that the wing movement is easier to follow. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Orangey Encounter--Pride of Barbados

During a recent walk on an overcast day, I spotted some fiery flowers on commercial property. My pixstrip shows contrast in the flower cluster and sky for September 3 and 5. I was fortunate to not get rained on. The third image shows mature seed pods near a flower cluster. (I have also interspersed these images into my YouTube video.) Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Motorized Three-wheelers, Mostly Part 2

"Motorized Three-wheelers, Mostly, Part 1", is mostly about transportation three-wheelers. Think wind-in-the-face trikes for grownups. This article is about motorized three-wheelers that pertain to lower-speed vehicles, mostly for short-distance transports for people and goods, the primary focus being forklifts. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Motorized Three-wheelers, Mostly, Part 1

Spotting a two-wheels-in-front-one-in-back vehicle sparked my curiosity. I was more familiar with seeing one-wheel-in-front-two-in-back types. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Delivery Pancakes or Not

My jaw just about dropped when I read "IHOP Now Delivers Pancakes to Your Front Door"

And to kick off the service, the company’s waving [sic] the delivery fee on orders over $10 (through July 22).

Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas

On June 29, 2018, USA Today's article about Amazon HQ2 mentioned Kansas City—"They 'listen when it's Amazon.' Second headquarters race revives transit, education projects". Seeing "Kansas City, Missouri" text piqued my curiosity about Kansas City. Questions arose, in no particular order. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Piqued Enough to Peek into Offbeat LinkedIn Video Posts

On LinkedIn news feeds, what would be offbeat, you might wonder? From Dictionary.com, "differing from the usual or expected; unconventional". … My LI news feeds have included a few videos that have intrigued me for entertainment value. Imho, they don't have anything to do with the working world, but they sure have been entertaining! Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Spiky-head, Multi-branch, Blooming Yucca (Elata/Soaptree)

This is one rare article that I'm not totally convinced of my subject's ID. The 3-tile composite image shows an entire multiple-branch plant and enlargements of two prominent features—end of a branch with leaves radiating out from the center (rosette), and one of the bloom stalks. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Road Tripping Time of Year

Summer's pretty much here. Ready to hit the road? Although gasoline's been inching up the last month or so, driving travel might be less hassle than flying and its own set of preparations and endurances. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Purple Daze 2, Deeper into History

In "Purple Daze 1, Various Purply Names", I focused on various purply colors. I mentioned a "The Meanings of Purple" statement: "The earliest purple dyes date back to about 1900 B.C. It took some 12,000 shellfish to extract 1.5 grams of the pure dye - barely enough for dying a single garment the size of the Roman toga." This article dives deepter into purple history. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

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Purple Daze 1, Various Purply Names

Occasionally, I kick around purple colors in my head. I've been dazed about them more than other colors pertaining to elementary school crayon colors, primary/secondary tempra colors from art class, and visible light colors. Purple seems a more dominant color name than violet, which Crayola uses, but with a nod to purple. "What were the original eight (8) colors in the 1903 box of Crayola Crayons?" lists the color as "violet (purple)". Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Ride-sharing with a Snail

During a trip (October 25, 2002), I spied the critter on my rain-spattered rental car that I needed to return. It looked interesting enough that I took a dozen pictures over a period of a little less than a half hour (from 9:06 AM to 9:32 AM). Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Painted Rocks Borderline

While strolling one morning, I spotted a line of painted rocks along a homeowner's sidewalk. (Charming!) I decided to record them, starting from the left-side marker limestone boulder and ending with the right-side boulder. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Silk, Silkworms, and Related

Last month, I wrote about spider silk, inspired to research because of recent articles I wrote about argiope spiders. I decided to revisit one of my curiosities about silk, particularly silkworms. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Close Word Groupings for Pause

This article lists mostly pairs of words that can cause misunderstanding because of picking the incorrect word. Context helps with the correct word selection. The trade-off is a time slowdown to assess the situation. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Spider Silk Miscellany

During my searches about argiope trifasciata (banded garden) spiders for "Argiope Trifasciata Spider--Final Bug Spotting of 2017" and "Argiope Trifasciata Spider--Doggone Buggone at 2018 Start", I collected information about spider silk, webs, stabilimenta, and Charlotte's web. IMHO, the most interesting information about spider silk is specialization. Spiders produce different silk for different purposes, coming from different "extruders" called spinnerets. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Argiope Trifasciata Spider—Doggone Buggone at 2018 Start

Tch! On the last day of 2017, I took pix and video of the argiope trifasciata spider. (For background, read "Argiope Trifasciata Spider--Final Bug Spotting of 2017".) The next morning, I went to the web; she was nowhere to be found. Over the next few days, we’d peered into the plant—no sign of the spider, nor indicators of web disturbances, nor egg sac. I’m guessing that the spider did not undergo a "normal" life cycle. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Argiope Trifasciata Spider--Final Bug Spotting of 2017

The spider that I spotted in the morning of December 31, 2017 is in the same spider family and genus as argiope aurantia spider, which I wrote about in "Argiope Aurantia Spider--Part 1, Friday 13th Visitor" and "Argiope Aurantia Spider--Part 2, Post-Friday 13th Observations". The pixstrip images show the palm plant that this article’s spider was in, a peer into the plant, and larger views of the spider and inside of the plant. Read the entire article and comment there, please.