Seriously … you could not make this stuff up. Comedians are pulling their hair out just staying ahead of reality. Haven’t you heard of the AIDS vaccine? If not, where have you been? In the immortal words of Gomer Pyle, USMC, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” [Read more…]

Okay, spurge still isn’t as annoying as puncture vine. It is getting there, though. I find it nearly everywhere I go. It’s in the gravel. It is in the lawn. It is all over central Arizona. I noticed it in lawns in St. Louis on a recent trip there. [Read more…]

Damianita daisy (Chysactinia mexicana) is all over my new neighborhood. It hadn’t yet made it into my old neighborhood, just 7 miles away in Tempe, AZ, so it was new to me. Once I saw it, I had to find out its name. First off, it is obviously a DYC (aka, Damn Yellow Composite – fellow botanists, you know what I mean). Thousands of these kinds of species dot the landscape, making it a bit of a challenge to nail down the correct identification. Now that I know what it is, C. mexicana turns out to be a pretty cool plant, especially if you are a sad little mouse. [Read more…]

If I’d paid more attention in my first zoology course at Shasta Junior College, this wouldn’t have come as such a shocker to me. Ever since I was kid, I called certain cute little bugs ‘roly-polies’ – since they roll up when threatened.

Today it finally hit me that my trip to the Children’s Science Center in St. Louis last year scarred my psyche beyond repair (unless the marijuana initiative passes in Arizona today – you know what I mean) based on the actual truth about pill bugs.

I just buried it in denial until now. [Read more…]