A mother skunk trailed by six little striped kits is a sight at least as charming as ducklings following their mother. Skunks themselves are not revolting. It's the pungent, oily, yellow-green liquid that streams out of nozzles on either side of a ...
We may think of snapping turtles as hissing, lunging, and biting beasts, but that's because we tend to meet them on land. In water, they're more shy than hostile, swimming away from threats and retreating into the mud. They're shy but not beautiful, ...
Slugs don't sting; they don't suck our blood. Yet when the subject of repulsive creatures comes up, slugs are often the first ones that crawl to mind. The slug physique is not appealing—one broad muscular foot topped with a gut (thus the class name ...
A few weeks ago, I spent a surprisingly pleasant morning watching vultures in the "Birds of Prey" section of the Bronx Zoo in New York City. The birds, juvenile females named Patsy and Dolly, were calm and curious, dropping down to the front of the ...
"There are several ways to lay out a little garden; the best way is to get a gardener." We can all agree that it's pretty sad to look at bare earth in front of or behind your house when it could be pretty and productive. Yet many homeowners fear to ...
Confronted with huge, uncontrollable forces, we tend to fall back on magical thinking. Say a goat was sacrificed on the volcano rim last year and lava did not engulf the village. It must follow that this year some poor goat is doomed. To garden is to ...
The driest, dullest entry in almost any garden how-to book is the advice on soil. It's a shame: The tale of soil is full of weird characters and fascinating processes we understand barely, if at all. It's also unfortunate because soil is the single ...
After dinner one night this summer, I served currants as a garnish on dessert. The pink, round, little fruits from a newly planted bush rolled off the cake slices like BBs out of a gun—quite a few of them shot onto the floor. Only a couple of dinner ...
Yes, it's charming and thought-provoking and amazing. But for those of us in the green world, the really striking thing about the animated film Wall-E is that a plant is the object of desire, the grail, the Ark of the Covenant. This happens so rarely ...
Ticks, which live on blood and nothing but blood, are loathsome to us. We strongly prefer not to share our blood, unless the act is voluntary and we get juice and doughnuts afterward. It's good that ticks are loathsome, because getting them detached ...
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