Don’t forget to send in your personal photos (MAXIMUM TWO), preferably doing something characteristic or interesting, and with a short caption. You may include a cat in your photo, but don’t send it separately!
Howie Neufeld is a professor of biology at Appalachian State University; I met him when I gave a talk there a few years ago. And he sent this photo and caption:
Last month I attended the Botanical Society of America meeting in Tucson. Took the family and made it a vacation also. This is me in front of an organ pipe cactus at the Sonoran Desert Museum, one of the best natural history museums in the country. By the way, my student won a best poster award at the meeting. She was very excited about that, as was I.
Very nice…that cactus must be centuries old. Maybe not?
I see your shorts match perfectly. 🙂
Properly dressed for Tucson in winter or summer. That’s a big organ cactus.
Lovely, Professor Neufeld ! Serious query:
does one within such a “m u s e u m” encounter
as well as cacti, say, rattlesnakes ? or no ?
My living in an area quite free of almost all
venomous serpents, I likely ‘ld be all garbed
up within long, long pants and sleeves cuz
… … well, worried in re same !
Blue
The Desert Museum is amazing. If in Tucson, it is a must see.
Thanks Howie, and congratulations to your student!
I’m a-gona get me a hat like that!
Idn’t that particular one the bomb, Mr rickflick / Dr Neufeld !
I concur ! Is that, perhaps, a Tilley hat ?
been through a few washes and guarandamnteed
for your lifetime ?
Blue
Kind of a prickly fellow. The cactus, I mean! 😉
You’re the FCG [to code it a little] Howie! I like your photo reports of The High Country which is how come I know you as FCG. “F” is my favourite too, but not so colourful in my post-industrial Midlands, UK.
I love that “museum” (more like a botanical garden and zoo combination). It’s where I learned the significance of the forked tongue of snakes and lizards. Following a “scent” trail (or is it taste?) they get two samples separated by an inch or two, then bias motion toward the side with the stronger signal. Simple, elegant and effective. Ain’t evolution wonderful?
IIRC (from Western films?), Native Americans accused the white man of speaking with “forked tongue.” I guess saying one thing but meaning the other unspoken thing.