Celebrity Cobra Takes Manhattan

It didn't take long for that cobra that's missing from the Bronx Zoo to become a beloved national celebrity.

The cobra's Twitter feed is boffo, with over 100,000 followers,  and all the late night comics are talking about him.

On Twitter, our cobra is reporting on his successful tourism gig through the Big City: "I'm leaving Wall Street. These guys make my skin crawl." and "Does anyone know if the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle sells organic mice?"

There's already a lot of cobra merchandise, including the lovely coffee cup pictured in this post.

I know cobras are dangerous, but based on his  Twitter account and the snarky comments from late night comedians, the cobra would be a lovely companion on a tour of the Big Apple. I figure if I just keep feeding him mice, he'd leave me alone. (I have a huge supply of field mice in my tool shed, and I'd be glad to donate them to the cause)

This all will probably end either badly or boringly. I hope the cobra is alright. I also hope he really is enjoying himself. Because there's not many things worse than a crabby cobra.

Have a Scary Easter

Easter is coming up in about a month, so tis the season for tacky plastic eggs on trees, Peeps exploding in microwave ovens and kids overdosing on chocolate bunnies.

A very, very sketchy Easter Bunny

Those bunnies. If you think about it, it's strange. A holiday that features rabbits hiding eggs for children to find. Just bizarre. Easter, if you ignore the religious part, is a much stranger holiday than Halloween, if you ask me.

In that spirit, I give you the web site Sketchy Bunnies, a great, fun time waster showing dozens of pictures of Easter bunnies that you dare not go near.

Why do we terrify innocent children with creepy men dressed up as giant rabbits, or Santa with whiskey on his breath, or wild-eyed clowns staggering menacingly around playrooms? I still have nightmares about Bozo.

The Sketchy Bunnies site seems to add more pictures daily, so you can check back to see which Easter Bunny is the scariest of them all.

Searching For Even Worse Weather Than Vermont's

It's spring, and it snowed a bit in Vermont this morning. And weather forecasters are threatening the Green Mountain State with a possible big snowstorm on Friday, April Fool's Day.

A snowstorm in Burlington, Vermont earlier this month

It's already been the third snowiest winter on record in Vermont, and there's still snow on the ground. So the snowy weather forecast has been met with the kind of general dread you get when told the person coughing in the crowded, stuffy room you're in has both typhoid fever and bubonic plague.

At times like these, I go in search of places that have even worse weather than Vermont, just so I can retain a bit of smugness and schadenfreude

I'm happy to report I've found a pretty amazing, scary video depicting weather more horrible than here. Watch, below, the lovely, sandstorm weather in Kuwait last Friday. So far, no sandstorms are in Vermont's forecast, but that could change.

Overreaction Patrol

In my never ending quest for examples of people who overreact just a teensy bit, I give you my latest two examples

Ricardo Jones, upset over a Taco Bell
price increase

The first incident hit recently when the price of a Beefy Crunch Burrito at a Taco Bell in Texas went up from 99 cents to $1.49. Customer Ricardo Jones, 37. was so displeased with the price increase that he fired an air gun at a restaurant manager, displayed weapons, and had a three hour standoff with police, according to the San Antonion Express-News. 

Apparently, he was trying to order seven Beefy Crunch Burritos, so Jones faced a price increase of about $3.50. Too much for him. Talk about driving a hard bargain.

In the end, he lost out, because he never did get his Beefy Crunch Burritos, and now has all these annoying legal expenses and possible jail time to deal with.

Still, it was nice of Jones to at least try and strike a blow against inflation, anyway.

Meanwhile, in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Isaiah Doyle maybe did not help his case as a jury weighed whether to impose the death penalty on him for killing a convenience store clerk in 2005.

He told the jury, "If I had an AK-47, I'd kill every last one of y'all without remorse," according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. 

As for the store clerk he killed, Doyle told the court, "The only reason she was shot four times is because the gun jammed. Otherwise, I would have emptied the gun in her (expletive deleted) head."

A jury imposed a death penalty on Isaiah Doyle
after he said he'd like to kill them. 

This of course is a terribly sad case, in that the convenience store clerk's family is still devastated.

The jury opted to impose the death penalty, no surprise there. Defense attorneys are seeking a new trial, saying Doyle is mentally retarded.

He's something, all right.

Butterfly Dreams

"Excuse me sir, you have a butterfly on your butt,"

The remark came from a boy, about eight years old, who alerted me to that very problem Sunday afternoon.

A butterfly on a child's hand at the Montreal Botanical Gardens

The explanation is I was at the Montreal Botanical Garden's Butterflies Go Free event, which continues until April 25, in case you're interested.

It hasn't been much of a spring so far here in Vermont.  It's cold. The snow hasn't melted away like it often does by the end of March. The ground is frozen rock hard. The only spring beauties that have appeared around my house is a few pathetic, shivering crocuses crowding up against the sunny, south side of my house.

So it was off to Montreal, in part to find warmth, fragrances, flowers and tropical plants at the botanical gardens.

A flower enjoys sunshine in a Montreal Botanical
Gardens greenhouse.

The gardens are a photographer's paradise. The place was filled with camera toting families who probably collected a million Kodak moments in one day. Especially in the greenhouse with the butterflies.

The exhibit features hundreds of free-range butterflies flitting around a greenhouse filled with fragrant, colorful plants. I'm so winter-starved that I thought I'd died and went to heaven when I was in there.

A butterfly on a flower Sunday at the Montreal Botanical Gardens

I especially liked a particular kind of large butterfly. It was brown and somewhat dull, with markings on its wing looking like a huge eye when the wings were closed. The insects would then open their wings revealing a tropical blue surface that took your mind immediately to a tropical island paradise.

There were hazards of course. Both the butterfly and I survived the butt encounter the boy pointed out. "Sweet nectar," my companion, Jeff, said sarcastically at the incident.

Unusual flowers at the Montreal Botanical Gardens,

You had to watch out underfoot. Sometimes a butterfly would set down in your path, and I don't know if the Botanical Gardens shoot guests who kill their butterflies by stepping on them. Also, children scampered about, chasing butterflies, sometimes without looking for other hazards, like my leg or my camera lens aimed at a butterfly who refused to settle down and pose like a proper model.

Luckily, the Montreal Botanical Gardens survived my visit intact, which really is quite a feat. To the best of my knowledge, none of their plants wilted under my steely gaze, and I know I didn't knock any plants over. Which for me is quite an accomplishment.

Deck Demolition

Darlusz the frog supervisers my
deck railing demolition

"What you do, dat noise, da pieces of wood all over. You make da mess," Darlusz Zabagaiski told me as I stood there, axe in one hand, claw hammer in the next. "You look like you murder somebody. I hope you no hurt me."

As readers of my blog at www.mattalltrades.wordpress.com know, Darlusz is the big brown frog made of plastic and resin that lives here and comments on my comings and goings. He believes he is my muse. He's nosy, but I don't mind because in the summer he consumes some of the mosquitoes that plague the boggy woods around my house.

As he always does, Darlusz was watching me work. I was starting to demolish the ugly, rotting wooden railing around the deck near the front entrance of my house.

Darlusz tottered on top of the railing I was destroying, seeing how his balance is

"Careful, I don't want you falling and breaking another foot. You still haven't recovered from that fall at Thanksgiving," I said, pointing to his bandaged front foot.

Darlusz  was looking doubtful about my work, and I could tell he needed more explanations from me.

"This will look better eventually. The railing is in the way. I'll have a garden in front of it, and we'll build  some seats. We can sit out here in the summer and enjoy the flowers. You can be my bug control guy," I said.

Darlusz brightened at that. He's been missing the big juicy insects we get out there when it gets warm.

I cut the railing demolition short though. After I knocked down about a third of it, I decided I didn't want to wrestle through the remaining snowbanks to get the rest of it. The railing demolition will have to wait.

Darlusz and I both want spring to arrive.

Um, Interesting Disaster Theories

A (very) few commentators say this tsunami was God's
punishment against atheists in Japan

The sober among us usually have pretty logical explanations for disasters that befall the world.

The Japanese earthquake and tsunami had to do with plate techtonics. Hurricane Katrina's destruction came from, well, a hurricane, plus maybe some inadequate levees. Terrorists are to blame for the 9/11 attacks.

These explanations don't stop people with more, um, interesting theories as to what caused some of the world's catastrophes over the past decade or so.  It seems God hates us for not hating certain people, so he unleashes traumatic but photogenic disasters upon us.

The Web site Jezebel has put together a nice timeline of offbeat theories behind major world disasters from the past ten years or so. 

As you can see in the list,  abortion providers, gay people and atheists seem to be the cause of many calamaties. I wonder if any members of these blamed groups do any of the heavy lifting.

Abortion doctors, like 'em or hate 'em, don't seem to have the skills to spin up hurricanes. Most gay and lesbian people I know don't have the strength to shift plates in the earth's crust to set off earthquakes.

The list indicates God is clearly in cahoots with these groups. See, he's punishing the world, or at least some denizens of the world, for accepting the fact there are gay people, abortions, atheists and the less-than-devout.

But what of the collateral damage? Seems these disasters kill, along with the heathens, some people who don't like gays, atheists, etc.  What gives? Is God clumsy? Or do the victims of the collateral damage go straight to heaven, where they help God plot future disasters.

Inquiring minds want to know.  So I can begin cowering in the basement.