Word Of The Week

Word of the week for the week of 12/25 is Capricious: apt to change suddenly.
Happy day after Christmas.

The Hidden Lives Of Frogs

Frogs are best known for their webbed feet and flying leaps, but these complex, sensitive animals have many other amazing characteristics and capabilities.

Many frog species are devoted—and resourceful—parents. Some species of dart frogs lay eggs on the forest floor, guarding the eggs from predators and keeping them moist by urinating on the eggs if they become too dry. In other species, after hatching, the father or mother will move the tadpoles on his or her back to a water-holding bromeliad (a flowering plant). The parent then feeds the tadpoles by laying unfertilized eggs in the bromeliad until the young have metamorphosed.

Some frogs even protect their offspring inside their own bodies. The male Australian pouched frog has pouches along his side, where the tadpoles live until metamorphosis. Darwin's frogs from Chile hold tadpoles in their vocal sacs for development.

Male bullfrogs defend their territory by inflating their lungs and floating in open water. If another male approaches closer than about 6 meters, the guarding frog will make a sharp, staccato "hiccup" sound and move toward the intruder. Usually, the intruder will leave, but if he doesn't, the two frogs will leap at each other until one is forced onto his back.

Most frogs live in moist areas, such as ponds, creeks, and trees. Some species, such as the Catholic frog and the flat-headed frog, can survive in desert environments by using a technique called bloating, in which they burrow during dry seasons and surface during rains to absorb as much water as possible before burrowing again.

Frogs absorb oxygen and moisture through a thin film covering their skin that allows oxygen to be dissolved and passed into their bloodstream. Because of this, frogs are very susceptible to environmental toxins. Pollution, pesticides, and habitat destruction may be some of the reasons contributing to declining frog populations.

Unfroggivable Cruelty

Countless frogs are tortured, killed, and deprived of everything that is natural and important to them. Pins are stuck through their skulls to destroy their brains, and they are dissected in laboratories and classrooms while their hearts are still beating. They are sold as desktop "decorations" by the "pet" industry, doomed to bleak lives in tiny plastic boxes, like Brookstone's "Frog-O-Spheres," in which they are slowly poisoned by their own waste.

In November 2009, PETA went undercover at Wild Creations, the company that supplies Frog-O-Spheres to Brookstone. PETA's investigator documented the rampant neglect and mishandling of these delicate animals and total disregard for their needs, welfare, and lives. Read more about what PETA's investigator found.

Frogs struggle to survive as human encroachment shrinks their habitats and people kill them to use their body parts to make drugs. Please, be a frog's friend: Refuse to dissect and never keep frogs as "pets."

Fascinating Frog Facts

• Many frogs contain mild toxins that make them undesirable to potential predators. These toxins include irritants, hallucinogens, convulsants, nerve poisons, and vasoconstrictors (which constrict blood flow through veins, arteries, and blood vessels).
• Poisonous frogs are often brightly colored to warn potential predators. At least two nonpoisonous species of frogs in tropical America mimic the coloration of poisonous dart frogs for protection.
• Female gastric-brooding frogs from Australia (who are now probably extinct) swallow their tadpoles, who then develop in her stomach. To do this, she must stop secreting stomach acid and suppress peristalsis (contractions of the stomach).
• Some frog species use a "babysitter" to watch over their eggs until they hatch. In a few species, one of the parents stays behind to watch over the eggs and sometimes stays to cares for the tadpoles too.
• In some species, male frogs create choruses during mating season in order to attract more females.

The Tuesday Quote

In the beginning, G-d created man, but seeing him so feeble, He gave him the cat.
-Warren Eckstein.

Word of the week

Word of the week for the week of 12/11 is palliate:To make (an offense or crime) seem less serious.

The Tuesday Quote on Wednesday

"Cleaning your house while your children are still growing up is like shoveling snow off your driveway before it has stopped snowing."

In which I admit (again) that I recently forgot I had a blog

Sorry. I forgot I had a blog again.
"A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution." -Hazel Nicholson.
Word of the week for the week of 11/20 is Analogy: Comparison between like features of two things that are otherwise dissimilar.
Word of the week for the week of 11/27 is Semantics: The study of meaning in language.
I also just realized that in my 2nd post I said "Check back tomorrow for The Tuesday Quote." when it was, in fact, Sunday, making "tomorrow" Monday and the day after that Tuesday.
Sorry.

The Tuesday Quote on Wednesday and other

"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books."
-Sir John Lubbock

I'm going camping and I won't be back until Sunday.
Word of the week for the week of 11/13 is Galingale: any sedge of the genus Cyperus, esp. an Old World species, C. longus, having aromatic roots.

Possible reading material

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits the sun and the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying: "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever." Said the old lady. "But its turtles all the way down!"
-Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History Of Time"
Just had to share that.

Word of the week for the week of 11/6 is Subrogate: to put into the place of another; substitute for another.

Why logic isn't always right

An alien walks into a bar. He sees three men. One is drinking whiskey and coke, another is drinking vodka and coke, and the last is drinking rum and coke. He "logically" assumes that they are getting drunk off of the coke. So he orders a coke and wonders with amazement why he isn't getting drunk.

Funny. My dad told me that.

The Tuesday Quote

"The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals." - Anonymous

Thanks for reading.

In which I ramble on about nothingness

Sorry I haven't blogged in 2 weeks but I kinda forgot I had a blog. There will now be "The Tuesday Quote". I went trick-or-treating with these two little girls I babysitted (babysat?whatever.). They fought over who got to ring the doorbell. At every single house.
Word of the week for week of 10/23 is Deviation: departure or divergence from an established dogma or ideology.
Word of the week for week of 10/30 is Kinesiology: the science dealing with the interrelationship of the physiological processes and anatomy of the human body with respect to movement.
Check back tomorrow for The Tuesday Quote. Goodbye for now.

First Post

This blog doesn't have a general subject or topic or anything. I made this blog several months ago but I wasn't sure what to write. Now I'm writing. Okay, I'm typing. Big deal. If anyone wants to leave a comment telling me how to put images in my posts, that would be great. I might do Not Me Monday posts like Mckmama has on her blog, www.mckmama.com . But I'm still not sure. I will do a post that tells you about me later, but not now. Every Friday come see what the word of the week is. Word of the week for the week of October 16th is Sustenance.
Sustenance: means of sustaining life; nourishment. Goodbye for now.