A Thousand Years a/k/a The Virgin Flora and the Second Coming, and the Third, and the Fourth, and the Fifth, and the Sixth, and the Seventh, and the Eighth.

It has been a thousand years, sweet blog.  I am very, very sorry to have neglected you for so very long.  It's just...the longer I went without typing, the more I felt I had to prove when I did type.

Fortunately, some news has inspired me to do a blog post.  Hooray!  I promisepromisepromise to type more once my grad school apps are in.  Extra promise.

O - want a new picture of me, blog?  Here you go:

Now there's something you won't be seeing in Indonesia, not with me, at least.  Not that I'm planning on going to Indonesia anytime soon.

O, blog, were you wondering what is up with birdflu these days?  That's a tough question to answer.  Things are going on, but they're...hazy.

Say, did you hear the one about the mallards?  So, these few thousand mallards, they go to die at this creek in Idaho...and then they die there.  All of them.

byebye, duckies

The article says that the ducks:

"likely were exposed to a single contamination source and gathered at the creek, their mutual roosting point, to die."

Isn't that just the saddest "a few thousand mallards" joke you've ever heard?

I believe they are blaming it on a fungus.  It would be odd for it to be H5N1 for many reasons, two of which being a) H5N1 doesn't usually get the ducks - they tend to carry and spread it, and b) none of the other birds in the area were affected.

Now, on to today's most awesome story - The Virgin Flora!  Flora is a Komodo dragon who is expecting seven baby Komodo dragons.  Flora is a Virgin.  It's that time of year, I suppose.  So, get ready for the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight coming of you-know-who, possibly in...DRAGON FORM!!!  Have you been naughty?  Have you been nice?  Might wanna get on that.

And - can you believe it - Komodo dragons come from Indonesia!  I told you something is up with that place.

Here's the link:

And the angels said, "Wait - that thing?"

If anyone starts to see Flora in their toast, or on window panes or in melted piles of chocolate, please let me know asap.

I do apologize for my facetiousness, and will expound on parthenogensis, as well as superfecundation, some other day.

I have one issue with the article -  the story's headline says "Virgin dragon prepares to give birth."  Perhaps I need to contact them re viviparous vs ovoviviparous vs oviparous.

If you're reading this, you're most likely of the viviparous sort of creature, which means that your mommy made you by keeping you inside of her until you were pretty well developed.  Then, she gave birth, at which time you came out into the world and started breathing and screaming and everything. 

The Virgin Flora is oviparous, i.e., she lays eggs which are hardly developed at all.  The eggs develop on their own and then hatch, and the baby Komodo dragons start breathing and growing all sorts of nasty bacteria in their mouths and everything.

O.  There's so much more.  It's really been too long.

I learned today that hippos can outrun a person.  I mean, I knew they were tough, but I didn't know that they could run that fast.

Here's a good article, courtesy of the LA Times.  It involves hippos and drug lords.

hippos are way tougher than drug lords

I must away to my secretarial duties.  Next time, maybe I'll have something exciting to say re H5N1.