Hawk and Whippoorwill

I know some of you are interested in poetry, and all of you, if you are reading this blog, are interested in interactions between humans and other aspects of the natural world.  That is why I direct your attention to Hawk and Whippoorwill, a new (reborn?) magazine 'devoted to poems of man and nature.'  It's a real magazine, made of paper and such, so you have to order an issue or subscribe to read it.  There is also information on the website for those of you who would like to submit your own poems.

Why are ticks?

If your revulsion of deer ticks does not preclude some intellectual curiosity about them, I highly recommend this article.  It has some of the cutsie-pie-isms endemic to science journalism, but also covers most of the bases of tick natural history.  Fascinating, and enlightening.

Of snacks, bugs, frogs, and anti-freeze.

It's cold snack season around our house, and the simplest self-packaged cold snacks around are freezy-pops.  I don't know or care if that's a trademark or a generic name or one I just made up, that's what we call those little plastic envelopes of sugar water that you consume frozen.  Recently I posted that we discovered a 'sports' variety of them, complete with 'electrolytes' (what laypeople like to call 'salt') so that they taste like salty sugar water.  Not as bad as that sounds.

Just the other day, Alexis found a new species in the family, a re-branding of the slush drink ICEE.  The genius behind this take on water plus color plus sweet, is that they have found a way to keep the product slushy when kept in the freezer.  What kind of alchemy do you suppose is at play here?  Is it a clever balancing of ingredients, some unique mystery ingredient, or did they just put anti-freeze in there?  The correct answer is C, they just put anti-freeze in there. 

Fortunately, it's illegal to use the kind of anti-freeze found in car radiators, since it is notoriously poisonous.  Instead they used glycerin (called 'glycerol' by sciency types) which is non-toxic, which is a good thing, since snack food producers put it in practically everything.  It gives everything a creamy gooey texture and it's mildly sweet and colorless, making it very useful for those who are trying to sell us more 'food' by creating novel edible substances.  It can be derived from animal, plant, or petroleum sources, and I have no idea which is typically used to make food, but the safe money is that it comes from corn.

In animals, glycerin is most notable for lending freeze protection to furless and featherless creatures of cold climes.  In New England, it allows us to enjoy the company of spring peepers in February, and to see wood frogs hopping about when there's still snow on the ground.  It probably allowed for the survival of that bullfrog tadpole I found on top of the ice on a Mt. Auburn Cemetery pond; I found a hole in the ice and set it swimming lethargically into the chilly mud.  Likewise, insects which overwinter in New England produce glycerol in autumn; otherwise species like the mourning cloak might turn to fragile black ice.

Unfortunately, in ICEE Slush Bars, glycerin serves to lend a very off-putting texture to the snack.  It's reminiscent of a thick raspberry jam, or guava paste, or perhaps the roe of some exotic sea creature.  You could, if you were so inclined, spread it on toast, or make a peanut butter and slush sandwich.  If it gets hot enough, I might do just that.