Thursday, June 18, 2009 - Pittsfield MA
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Fluff in the Strawberry Patch, Home Farm, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, May 30, 2009
It's wild strawberry season
This year promises to be a good one for wild strawberries. Plant life not adversely affected by the extraordinary rains we've had the last few days, like the wild strawberries in my field, is growing vigorously.
I think this darned leak is finally sealed?
We had another downpour last night - there were no leaks!. You can read about my long struggle to find and seal these two leaks at A Tale of Two Leaks.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pittsfield MA
Wal-Mart Store #2228, 555 Hubbard Ave./Suite 12, Pittsfield, MA 01201 - (413) 442-1971
- Good level parking lot
- Verizon cell phone service is good
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service is good
- 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