Thursday, November 26, 2009 - Poplar Bluff MO
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The Little Tug That Could, reworking a tow, Fort Defiance Park, Cairo IL, November 26, 2009
I took a few hours this Thanksgiving day to watch the tugs and tow boats go about their business at Fort Defiance Park at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in Cairo IL.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Poplar Bluff MO
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #19, 333 S Westwood, Poplar Bluff, MO 63901 - (573) 686-6420
- Nice level parking - to the right side of the lot away from the store
- Verizon cell phone service- Very good
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - Good service
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69