canny granny

Promiscuity Rules

So now it’s official, the way to teach sex education is by observing Nature. Like the Birds and the Bees. Or more correctly, the Birds, the Bees and the Broadbeans. Promiscuity Rules!

It’s all to do with evolution, and how species arise, and hybridisation. Virtually all plants are distinct species, yet some are in the promiscuous habit of creating new hybrids with other plants.

But in case you didn’t know this, promiscuity is more successful for animals than it is for plants.

Cross species mating is common in ducks, North American fresh water fish species, whiptail lizards in the American Southwest and Bynoe’s Geckos in Australia. Even butterflies get into it.

I must have intuitively realised the significance of this animal behaviour when I was young and carefree. Of course all this doonah- dancing is past me nowadays, I can hardly remember what all the fuss was about.

Awful pets

The Gastropod thing is getting worse.

Imagine for a second, a common brown garden snail, and now imagine one of those more than 20 centimetres long.

That’s what’s been found on the Gold Coast, not far from one of Queensland’s most popular nature parks, and the discovery of the world’s most destructive land snail has forced quarantine authorities to re-think their inspection procedures. The last Giant African Snail outbreak was at Gordonvale, near Cairns, in far north Queensland in 1977 – hundreds were found and they took eight months to eradicate.

Some people keep them for pets, ugh.

The Good Luck Frog

My grandmother used to say ‘A frog brings good luck to the house it enters.’ This is possible, I started thinking about frogs and, lo and behold, a cheque I was waiting for arrived this morning. It worked!

I had better keep this information to myself or the Council Home Help girl will think I’m losing my marbles and jump on the blower to my interfering doctor or, infinitely worse, my interfering grandson. I need a frog charm to ward off them off. Better put a bit of dried leg in a silk bag and tie it round my neck.

This is an old charm of my foremothers, a rough lot who knew heaps about herblore from the Old Country. The frog leg wards off warts, baldness, gout, toothache, constipation, epilepsy and St Vitus Dance. (I think I’ll sit that one out). I’m also told a dried leg has a deleterious effect on vampires, which is always a handy thing to keep up your sleeve.

When you need an Umbrella

Well I’m certainly pleased to have a frog in my garden, she may keep the blasted gastropods from returning. Drop in and say hello to my tenant ribbiticus, (in the rent-my-blog over to the right there) it’s her birthday. She didn’t come down in the last shower

Plenty of other frogs came down in the last shower - or the one before that.

Throughout history, there have been tales of raining frogs. These stories, as crazy as they may seem, are apparently real events.

In 1873, Scientific American reported that Kansas City, Missouri was blanketed with frogs that dropped from the sky during a storm.

Minneapolis, Minnesota was pelted with frogs and toads in July, 1901. A news item stated: “When the storm was at its highest… there appeared as if descending directly from the sky a huge green mass. Then followed a peculiar patter, unlike that of rain or hail. When the storm abated the people found, three inches deep and covering an area of more than four blocks, a collection of a most striking variety of frogs… so thick in some places [that] travel was impossible.”

The citizens of Naphlion, a city in southern Greece, were surprised one morning in May, 1981, when they awoke to find small green frogs falling from the sky. Weighing just a few ounces each, the frogs landed in trees and plopped into the streets. The Greek Meteorological Institute surmised they were picked up by a strong wind. It must have been a very strong wind. The species of frog was native to North Africa.

As long as the passing breeze doesn’t pick up any snails