In the department of most amazing things to happen lately, our compost pile has grown a peach tree. And a cherry tree, according to the Seek app? The peach tree has baby peaches on its branches. We did not plant this tree, other than to throw a peach pit out with the compost! Stay tuned to find out if we will be eating peaches grown from a barely-tended pile of fruit and veggie scraps!
Thank you to Nana, who sent us this story about two pygmy slow loris babies born at the National Zoo on March 21. Pygmy slow lorises are a species of loris native to forests east of the Mekong river in Vietnam, Laos, eastern Cambodia, and China. They spend almost all their time in trees, hunting for fruit and insects at night and sleeping during the day, curled up into balls in tree hollows and crevices. They’re smaller than most squirrels, at six to ten inches long, and have big round eyes and patterned fur.
But as cute as they are, they’re also dangerous. Slow lorises are the only known venomous primate, secreting a toxin from sweat glands near their elbows. When threatened, they can lick the toxic sweat, spreading it to their teeth. Though very rare, a bite from a slow loris can incapacitate or even kill a human!
These beautiful nocturnal animals are endangered—habitat loss from war and logging, plus the exotic pet trade, make them the most threatened of the non-lemur prosimians (prosimians are the earliest primates, and include tree-dwelling animals like lemurs and lorises). This is why it’s so important that the National Zoo has a successful breeding program.
We’ve never seen a pygmy slow loris (and they’re no longer kept at Duke Lemur Center), so we think we need to take a trip to see these adorable babies!
Near the end of the NC State Women’s Final Four game, when it was clear the Pack would lose, Aziaha James stepped off the court just briefly. She’d played all forty minutes of the game, scoring twenty points. But in this moment she draped her arm around Coach Wes Moore, and looked out at her teammates.
They’d come so far! From unranked at the beginning of the season to the Final Four, alongside the men’s team who came in as 11-seeds and also made the Final Four. We thought she looked proud and happy, and I feel proud that the girls and I got to watch her all season from section 205 in Reynolds Coliseum. We’ll definitely be back next year!
And speaking of March Madness, check out this terrific, bracing essay by our friend Jill McCorkle on the relief of March Madness (as opposed to the political madness roiling our country and state). Jill writes,
There would be no sport without fairness and integrity; all the hard work and talents of those individuals participating would be sacrificed to a lack of respect and civility.
Imagine if the one who screams loudest--say the player parents don’t want their children to imitate, the one who rarely makes a point and commits one flagrant foul after another – is named MVP and becomes the face of Basketball. Talk about madness!
We found this hilarious guessing-game book by Kari Lavelle at the Chatham Community Library and think it’s the greatest thing since compost-pile-grown peaches. There’s even a follow-up—Butt or Face: Revenge of the Butts—that we plan to check out next.
How about you, Frog Troublers? Can you tell a butt from a face? Is your compost pile growing anything cool? Are you in the path of the solar eclipse, and will you watch it? (We’re searching for eclipse glasses but may need to make a pinhole camera viewer.)
See you next week!
I second what Mamie Buttons had to say! Bravo to brilliant, beautiful Jill McCorkle, I love you and the entire FTT family. Bravo to Buttons for reading FTT on the internet. Bravo to Belle and Bea for another wonderful edition of the FTT, Bravo to the NC State Women's and Men's Basketball teams! My love to you all! Lastly I can't wait to check out the books.❤❤❤❤❤❤
I just read FTT Live! Straight from the internet on my iPad!