The Birds and the Bees are celebrated in this week's Tidbits! Also an intersting article on Clara Barton and the first of several columns by Ron Ross with the theme, "You're Something Special."
The Neatest Little Paper Ever Read ® Display until Sep 17, 2013 Back in 1965, Jewel Akens had a Billboard top hit and gold record with “Let Me Tell You about the Birds and the Bees.” is week, Tidbits brings you a variety of facts about these creatures. • Out of close to 10,000 varieties of birds, the largest is the African ostrich, with an average height of 8 ſt. (2.44 m). is flightless bird weighs between 220 and 350 lbs. (100 to 160 kg.). It has the largest eye of any land animal, measuring almost 2 inch- es (5 cm) across. An ostrich egg measures nearly 7 inches (17.8 cm) across and weighs around 4 lbs. (1.8 kg), enough to make about 11 omelets. • A cheetah can run at speeds up to 70 mph (113 km/hr), but it’s not the fastest animal on Earth. A spine-tailed swiſt can fly at speeds of 106 mph (171 km/hr), but one bird is even faster. e per- egrine falcon can reach 200 mph (320 km/hr) as it dives down while hunting prey. e fastest bird on land is the ostrich, who can hustle along at 43 mph (69 km/hr). • e world’s smallest bird is the bee hummingbird, just a bit more than 2 inches (5 cm) in size, and weighing .07 of an ounce (1.8 g), about as much as a lump of sugar. Native to Cuba, this tiny crea- ture can flap its wings between 50 and 80 times per second. • To safeguard your home from woodpeckers, consider the reasons these creatures peck. e fast drumming by the male is an attempt to at- Tidbits tells you all about... Of Greeley, Centerra, Loveland & More! Issue 896 Listen to... Tidbits Talk Wednesdays at 8:18am THE BIRDS & THE BEES
Transcript
The Neatest Little Paper Ever Read ®Display until Sep 17, 2013
Back in 1965, Jewel Akens had a Billboard top hit and gold record with “Let Me Tell You about the Birds and the Bees.” This week, Tidbits brings you a variety of facts about these creatures.
• Out of close to 10,000 varieties of birds, the largest is the African ostrich, with an average height of 8 ft. (2.44 m). This flightless bird weighs between 220 and 350 lbs. (100 to 160 kg.). It has the largest eye of any land animal, measuring almost 2 inch-es (5 cm) across. An ostrich egg measures nearly 7 inches (17.8 cm) across and weighs around 4 lbs. (1.8 kg), enough to make about 11 omelets.
• A cheetah can run at speeds up to 70 mph (113 km/hr), but it’s not the fastest animal on Earth. A spine-tailed swift can fly at speeds of 106 mph (171 km/hr), but one bird is even faster. The per-egrine falcon can reach 200 mph (320 km/hr) as it dives down while hunting prey. The fastest bird on land is the ostrich, who can hustle along at 43 mph (69 km/hr).
• The world’s smallest bird is the bee hummingbird, just a bit more than 2 inches (5 cm) in size, and weighing .07 of an ounce (1.8 g), about as much as a lump of sugar. Native to Cuba, this tiny crea-ture can flap its wings between 50 and 80 times per second.
• To safeguard your home from woodpeckers, consider the reasons these creatures peck. The fast drumming by the male is an attempt to at-
Tidbits tells you all about...
Of Greeley, Centerra, Loveland & More!Issue 896
Listen to...
Tidbits TalkWednesdays at 8:18am
THE BIRDS & THE BEES
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tract a mate and announce to other males in the area that this is his territory. He usually chooses a hollow branch for this purpose, but will opt for a house’s gutter or loose siding. They also peck searching for insects. If you see holes in your sid-ing, you could very well have insects living in the boards that the bird found. Your siding is also an attractive place for a nest, and it’s nothing for the woodpecker to drill a hole large enough for entry. It can be beneficial to install a nest box on the side of your house or fence to keep them from pecking into the siding.
• The woodpecker has a very thick skull and a built-in “shock-absorber system” in its neck and rib cage to withstand the constant pounding.
• Filling up your birdbath today? The Audubon Society recommends a depth of about 2 ½ inch-es (6.3 cm). Any less makes it too difficult for the bird, and deeper water frightens them.
• Not every group of birds is called a flock. A group of pelicans is known as a squadron. Other unusual group names include a charm of hummingbirds, a tiding of magpies, a muster of peacocks, a conspiracy of ravens, a bouquet of pheasants, a murmuration of star-lings, and a murder of crows.
• It’s a long trip south every year for the North American Black War-bler, a small bird about 6 in. (14 cm) long, weigh-ing only 0.39 oz. (11 g). Every year, it migrates a distance of nearly 2,500 miles (4,023 km) that is covered in a non-stop flight that takes close to 90 hours. They accom-plish this by doubling their body mass as mi-gration time nears. The warbler’s average speed on the journey is 27 mph (43 km/hr).
• West Baden Springs, Indiana was the birthplace of a very famous Bird who migrated to Boston, Massachusetts in 1979. The 6’ 9” tall (2.1 m) Bird, also called a Larry Bird, played his entire basket-ball career with the Boston Celtics, leading them to three NBA championships. He was also a 12-time NBA All-Star and league MVP three times. After participating on the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team,” the Bird retired as a player and entered into coaching.
• There are about 20,000 different species of bees in the world. Bumblebees pollinate crops and plants, while honeybees produce honey from the pollen and nectar of the plants they pollinate. A hon-eybee’s wings flap at the rate of 11,000 times per minute, producing that familiar buzzing sound.
• Three types of bees occupy each colony – the queen, the worker bee, and the drone. All drones are male and their only job is to mate with the queen. Female bees are the only ones that work, collecting pollen and nectar and cleaning the hive. The queen’s only job is to lay eggs, and she can lay about 3,000 eggs in one day. Only the queen bee can reproduce and all worker bees are sterile.
• One tablespoon of honey requires the nectar of about 2,000 flowers. One pound of honey is pro-duced by 550 bees collecting nectar from 2.5 mil-
lion flowers. A typical honeybee can carry the pollen from 500 flowers in one trip.• If you think poisonous snakes are deadly, consider the fact that bees kill more peo-ple annually than snakes. Of all deaths caused by animals, bee stings rank highest, causing 75% of those deaths compared to about 5% for snakes. • The stinger on the av-erage bumblebee is .3125 of an inch (7.9 mm) long. Bees store their venom in a sac attached to the stinger. Only the female bee stings, and uses 21 muscles to accomplish this task. Contrary to popular belief, not every bee dies when it stings. Honeybees, whose sting-ers have barbs or hooks, die after stinging because as the bee tries to fly away, part of the abdomen gets caught and is ripped away. Bumblebees have smooth stingers that do not get caught in the vic-tim’s skin, enabling them
to fly away and sting again. • Back in 1985, a Virginia man named Jed Shan-
er set a world record by piling 42 lbs. (19 kg.) of bees on his body. But that wasn’t enough for this third-generation beekeeper. Two months later, he upped the amount to 48 lbs. (21.8 kg.), then fol-lowed up six years later with an astounding 80 lbs. (36.3 kg.) – about 640,000 bees – several inches thick covering his body. He missed his goal of 100 lbs. (45.4 kg.), and although he endured several stings, said, “It’s not as bad as you think.” That’s what he thinks!
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The name of Clara Barton might not be familiar to some, but her accomplishments live on through-out the world today. The American Red Cross has provided compassionate care to millions around the world during times of disaster, as well as support to the families of the members of our armed ser-vices. Follow the life of this courageous woman who founded this organization.
• Born in 1821, by the age of four, Clara was reading and spelling complicated words. It was no surprise
that she was already a Massachusetts school teacher at age 17. By 24, she had founded her own school. A few years later, she temporarily left the field to pur-sue writing and language classes at a New York col-lege.
• After completion of her further education, Clara opened another school, which rapidly grew to 600 attendees under her leadership. When the school board chose a man over her to head the school, her career took another route. Clara accepted a job in Washington, D.C. as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, the first woman to receive a significant clerkship with the federal government.
• It was during her time in Washington that the Civil War broke out. Troops poured into the capital city, and Clara began offering assistance to hungry and wounded servicemen. She campaigned for dona-tions for bedding, clothing, and medical supplies. Having always had an instinctual feel for nursing, having cared for her seriously-ill brother for two years when she was just 11, she began caring for the wounded, traveling to the battlefields.
• As the battles raged, she drove wagons to the sites loaded with supplies, earning her the name “Angel of the Battlefield.” She was a nurse, a cook, and source of comfort, reading to soldiers, writing letters for them, and offering a sympathetic ear.
• As the war drew to a close, Clara began working dili-gently to identify 13,000 of the prisoners who had
died in the legendary Andersonville Confederate prison camp and marking their graves. Following her efforts, thousands of letters began pouring in asking for her help in locating missing loved ones. Over the next four years, Clara operated the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the U.S. Army, answering over 63,000 letters, and identifying more than 22,000 men. The Red Cross’ tracing service had its roots in Clara’s activity, help-ing million locate missing loved ones over the dec-ades.
• Visiting Switzerland after the war, Clara learned of the European Red Cross effort, and upon her re-turn to the States, rallied supporters to establish an
American organization. She led the group for the next 23 years, expanding the function to disaster relief, assisting victims of a destructive Michigan forest fire as the first official project. She and 50 volunteers were the first relief workers at the site of the devastating 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood, which claimed over 2,000 lives. Her final project was pro-viding relief to survivors of a hur-ricane and tidal wave that struck Galveston, Texas in 1900, causing more than 6,000 deaths. Clara was 79 years old. She retired from the
Red Cross in 1904, and passed away eight years later. Born on Christmas Day, 1821, she died on Good Friday, 1912.
Famous Women of the World
CLARA BARTON
Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys. But instead of yelping with de-light, the little boy burst into tears.
“What’s the matter?” the psychiatrist asked, baf-fled. “Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?” “Yes,” the little boy bawled, “but if I did I’d only break them.”
Next the psychiatrist treated the optimist.
Trying to dampen his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure.
But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist.
Then he clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the psychia-trist asked, just as baffled by the optimist as he
had been by the pessimist.
“With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere!”
There used to be a street named after Chuck Norris. It had to be changed because no one crosses Chuck Norris and lives.
Reaching the end of a job in-terview, the human-resources officer asks a young engineer fresh out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “And what starting salary are you looking for?”The engineer replies, “In the region of $125,000 a year, de-pending on the benefits pack-age.”
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The interviewer inquires, “Well, what would you say to a package of five weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary and a company car leased every two years … say, a red Corvette?”
The engineer sits up straight and says, “Wow! Are you kidding?”
The interviewer replies, “Yeah, but you started it.
BEST OF LATE NITE HUMOR
Days after we invaded Afghanistan, one of my Marines found out his wife hadn’t paid the cell phone bill. He called the company and asked how he could settle up.
“You can go to Western Union and place a money order,” the billing agent told him.
“Ma’am, I’m in Afghanistan,” he explained. “We don’t have Western Unions.”
“No problem. You can also go to Walmart.”
Ronald Reagan’s favorite joke:
A couple had twin boys and they worried they had developed extreme personalities: one was a total pessimist, the other a total optimist. Their parents took them to a psychiatrist.
First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist.
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• It was noted wit Ambrose Bierce who made the following sage observation: “All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”
• When the famous “Hollywood” sign was con-structed in 1923, it read “Hollywoodland.” It was an advertisement for a new housing devel-opment and was expected to be in place only about a year and a half. The sign became such a recognizable symbol of the new film industry in Los Angeles that it has been refurbished and rebuilt as necessary for 90 years.
• In January of 2004, the Food and Drug Ad-ministration approved the use of maggots as a medical device for cleaning wounds.
• If you’re planning a trip to Laramie, Wyo., you might want to make a pilgrimage to the Ames Pyramid. At the end of a 2-mile dirt road, in the middle of featureless pastureland, you’ll find this 60-foot-tall monument seemingly plunked down at random. The pyramid was built in 1882 near a line of the Union Pacific railroad and in honor of the railroad’s financi-ers. It was thought that the monument would be a welcome distraction to railroad passen-gers traveling through the plains of Wyoming. The decline of railroad travel, however, caused many tracks to be removed, including the line that ran by the pyramid. Now only cows are left to admire this relic of the industrial age.
• The 1979 horror movie “Alien” has become a cult classic, but not many people realize that it was originally titled “Star Beast.”
***Thought for the Day: “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the 50 cents.” -- Marilyn Monroe
(c) 2013 King Features Synd., Inc.
By Samantha Weaver
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Dr. Ross is the publisher of Tidbits of Greeley. Dr. Ross is also the Voice of Tidbits Radio on 1310KFKA Every Saturday Noon - 1pm. He is available to speak at your service club or other event. Dr. Ross posts this blog each week onRonRosstToady.com. To contact him email: [email protected] or call 970.475.4829.
Who is that person wearing your skin? Where have you come from, where are you going, and what are you supposed to be doing in the meantime? In short, who are you?
Isn’t it really rather simple? After all, biologists can define you geneti-cally, psychologists can explain you behaviorally, sociologists can assign you culturally, theologians can classify you religiously, educators can measure you intellectually, employers can uti-lize you profitably, judges can adjudi-cate you legally, bankers can rank you economically, and your friends and relatives can describe you accurately, yet still you wonder who you are and why you’re here!
For the next few weeks and months we will explore this wonderful subject of YOU! Each column I write will fo-cus on a different aspect of YOU and what you’re all about and why you are so very, very special!
The series is based on one simple premise: YOU are absolutely unique. In the 10,000-year history of human-ity there has never been anyone like you before, and throughout the un-known millenniums to come, there will never be anyone like you again. Indeed, You’re Something Special!
Please join me each week as together we peel
You’re Something Specialaway the facades and confusions of daily life to dis-cover the true and marvelous you. To help us get started on the right track, I wrote this little poem.
It describes what I will be attempting to accomplish over the next number of weeks and months for both you and me.
Only You Can Be YouBy Ron RossOnly you can be you,Only I can be me,When we are who we areWe are really set free.So, let’s you and IDo all we can do;First I’ll improve meWhile you shape up you.And when our life’s doneWe’ll know we were true,I was uniquely me,You were matchlessly you.If you would like a FREE compila-
tion of this series of Dr. Ross’ columns please send him an email requesting the “You’re Something Special Compi-lation” and a PDF E-book file will be emailed to you. Email: Dr.Ross@Ron-
RossToday.com. Read more by Dr. Ross at www.RonRossToday.com.
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