Beaver kills man in Belarus

Beltane                                                                            Early Growth Moon

I read this breathless title and clicked through to see what was going on.  The article refers to it as one of several animal attacks turned deadly.

Posting this because it illustrates wrong use of language, you know, like War on Terror.  How much different would your reaction to this be if the article had this title:  Beaver defends self against human attack.

These paragraph are about three-quarters or more down in the article:

“The fisherman, who has not been named at the request of his family, was driving with friends toward the Shestakovskoye lake, west of the capital, Minsk, when he spotted the beaver along the side of the road and stopped the car. As he tried to grab the animal to have his picture taken, it bit him several times. One of the bites cut a major artery in his leg, according to Sulim.

The man’s friends were unable to stem the bleeding, and he was pronounced dead when he arrived at Sulim’s clinic in the village of Ostromechevo.

He is the only person known to have died from a beaver attack in Belarus.”

 

Glad They Didn’t Name It After The Titanic

Beltane                                                             Early Growth Moon

Asteroid 1998 QE2 to Sail Past Earth Nine Times Larger Than Cruise Ship

“On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2 will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon.” nasa

 

Local Bees Raise the Roof

Beltane                                                                     Early Growth Moon

The bees have taken a second hive box, which means the queen has laid sufficient brood in the original box to sustain move into second story accommodations.  In caring for bees the American way it’s all about air rights.  The aim is to build up and up and up, putting on a third hive box for a colony you expect to over winter, then honey supers as far up as the little darlings will climb with their honey.

The more honey supers filled, the more honey to harvest.  The third hive box, twice the size of a honey super is for honey storage necessary to overwinter the colony.  Anything beyond that is superfluous to the colony’s needs and can be safely harvested.  That’s one of the wonderful aspects about beekeeping, nobody gets hurt.  Sort of like dairy cattle, I imagine. Well, I did get my first sting of the season today, but other than that.

Here’s a video I discovered that shows the immediate effect of planting corn seeds coated with Bayer’s neonicotinoid pesticides.  Note that this is this month and in Minnesota.  Here’s a link to a Mother Jones article that talks about this problem.