Time saver

As I was finishing up round two of sunscreen application for my 1.5-mile walk into the LNFU I realized that summer is quite the time suck in terms of product application if you are, a, incredibly pasty/prone to skin cancer, and b, incredibly sweaty. I have two different deodorants, three sunscreens, and one can of monkey butt powder. You get one guess as to where the last product goes.

I have sunscreen for my face/decolletage, sunscreen for my body, spray sunscreen for the parts I can't reach, powder for certain parts, plus I put deodorant on my feet as well as my armpits because of the sweaty sweat. And you have to reapply all this stuff at least once.

So here's my idea: some sort of misting, lotioning, powdering pod that spiffs you up right quick. Or an in-house treatment team a la what the Cowardly Lion got spruced up by in The Wizard of Oz.

Fish food at the LNFU

Today I fed pipettes full of teeny-weeny iggly-wiggly black worms to some river stingrays. A couple of the rays were quite shy and buried themselves in the sand as soon as they sensed humans nearby, refusing to come out even after the worms were phooted into their tanks. But one ray happily Roomba-ed his way through a bunch of them while I watched.

I also watched while someone fed an earthworm to a nine-year-old salamander. The entire process was very quick. Mr. E. Worm was dropped into Mr. S. Mander's tank, where the former sank gently down, coming to rest near the latter's maw.

And then-ZOOP! The earthworm was toast.

That salamander ate him up so fast I couldn't see what happened even though I had my eyes open and focused on the critters the entire time. It was one second: earthworm. Waaaaaaaaay less than one second later: no more earthworm. Apparently the salamander occasionally horks the earthworm back up only to re-eat him. Sort of like a dog would when he eats too fast.

After all that fishy goodness, I even got a door prize: four glass specimen jars from a now-defunct French company. They are no longer usable by the LNFU. In fact, the ones I got have never been used. Fortunately, the jars do just as good a job keeping food fresh as they do dead fish.

He puts the rr in Overrdrive

Dr. Moo has decided to purchase the first sheep pictured here. Plus three ewes. My mother has suggested renaming the ram Odie Cologne after a skunk cartoon character it turns out is unrelated to Pepe Le Pew.

In other McPolack family critter news, Harold the chinchilla who will not be ignored wasn't getting enough attention from PolackPappy last Saturday night. So H. Chin. threw a slightly gnawed, boomerang-shaped apple twig at PP from between the bars of his cage.

Butt, meet chair

Writing is ultimately about sitting down and doing it, whether you feel like it or not. These days I've been going through a lot of sad stuff that I just don't think is appropriate to put on here, much though it does help me to process things to write about them here.

But there's been good stuff, too. To wit: a couple of weeks ago I got a phone call at 9:00 PM on a Friday from Dr. Moo. She told me to check my email. Because she'd sent me an essay she wrote to enter a contest to win a flock of sheep. Oxfords, specifically. Those were the sheepy-deeps she'd raised from lambs, and shown, and bred, and eventually scattered their ashes on the grounds of the fair at which they'd won many a ribbon.

Well I looked at that essay and while there was a lot of Dr. Moo in it - mentions of what a nice carcass the Oxford has, dissing of the candy-ass Icelandic sheep she sees at fayuhs in Vermont - she'd buried the lede. I told her so, and suggested a rewrite. She called me later and said she laughed and laughed because I had so many facts wrong in my rewrite. Like she wasn't 9 when she got her first sheep, and it wasn't a boy sheep. Harumph, I thought to myself. That wasn't the point. The point was the story: you fell in love with sheep young, you raised sheep, you grew up, your sheep died, you went to vet school, you married and bought a home and now it's time for sheep again. Yada yada yada.

Anyhoo. Wouldn't you know, not three days later she emails me to tell me she's a finalist in the contest and it was because of my suggested edits.

She ended up coming in second out of 25 but since there was only one prize, she ultimately lost. Which meant I didn't get my wish: name the firstborn lamb Vajessica Bumbawiener. But Moo is buying a ram with enormous woolly balls so there's hope yet.

Fanny pack

A lady and her cancer-sniffing dog were featured on one of the morning news programs today. Her pooch alerted her to a melanoma. Apparently studies have found that dogs successfully detect cancer 50% of the time.

Researchers think it may have something to do with peoples' breath. Which is a good thing, because I imagine the dog hit rate for bum cancer would be much lower otherwise.

Afternoon coffee break

Whilst strolling past the LNFU's natural history museum on my way to get coffee I noticed a couple of people standing in front of a tree. I could hear some very distressed-sounding critters in that tree.

As I drew closer, I saw the female red-tail, on a branch low enough to touch, with a wee birdie clasped between her talons. It seems a little odd to eat you own kind, albeit a smaller version. Especially if you try and picture having the Lullaby League for dinner. But much less odd than the bird-eating squirrel I saw on a different tree around the corner.

Anyhoo, the eatee, as it were, looked like a chickadee but as I've never seen chickadees at the LNFU, I think it must have been a sparrow. I didn't want to look too closely because I was worried the little bird was still alive, which is too much nature for this lady.

I went on my way, passing a picnic table of foreign students. When I returned, a few of them had gathered around the hawk. She was finished eating by this point and was just kind of hanging out, watching them watch her. I pointed out her home to them, and told them a bit of her story. I heard her squawk as I walked away.