Turkey vultures spotted on a hike in San Diego’s Mission Trails Regional Park lead to a small feast of collective nouns for turkey vultures. A group in a tree can be a committee, a venue, or a volt. In flight, it’s a kettle, and when feasting on...
Books for sale, books for free, and wisdom passed down through the ages. Libraries aren’t just repositories for books — they’re often a great place to find gently used volumes for sale. Or you can always visit a “little free library” — a...
Kirby in Deer River, Minnesota, an agriculture science and Future Farmers of America advisor, asks whether ruminate as in pondering comes from the cud-chewing done by ruminants. The image fits, but the figurative language is older than modern farm...
jumps n.pl.— «You look down again and the water’s boiling all around you. And you begin to see the culprits: white bass. They’re murdering a school of baitfish, and those baitfish are going airborne in a frantic attempt to escape. The scene...
wet-brain drunk n.— «They dropped pills into my mouth from several inches away as if feeding a baby bird, and even the wet-brain drunks wouldn’t come near me.» —“Me and My Girls” by David Carr New York Times July 20, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued...
shark rodeo n.— «Shark-feeding is not illegal in the Bahamas and several local dive operators have, for many years, been safely conducting what are commonly known as “shark rodeos,” where dive guides feed sharks. I have taken part in numerous such...