Judging by our town’s Facebook page, cats disappearing and either never found or being found flattened by a car is still depressingly commonplace. I live in an area with both a lot of traffic and a lot of coyotes (suburban with tons of green space). Seems like there are 5-10 cases a year of cats disappearing and we have about 2500 households in town, not nearly all of whom are on Facebook and fewer yet on the town’s unofficial Facebook page.
Though my non scientific observation is that most of the people with indoor-outdoor cats are older people. The people scolding them on Facebook are younger people, and the defenders are older people. So maybe it’s a generational thing as attitudes are changing.
It’s only been since the 1970s that scientists discovered that cats require taurine in their diet! Prior to that, some cats would go blind or succumb to heart disease due to less than optimal nutrition.
In space, no one can hear you belch, because if you try you just vomit. Apparently, with gravity, the solids go down and the gases go up, but in zero-G it’s all a big, “chunky bubble,”* according to one cite I read.
*no relation to Big Chunky Bubbles the soup and chowder artist.
I know open flames tend to burn poorly in zero-G (because hot stuff doesn’t go “up”, so fresh air doesn’t get pulled in from “below”), so the belching problem makes sense, even though it never occurred to me before. That sounds kind of miserable, because burping seems like an important function of the GI tract.
That reminds me… I live in Montana, where we have these critters called Pronghorns. A lot of locals call them “antelope,” which they aren’t. They’re more closely related to giraffes and okapi than they are to antelope — yet another misnomer from the Lewis & Clark expedition.
Anyway, pronghorn are fast! I’m talking 55 mph sprints, significantly faster than any of the predators they face here in the U.S. of A. Why so fast? Well, roll the clock back 16,000 years or so and guess what predator roamed these plains? Cheetahs. I have often (jokingly) commented that since we reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone to control the elk overpopulation, we should try reintroducing cheetahs to control the deer overpopulation.
Cheetahs would probably win my vote for the 2nd best-looking cat, after the clouded leopard. Shhh. Don’t tell the lynxes, bobcats, and mountain lions at the wildlife sanctuary I used to manage. They think they’re my favorite.
Wow. I come back after all this time and I find this quote from the dark ages? Nice to see you, @CalMeacham!
Have you seen the video of the bear strolling into a convenience store? He grabs a box of Snickers to go. Comes back later and sprawls on the floor eating Three Musketeers.
The star Rigel, now prominent in the winter sky, was known in Norse mythology as Aurvandil’s Toe. Aurvandil, or Orwendil, was the husband of the witch Gróa, and one day he was abducted by the giants of Jotungard. Thor heroically went off to rescue him, and did so, although the giants stuck a whetstone into Thor’s head.
Despite this mild impediment, Thor carried Aurvandil back across a frozen river in a basket, but one of Auvandil’s toes stuck out and got frostbite. So Thor snapped it off and threw it in the sky, where it became the star Rigel. Later, the witch removed the whetstone from Thor’s head, while he told her the tale of the rescue and the new star.
Another curious thing is that Auvandil was anglicised into Ēarendel in Old English, and Professor Tolkien seems to have adopted him into hobbit lore at some point.
And feral dogs, and large birds of prey, and other cats.
To be fair, folks might not have noticed you coming back, what with being invisible and all.
Well, Betelgeuse is a variable star, and I would expect a legend about a “new star” to be about a variable star (one that got noticeably brighter in a single storyteller’s lifespan). And while most folk see a human figure in the constellation of Orion, at least some see the figure inverted, with the “sword” being the head, which would make Betelgeuse a toe.
Fantastic; thanks!
And in the Tolkien mythology, Earendil is associated with Venus; some sources say Ēarendel in Old English was associated with Venus, too. https://glaemscrafu.jrrvf.com/english/crist.html
The only currently active duty ship in the US Navy to have sunk an enemy vessel is the USS Constitution, a three masted sailing ship that saw action in the War of 1812.
