Features (Creature Feature)

Article - Creature Feature; by by Rose Anderson - 12/22/11

This Week’s Creature Feature

A Hound’s Jolly Humbug!

As I decked the halls with boughs of holly I put a Santa hat on this dog to be jolly. When down to the dog park we went to play, The strangest things my dog had to say! Santa Hat, for who? Not me! I won’t wear it! I’m a dog you see! All I want is to bound and play And your holiday cheer gets in my way. Barking and howling, he became quite a yelper For he’d have no part in being Santa’s little helper. His head he shook with all his might Removing that hat with...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/15/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... It’s Not Just...

Arsenic additive accumulates in poultry, soil and us

It’s not just chicken feed; it’s arsenic as well that fattens chickens in their short seven-week lifespan from egg to market. The chicken we love to eat fried, sautéed, roasted and broiled contains traces of the poisonous element. That’s one finding of a new study commissioned by the Maryland General Assembly and done by the University of Maryland’s Harry R. Hughes Center for Argo-Ecology in Queenstown. Arsenic in any of several formulas is added to...

Article - Creature Feature; by Diana Beechener - 12/8/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Give a Wild Gift...

Hang a gift on the National Zoo’s Enrichment Giving Tree

Grateful for the wild things that enrich your world? Choose a wild gift from the Animal Enrichment Wish List to hang on the Smithsonian National Zoo’s Enrichment Giving Tree. Speaking for the animals, zookeepers and researchers have asked for toenail clippers, bubble machines, natural-colored feather dusters and shower radios with CD players. Lest you worry that next year the lions will want iPads, understand that every item on the Zoo’s Wish...

Article - Creature Feature; by Diana Beechener - 12/1/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... A Tentacle by Any...

What to call a giant octopus?

The National Zoo’s new giant Pacific octopus will pick its own name, but suggestions from local kids are welcome. The zoo asks invertebrate enthusiasts ages five to 15 to submit their favorite name for the rapidly growing cephalopod. The only hitch is that the zoo isn’t sure if the octopus, now the size of a grapefruit, is a boy or a girl yet. So you may want to stay away from suggestions like Ralph. “We’re thinking it’s a...

Article - Creature Feature; by Rose Anderson - 11/24/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... The Animals of the...

Your gift makes room in the inn, warmth in the stable

The Christmas story tells us that animals made the only warmth in the stable where baby Jesus was born. If animals have also warmed your home and your heart, making a gift to the animals may be the right way for you to give back this season. Especially because so many animals nowadays lose their warm homes because their owners no longer have the means to afford their pets. The SPCA of Anne Arundel County shelters, feeds and cares for up to 4,000 animals a...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 11/17/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Almost Time for a...

As temperatures and food supplies drop, mammals hunker down to hibernate

Seen enough of the groundhog, which experts, admirers and detractors alike agree was the Mystery Creature who so fascinated Bay Weekly readers? Good thing. Because whatever you call him, her and them — groundhogs, woodchucks or whistle pigs — these omnipresent neighbors are ending their season above ground. “Groundhogs are especially fat at this time of year, in preparation for a long winter’s sleep,” writes John Taylor of...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 11/10/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Mystery Critter,...

The saga continues, but the jury is still out

You never know. We never know, either, what’s going to catch your eye, invade your thoughts and, best of all, goad you to action. This week it’s the mystery critter. Which, you told us, may not be so mysterious after all. We have been chuckling at your responses all week. They came short and with certainty: The critter is a groundhog, wrote Linda...

Article - Creature Feature; by Margaret Tearman - 11/3/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Can You Identify...

Neither nutria nor porcupine, it’s a stumper

Bill and Martha Sykora have a regular visitor to their yard on Broad Creek in Annapolis, but who it is they don’t know. New to the neighborhood — they moved in May — they aren’t familiar with local wildlife. Martha had never seen anything like this visitor, so she grabbed her camera. “The fuzzy photos taken thru my second-story window are of the critter in question,” she tells Bay Weekly. “It is the size of a very short-legged cat....

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/27/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... The Northern...

This invader transforms from trick to treat

Since 2002, when the northern snakehead made its Chesapeake debut in a Crofton pond, it has been nothing but trouble. The pond was poisoned and drained. The species set up housekeeping in the Potomac and its tidal tributaries, whence it could eventually migrate to the Bay. After all that trickery, who’d expect the snakehead to turn into a treat? Yet the snakehead now is attracting fishermen, chefs, seafood marketers and gourmets. ...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/20/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... A Happy Cow Is a...

Maryland Grazers hope to clean up the Bay getting cattle farmers to switch feed from corn to grass

Cows in the Bay watershed will live happier lives grazing at their whim in green pastures rather than confined in cells and fed a diet of corn. Their comfort is so good for the Bay and for farmers that it has earned the Chesapeake Bay Foundation a $200,000 grant to extend its three-year-old Maryland Grazers Network to more farmers in more places. The Grazers Network is one of 55 bright ideas on reducing pollution to local waterways and the Chesapeake Bay...