ALL THE REST —  May 26, 27 & 28
  

Amphibians and FROGS

Red-Eyed Tree Frog


The red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas) of Central America, could well be the world's most popular tree frog. Its spectacularly beautiful colors could well be the reason for its celebrity. This frog is clad with a neon green back, blue striped flanks, cram colored underside, orange toepads, and blood red eyes. The species was identified by herpetologist Edward D. Cope in 1860. He named the frog from the Greek word kallos - which means beautiful and Dryas - which means wood nymph.

This gentle, inquisitive looking creature's picture has appeared on many magazine covers, T-shirts, sweatshirts, umbrellas, coffee mugs, shower curtains, jigsaw puzzles, and numerous other items. It is the logo for a chain of restaurants. It has become a symbol for the drive to save the rain forests, which are disappearing at the rate of 1 1/2 acres each second.

This beautiful frog lives high in the trees of the Central American Rain forests. It may live as much as fifty feet high in the trees. It descends to the ground in the rainy season at dusk, to breed in ponds and temporary pools. The female is attracted to the chock-chock mating call of the male, repeated at 8 to 10 second intervals. The female, larger than the male, will carry the male on her back while she walk or climbs to a suitable site to lay her eggs. The female will deposit a clutch of 50 to 100 eggs on leaves that overhang ponds. When the eggs hatch the larvae will fall into the water. If a tadpole accidentally fall on dry ground, they can flip themselves into the water with their strong tails.

Sources for the Amphibian - Frog series include:

Encyclopedia of Reptiles and Amphibians - Editors: Dr. Harold G. Cogger, Dr. Richard G,.Zweifel, Academid Press
Frogs - Text: David Badger, Photography: JohnNetherton; Voyageur Press
Groliers Encyclopedia
Microsoft(R) Encarta(R)
Encyclopedia Britanica

A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
Proverbs 17:22 (NIV)

"What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable."

Joseph Addison

 

Two childhood friends grew up. One was a devout, religious man who prayed everyday. Unfortunately, things didn't work out for him. After forty years of hard work, he has nothing to show for it but a big family that scrapes by. The other was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy who went to Las Vegas and hit the jackpot. For the last forty years, he has been living the good life in his huge mansion with a bevy of bikini-clad girls around him. Needless to say, he has never once set foot inside a church.

The religious man looked around his tiny apartment and prayed, "Lord, what did I do to deserve this fate. I prayed to you faithfully, all the time just asking for small favors. My friend never even talks to you, yet look at him. He seems to enjoy life. Lord, what happened?"

The Lord answered, "That's because he has never nag me in his entire life. You, on other hand, have been bugging me for the last forty years!"

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Noticing a man has fallen asleep, the preacher called the deacon aside and ordered him to wake up the man.

Replied the deacon, "You put him to sleep. You wake him up."

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Pastor, after surveying the day's collection: "The best way for the government to help the church is to stop printing one dollar bills."

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Original Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.



Modern American Version

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, and ABC show up and provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable house with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Then a representative of the NAAGB (the National Association for the Advancement of Green Bugs) show up on Nightline and charges the ant with "green bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It’s Not Easy Being Green." Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News and tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan summers, or as Bill refers to it, the "Temperatures of the 80’s." Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the "back of the grasshopper", and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share." Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act", RETROACTIVE to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday afternoon between 1:30 and 3:00 PM when there are no talk shows scheduled. The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he’s in which just happens to be the ant’s old house crumbles around him since he doesn’t know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant’s food, they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in America.

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Did you hear about the pregnant bedbug?
She had her baby in the spring.

Why couldn't the flower talk?
It's problem stemmed from not having two lips!

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Then there was the farmer who didn't realize he was growing crops on a former nuclear test site.

Everyone who ate his produce came down with atomic ache...

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TRUE FACT ...

Humans begin laughing at two to three months of age. Six year olds laugh about 300 times per day, while adults laugh from 15 to 100 times per day.

SOURCE: NYT, Dr. William F. Fry, Stanford University

The chess tournament winner received a check.

Daily Miscellany Comics

Have A Great Day !

Phillip Bower