The City Mouse in the Country

In the new TV show Fallout there is a great line.  " The Golden Rule of the wasteland is thou shalt be distracted by bullshit every single time." I've never played the game it is based on but the picture shows the two newest distractions in my life.  We have taken care of our former neighbors barn cats since he moved out nearly a year ago.   Long story short the mama cat gave birth in his barn that we we given access to.  We found four little black long hair kittens and decided to take them, as it would probably be the only time we would be able to catch them.   Much to our surprise after a day or so the mama came over and started to milk them laying on our kitchen floor.  She's comes in, feeds them and then goes back outside.  Once they are mature enough to have them fixed we are planning on doing so and then they will go to a good home.   That's the plan...but plans have a tendency to change as one or two of them are findi...

  This is a true story.   Years ago when I was a young man studying Evolutionary Biology as part of my teaching degree; our professor told us this story.  His professor at the time walked in, dropped the textbook into the trash and said something to the effect of " The discovery of complex life developing in deep sea vents changes everything we thought we knew." In other words....the biologists at the time were surprised to discover multiple colonies of complex animals with completely different biochemistry living in a very hostile environment, at that time it was believed that only small organisms evolved in the extreme temperatures and high pressure of the deep sea vents.    Suddenly there were advanced forms of life (worms and crabs) whose biochemistry was unlike any thing else on the planet.   Evolution, at least the way it was understood at the time, changed.   This story has stuck with me all these years because it teaches a v...