Verbal SPLET

Did you know cats blog? Lots of pets do but there are a particularly large number of cats online blogging. Sounds kind of strange. I have two cats who blog. My friends think I need to get out more. However, like many online cat bloggers, I find that it’s a great use of creativity. I started my original blogspot blog about my kitten Gemini to keep my writing. I wanted the daily exercise of writing to practice my grammar and spelling to write regular articles for my websites. I wasn’t getting a large number of readers but I discovered others who were writing from the viewpoint of their cat. They had huge numbers of readers. So I changed. I began writing from Gemini’s viewpoint. I left the blog on my website, My Siamese as a blog about cats, rather than by cats. However, it didn’t get many comments. The one written from my cats view was. More importantly, it was getting seen. So I switched the other blog to my cat’s viewpoint. It too gets seen and read. Most of the cat bloggers find that writing from their cat’s viewpoint a great way to stretch their creativity. I think writing from the cat’s viewpoint also allows us to write about a subject that we love, our cat. It creates an immediate character. The events that happen can be just a diary about the daily events, told from a different viewpoint. Isn’t that a great therapeutic benefit? The events could be made up, or like something the person read. We have cats who are on their own amazing race. The race is set up where other cat bloggers send a postcard to this cat and then he goes to your city for an adventure. Another cat is a diva. She regularly converses with the stars of the day and comments on the foibles of the rich and famous. Other cats talk about more mundane lives. My own Siamese is planning a presidential run in 2008. We’ll see how far she gets in blog-land. At any rate, cat lovers seem to enjoy blogging from the cat’s viewpoint. Even the diaries on Catster.com are more generally written from the cats view. I’m not sure the percentage of cats on Catster who have diaries, but since I’ve been a member, the listing of cats increases by one to two hundred cats a day. That’s a lot of people who love their cats.

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Well it is well past update time for Taddy the Tardy Tadpole! As you may remember Taddy came to live with us in September  thanks to our granddaughter and her fishing net. Taddy has grown very large and his length has increased to 10.5 cm living on algae and pond fish food. He is comical to watch eat, he enjoys the food his goldfish friend is fed, the floating fish pellets for ponds (which is where they live in the warmer weather). Taddy grabs a pellet and looks like he is sucking it like a jaw breaker we all ate as kids. He pops it out of his mouth and then grabs it in again and sucks it. He will eat lettuce or spinach.We were getting very used to Taddy as a tadpole who was only getting fatter and longer and not becoming frog like in any way.He has a large round body and an extremely long tail.

About a week ago we noticed tiny back legs on Taddy he is starting to change into the frog he will become.
My research shows that the next stage should take 9-12 weeks and I sure hope it is the later as we need the weather to warm up and snow to thaw before Taddy can be released.

Check out The Digital Frog‘s Ecology section to learn about the frogs life cycle or visit our website here and check out the related frog links.

We have been thinking about the tank we may have to create to keep Taddy should the weather be too cold for survival when metamorphosis is complete. We need to provide a  wet and dry environment for Taddy with some room to swim around. For now the aquarium with his friend Mr. Bo-jangles is just fine. I will let you know in a few weeks what is happening with Taddy so check back.

We have  a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) living in our area and often see it hunting in the fields near the house. Seeing a Hawk in flight is an incredible sight. I love to stand and watch the hawk have fun with the air currents, soaring and gliding with an occasional dip to the ground. When soaring it will typically travels from 20 to 40 mph (64 km/h) and can exceed 120 mph (190 km/h) when diving.

The large barn on our property is no longer for farm use but offers a refuge for birds and rodents year round. Our free-range chickens like to use the barn so it is a regular spot to check for eggs. Yesterday morning our check turned up more than eggs!

The Red-tailed Hawk is an opportunistic feeder and a carnivore. It dines mainly on small mammals but will eat birds and reptiles. Prey varies between regions and seasons but usually centers on rodents which make up about 85% of the hawk’s diet. The Red-tailed Hawk primarily hunts from an elevated perch site, swooping down to seize prey, catching birds while flying, or pursuing prey on the ground from a low flight.

The Red-tailed Hawk was spotted  in the barn dining on an unfortunate Rock Pigeon (Columba livia) and was so intent on the meal that it didn’t seem to mind the quiet observation or a few photos being snapped. I have carried my camera on many occasions trying to get shots of the hawk as it sits on a post or tree on the laneway, but it always disappears before the lens cover is off. This opportunity was an amazing one for photos as the bird was so intent on its meal that it would not leave its perch and risk losing the meal it had worked hard to catch. The hawk was vulnerable while eating, but a risk it needed to take for it’s own survival.

This was fascinating to observe and sad at the same time. Nature has a cruel side with all the dependencies between species. The pigeon had to give up its life to help the hawk survive the cold winter ahead. This was possibly the same pigeon one of my hens had been picking (or pecking) on last week when she decided the barn wasn’t big enough for both of them.

The interdependencies of organisms is a fascinating subject and one we all try to teach our children to help them learn a respect for all things in nature. They learn that even the tiniest bug can help another organism survive. Visit The Frogger Club on our website for a printable version of the dependency web games from The Digital Field Trip to The Rainforest and The Digital Field Trip to The Wetlands to help reinforce this learning with your children or students. Check back for some video footage of this as soon as we can get it web ready.

      How many hours do you spend in using the computer? Seven? Eighteen? Twelve? And in these hours, how much time do you spend using the internet?  What do you do? Play computer games? Open social networking sites? Or do you make researches and other academic activities? Do you consider these activities worthwhile? Are they beneficial to you? Do you become a better person by absorbing yourself in these activities?

      Modernization has truly altered our life. One of its contributions to the society is the internet. Nowadays, the internet is vastly used by people, especially students. It helps us do our work faster and more efficiently. We don’t need to spend heaps of time searching and scanning books; instead, we just go to a website and type in a few keywords, and just like that! Our research is finished. It certainly helps us save time. It makes our projects look more presentable and professional because we now have Microsoft Office.

      But of course, the internet does not only give beneficial but also harmful effects. The internet allows people to view things that are not wholesome and pleasant to the eyes. It also provides people the opportunity to be engaged in other people’s biographies which may result to addiction or bad effects, prior to these are celebrities. The internet also provides teenagers and young adults with online games. These online games cause the improper use of money, time and effort and also cause them to be an addict.

      The internet is just another contribution of modernization that we use incorrectly. The fact is that everything is beneficial and that we, the users, keep taking advantage over it. Let us not blame the internet for these harmful effects, for on the first place, we’re still the ones that control it. Let us think twice before we overuse things so that we may not regret our doings. 

—-KOWDJEE FANTUWA