Yoda the Four Eared Cat

Gosh, I love this cat!

He’s soooo cute!

And I’m horribly allergic to cats. I would take shots for this little guy.

He has four ears. Should anything with four ears be so darling?

He must be like cuddling a little space alien or X-Cat.

Full story on Yoda here.

Bigfoot: Dead or Alive!

I’m always delighted when they come up with new Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monsters stories. They’re so charming! I also like reading about the hoaxes perpetrated mostly for kicks, like the famous Surgeon’s photo of Loch Ness or the guy who carved giant wooden feet and tromped around the California forest wearing them. I like those kinds of pranks.

Last week’s big shocker was a supposedly dead bigfoot huddled in a freezer. It does look pretty pathetic and the apparently the DNA analysis revealed nothing but human and opossum DNA. Which is, decidedly, the weirdest combination of DNA around. The article also describes an opossum as a “cat like” creature, which seems a wholly inaccurate description to me. “Giant rat” appearance seems more suitable. Bigfoot can be seen at www.searchingforbigfoot.com

I don’t see a whole lot of point to solving the mysteries, frankly. Suppose they discovered a school of unusually large sturgeons in Loch Ness that were responsible for all the sightings. How disappointing! Once you find an animal, they become simply an animal, like the gorilla or the rhinoceros. These animals were only rumored in Europe for centuries! Now we know they exist and there is definitely less excitement.

One that I find very odd is that of the Kraken. The kraken was a legendary giant squid, like the one in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I keep reading these odd things like could the kraken been inspired by The Giant Squid or the Colossal Squid? Okay, the monster is describes as a giant squid. It doesn’t have magic powers or is covered in fur or sprouts women shaped lures to tempt salty sea dogs. It’s a huge squid. Now it happens that we occasionally find the bodies of gigantic squids. They’re just like little squids, only huge. Can’t we fairly say that we’ve discovered the kraken? Of course, we can’t say that every time a rum soaked sailor spotted a giant tentacle it really was a huge squid, but come on! It’s more than a vague supposition.

Novelties and The Wicker Man

My pal Lauren had a duffle bag full of adult novelties at work today. Alas, my workplace isn’t usually so fun. She was going straight to the airport and then to throw a bachelorette party.

I’ve never seen so much wang shaped stuff and I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Boystown. She had shot glasses, suckers, bracelets, wind up toys, a stuffed monkey, themed plates and napkins, and shaped pasta.

Plans also include a wang shaped cake, which her mother knows how to make free hand.

I started thinking this was sort of odd, because while most straight women enjoy wangs, few prefer them as a decorative motif. This is pretty much the only time in American culture women come together to support the wang, ironically at a women only event.

The more I think about it, the more this resembles a fertility rite. It could be straight out of The Wicker Man. Various babes getting together in preparation to send one of their lot into marriage and surrounding her with phallic imagery.

I’m a big Wicker Man fan, not only because it’s a tense clever film but because a big part of me really feels in tune with paganism. It’s so practical!

If the crops fail, you sacrifice to the gods. If they aren’t right after that, you obviously didn’t pick the right sacrifice and need to try again. There is a direct cause and effect. I also firmly believe that if our hero hadn’t been present, Lord Summerisle would have had to have been sacrificed as was his duty and right and chieftain. It makes sense that such a dreaded duty would fall upon those who sought that power in the community.

Of course, I’m not silly enough to really believe that, but I had a strange shock one afternoon when I asked Knut a question. Do the crops come back the next year? “Of course not,” he said “the ground was wasted. Crops shouldn’t have grown there at all. Nothing would bring them back”

I guess I always assumed that the crops would return. That the perfect sacrifice was made honorably and whatever strange gods they worshipped would be appeased.

It surprises me as much as anyone.

Lightnin' Cubs!

Last night we went with our Norwegian pals Simen and Sturle to the Cubs game. The game started out beautifully. It was sunny and warm. The lads enjoyed hot dogs and tried nachos for the first time. Note to Europeans: the beer vendors won’t accept EU driver’s licenses.

The Cubs weren’t playing well, but we were enjoying it. Witness Sturle!

They called a rain delay at 7:40 pm. There was TONS of lightning. I can’t believe they didn’t call it before then, because it looked really dangerous. We were all looking at the lightning behind the scoreboard but we eventually realized it was much worse behind the press box. It didn’t look like it was going to stop so we decided to leave at 8pm. After walking past two Elvises high fiving each other (one of whom apparently then ran onto the field and skidded across the huge tarp laid over the infield), we heard this garbled announcement. Turns out they were telling everyone to leave the stands and get into the concourse.

A couple of workers tried half heartedly to stop us leaving the stadium, but we walked out and I realized they were blowing the tornado sirens. I have never heard those in Wrigleyville before. We jumped onto the Red Line and it was raining so hard and blowing so badly that water was spurting out through the crack between the doors and pooling in the floor of the car. There was lightning everywhere and the conductor must have been driving at top speed.

When we got off at Bryn Mawr, we stuck under the awnings for the first block, but the little half block to our apartment had us soaked to the skin and cringing from the thunder. About 15 minutes after we got inside, there was this gigantic fork pronged lightning bolt that looked like it hit near the Bryn Mawr station. All the car alarms in the neighborhood went off.

I’m glad we didn’t stay for those last couple of innings! They were insane to start playing again

As Fine as a Troll's Hoard

I have my jewelry class tonight and I’m thinking of bringing some of my most favorite jewelry to ask the instructor how it was made.

My favorite jewelry store in THE WORLD is in Valle, Norway. It is the home of Hasla.

We found it totally by chance. We had decided to drive through Norway from our home in the West to Oslo. In the wintertime, you have to take the highway that runs around the southern coast, but in summer, you can go through the mountains right across the center.

This is always charming because a good portion is through isolated country without human inhabitants, but lots of sheep. Farmers let the sheep up in the mountain to graze all summer long and then bring sheepdogs to round them up in early Fall to bring them back in for the winter. There are no fences and the sheep roam at will and nap in the road. They know no fear and you frequently have to stop the car and honk the horn until they get out of the way.

Anyway, after a tough morning of sheep-honking, we decided to stop for lunch just on the other side of the pass. This happened to be a tiny village called Valle.

It has a gas station, a city hall, a restaurant, a church, and a church community center. But towering about them is a silversmith in an enormous building built rather like a stabur.

Walk inside and it’s immediately clear there are masters at work. The workshop is visible through glass and the wall lined with sale cases. Hasla makes extraordinary bunad jewelry. Delicate filigree silver work is a trademark. It is beautiful, but I most love their modern pieces.

I have in particular two modern pars of earrings made in bronze. One is an elongated stem ending in four curved petals, known as their tulip design. The other is a bold twist of wires in a design the elves of Middle Earth might have admired.

They also use their bunad skills to other effects creating marvelous confections shaped like butterflies or daisies. Really spectacular.

It’s a shame, in a way. Their traditional pieces are fairly widely available, but the pieces I’ve really fallen in love with only seem available in that funny little valley.

www.hasla.no

Dogs, Monkeys, Groundhogs

This weekend’s plans:
1. Dog Beach (Knut went yesterday, met three baby Cavaliers. I stayed home because he was a little bit grumpy. Darn it!). Will attempt to wade with Colin. Colin has previously shown no interest in swimming. I’m hoping peer pressure is the answer.

2. Awesome party at Cynthia and Steffi’s. Here’s the text from the invitation:

"God vs. the Monkeys -
We're having a party! For no particular reason, although it happens to fall on the same date that the Scopes "Monkey" Trial came to a close in 1925. To honor this this original showdown between the Creationists and the Evolutionists, we'll be serving up some brass monkeys and -- for those who remain faithful to Genesis -- some sour apple cocktails. Also feel free to BYOB (the B standing, of course, for Bonobos and Bibles, though Beer is okay too).

So come over next Friday to reconnect with your inner primate and nourish your jungle roots. We don't know exactly how the night will turn out, but we imagine it will look something like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKXqqjhnOhM"

Looking forward to that! My favorite part of their parties is Knut sitting and being admired by super cute lesbians because he’s strong enough to open the hatch to the roof. It’s far too adorable.

3. Road trip to Woodstock. To Woodstock, IL not the 1969 Music Festival. I do not expect The Who to be there. Although that would be awesome! Woodstock is where they filmed Groundhog Day. It’s also the hometown of the creator of Dick Tracey. I’ve heard there’s a little Dick Tracey museum. We basically just feel like getting out of the city.

I don’t know what we’ll do on Sunday yet. Probably early preparations for the Norwegians who will be coming on Thursday. Right! I almost forgot to ask to borrow sheets and pillows from my folks!

A Work Day Fantasy

I’m not having a particularly nice day at work today, so I think I’ll lapse into a Walter Mitty style fantasy for a moment. Where would I like to be…

There is a beach in Hong Kong, not far from the worlds largest seated Buddha (not to be confused with the world’s largest reclining Buddha which is in Bangkok).

And on this beach, there is a pretty outdoor restaurant where the tables are set in the sand under a canopy. The sand is a little gritty and gray white.

The restaurant is owned by Ex Pats, so they serve bread to start with. We order seed bread packed with poppy and sesame seeds. We order Sangria. It’s clear red wine served in a small round wine glass, garnished with a stick of cinnamon and a slice of green apple.

We kick our shoes off and our toes dig like hermit crabs into the sand. We sip the sangria and nibble seed bread while the sun floats just above the horizon.

We spot another table beneath the red striped canopy. They are Englishmen dressed in traditional Indian white cotton outfits. We sneer a bit as we admire our seersucker and sundresses. The Englishmen have ordered many bottles of wine, but their inebriation is wholly cheerful.

We order grilled shrimp and crabs steamed with garlic. This is some of the freshest sea food in the world. We lick our buttered fingers and smile as the sun fades and pretty strings of miniature lanterns glow above our heads.

There’s still a bit of light so we leave our shoes under the table and take a a stroll along the tiny beach. A few children make grainy sandcastles but our attention is caught by something else. A feral cow stands on the shore, briny water lapping at its hooves. It’s furry and rather small. It wears no brand or ear tag. It will not let us touch it but is not bothered by our presence. The children jump up and we join them in chasing the cow down the beach. The cow jogs lazily along, clearly not too bothered by the game.

The sun goes on to warm the other side of the world and leaves us, the cow, and the children with only the glow of the party lights and the stars.

Daily Coyote

It's been a very busy week so I haven't had much of a chance to do a lot of posting, but I got the chance this morning to catch up on my favorite blog (besides this one):  The Daily Coyote

This blog is the work of Shreve Stockton, who is a most interesting woman.   She began by moving from San Francisco to New York, not with a U-Haul like the majority of us, but alone on a Vespa.  On her way, she fell in love with Wyoming and returned there, instead of continuing to live in New York.

In Wyoming, she encountered a motherless baby coyote and felt compelled to save him from certain death.  This blog is the story of Shreve, Charlie the Coyote, and Eli the Cat as they go through their daily lives.   It's recorded mostly through beautiful photographs.  

I'm always a little envious of people who have the ability to cast practical thoughts aside and roam at will.  Most of us are stuck in a groove that forces us to do quite reasonable things like stay in jobs we hate because we're accustomed to the money, live in areas purely because they're what we're familiar with, or stick to experiences that hold no threats for us.  The truth is that freedom is a very scary thing and too many people will trade liberation for security.

In any event, Charlie's life is one I fear stands a good chance of ending in sadness, but it is so exhilarating to watch it even from afar.

http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com

Bats!

On Sesame Street, when I was a lass, there was a purple fellow with long incisors named “The Count.” He counted things. One of his key numbers was a song that went “Batty batty bat. Batty batty bat. Batty batty bat. 1. 2. 3. Count!” The chorus was sung by tiny high pitched bat puppets. Thus a love of bats was born.

I even recall making my own bat puppet, probably using my mom’s best wool, complete with googly eyes and little teeth. Funny to think I could make a professional quality one now.

This continued into college. I still carry a trading card from a pack of cigarettes featuring a fruit bat. Someone gave it to me after a night of beer and frollicking. Later, I walked down Lakeshore Path and saw a tiny brown bat clinging to the side of the cement water building. I was admiring it and this freaky beatnik starting talking to me about the wonderousness of nature and the world—everything! I drew his attention to the bat and he said “Yeah, and the bat too!”

The pet guy who used to be on the Martha Stewart show has a pet fruit bat. I am deeply envious. He fed it grapes and explained he had no idea how old it is. It was full grown when it was given to him and that was 30 years ago!

For Halloween, Knut bought me a beautiful little bat skeleton. They truly are amazing. The power of flight, sonar, and snuggly soft fur.

Today, in fact, I am wearing a beautiful hand cast silver bat bracelet. It’s from Marty Magic. It was a princely sum 6 years ago and now even more! I’m glad she’s doing well; she has a very fine hand at minatures. I bought it in college. Perhaps on the same day I met my little bat clinging to the cement wall?

See some lovely bat photo here at National Geographic!

Ruminatin' on Roadkill

Roadkill causes the strangest behavior in people. This is my normal reaction:

1. Oh no! Look away.
2. Wait, what kind of animal was that?
3. A raccoon! Ewww… it’s all over the road! Look away.
4. Poor raccoon.

I’m pretty sure this is how most people react. Some, of course, have more interesting reactions like “Hmmm… that’s a good sized deer. I bet we could make sausage” or “A skunk?! In downtown Chicago?!”

I also can’t figure out how animals migrate to either the median or the side of the road. Possibly they retain some Schrodinger’s Cat abilities; because some are so squished they couldn’t have made it on their own. Alternatively, people wouldn’t just throw ‘em onto the shoulder. I suspect ravens might have the intelligence to move a meal to a place where they could gobble unmolested, but ravens are pretty rare overall.

(A note to city dwellers, if you think you’ve seen a raven, you haven’t. You’ve probably seen crows or grackles. Once you’ve seen a raven, you cease to mistake anything for a raven. You also giggle at tiny mysterious Goth girls calling themselves “Raven” because ravens are huge muscular threatening birds with the sort of alien intelligence in their eyes. They’re fascinating, but not in a pretty fluttery birdie kind of way.)

What’s interesting is that the above reaction occurs whenever I see something lying in the road no matter what it is. Only this morning I caught myself saying “Oh, poor coat!” and then thought “Wait a minute!!”

Whaling, Whaling, Over the Ocean Blue!

I’ve recently become aware of a Facebook group called “F*** OFF JAPAN… LEAVE THE WHALES ALONE.” This strikes me an as unusually rude (and frankly ineffectual) try at conservationism.

I’m a bit ambivalent towards whaling. Mostly because I’ve eaten whale and am not particularly enamoured of its “fish-beef” flavor. Imagine roast beef that’s gone off. They sell whale all over the place in Norway and Norwegians have a fairly active whaling industry. According to Wikipedia, Norway kills about 600 a year. Mostly they hunt Minke whales, which are pretty small for whales, but still huge. There is a skull of a minke whale in the basement of the Stavanger museum that is longer than I am tall, still drooping with dried out baleen.

It does occur to me that since each animal is basically school bus sized, you could potentially feed a lot of people with the death of a single animal. They are also not endangered. Because of its rarity, whale meat is fairly expensive and I imagine a lot of people earn a decent living off the lives of a relatively small amount of animals. This is a marked difference to, say, chickens. One large chicken feeds about 5 people so when you add up all those Sunday dinners, it’s at the cost of quite a number of animal lives.

On the other hand, whales have near human length life spans and long gestation and parenting phases. With animals that live so long, it can be difficult to correctly interpret conservation numbers. At the moment, Norway is still well within the quota of whales it can hunt, but I imagine the data can be pretty tricky to collect.

So it’s definitely not the debate over whether whaling is a good idea or not to which I object, it’s the general disinterest in information over emotion.

For instance, a few years ago MTV had an ad for Europe that showed a CGI mother and baby hump backed whale playfully frolicking while whistling Enya. Then it flipped to black with the slogan “NORWAY IS WHALING AGAIN!” I don’t think anyone hunts humpbacks, certainly not Norway, and hunting a mother with calves is a bad economic idea. It’s just a good use of sentimentality.

When I was in college, I was on the bus listening to a particular inane conversation between two classmates. It went something like this:

“Eww!! I hate lobsters! They’re like giant bugs.”

“Yeah! I don’t know how anyone can eat anything that ugly. Like big ugly bugs.”

“Yeah, but like cows are cute. I don’t want to eat them either.”

“Yeah, but like chickens are okay.”

“Yeah.”

Apparently, there’s a minimum and maximum level of acceptable attractiveness for edible animals. Despite the fact that crustaceans and mollusks are plentiful, nutritious, and of minimum intelligence they aren’t cute enough to eat. Cows are too attractive, so you can’t eat them either. I can’t quite figure out how other commonly eaten animals rank in this system. Presumably rabbit is too adorable, but what about sheep? I know snails are too ugly, but how about pigs?

I guess I just get annoyed at superficial opinions.

Media

I am convinced the media creates most of the fear in the world. I mean, if you just go along from day to day, you worry about things like getting hit by cars, leaving the stove on, or getting catching a cold from your colleagues. Watch CNN for an hour and your simultaneously worried about drought, floods, serial killers, bioterrorism, zombies, giant subterranean man eating clams, rabid gila monsters, glue sniffing teens, monogamous gay couples, and japanese long horned beetles.

Most of these are either not really a threat or strictly the kind of threat that we can figure out how to defend ourselves against, except for gila monsters and gay couples. They just want to be allowed to be themselves and live comfortable productive lives.

Which leads me to this great page!

Benjamin Radford writes great essays dealing with the slight of hand of the media, the hype, and the misinterpretation of data. He also contributes to Skeptic Magazine (look for his hilarious account of a haunted house investigation!)

The book is great, and he has several essays posted for free. Here are some of my favorites:

The Today Show's Fake 'Stranger Danger' Test

A Closer Look at Internet Predator Laws

Is Barbie Really an “Ideal”?

Predator Panic: A Closer Look

Life and Death of Peanut Men

I’ve always been crafty.

Mom is always amazed when she sees bored children since we were always investigating _something_. Jamie and I made quite excellent volcanoes in the sandbox with the garden hose (Mom built the sandbox! It’s genetic!) and Tom pretty consistently took every mechanical thing we own apart to see how it worked. I once tasted every flower in the backyard except for the dreaded deadly nightshade. Begonias are sweet and juicy. Tulips taste bitter and waxy, which is fortunate because they’re poisonous.

I also invented a weird gel by mixing white glue, washing powder, and spray starch. This had a strange gummy consistency but only stuck to itself. Very peculiar, but I recreated it several times. I believe it may have been a colloid.

I had a couple of craft books for kids (I was born in 1980, but most of the toys we played with were late 1970s) that featured kids in groovy outfits building exciting things. I can still feel the longing to create a life sized alligator out of paper mache and chicken wire, just like in the photos. They did have some smaller scale projects including peanut men.

Peanut men, or ladies, take advantage of the usual bi-legume peanut shell shape. To make, draw a little face on the upper half of the peanut shell. Add eyelashes or curly hair lines if the peanut exudes a feminine mystique. Stick a toothpick through the join of the two nuts for arms. Cut another toothpick in half and stick the two halves into the bottom shell for legs. Then find two single nut peanuts and stick them onto the leg picks. If you balance correctly (always a tricky situation for the under 10s) they’ll stand up.

I made a whole set of these on a hot summer afternoon and left them on a paper plate near the TV in the kitchen for the family to admire. The flaw here is that these people are made of delicious salted in the shell roast peanuts.

When I got up the next morning, disaster! Peanut shells and toothpick legs were spread with wild abandon. Salty carnage, the peanut men had been savaged by hungry dads during the night.

A Quick Test: Lover or Hater?

Does this photo makes you go “awww…” or reach for your bb gun? Or does it do a little of both?

I’m a little bit of an amateur city zoologist as you may have gleaned from my previous posts. I’m genuinely a little thrilled when we see rats or possums, odd as it may seem.

I have a bird feeder on the window sill in the chicken and I’ve observed some interesting birds, including:

Starlings (yuck!)
Pigeons (blargh!)
Doves (aww…)
Red Finches (AWWWWW..)
Sparrows (aww…)

And once I swear I saw a tiny falcon nestling up against the window for warmth. It was very small and had a round little face with a wicked curved beak. I’ve heard some of the skyscrapers have them to hunt pigeons. Maybe this little guy wasn't so far from his nest.

Our alley is home to raccoons, feral cats, possums, squirrels (one of whom threw a bagel at Knut’s head. Really.) and the occasional rat. We even saw a woodpecker just a few streets away!

These little guys are not from my neighborhood, however. They are, in fact, the third floor tenants in a two story house occupied by Lauren and Eli. Apparently, when the light is just perfect you can make out their silhouettes through the ceiling.

Lauren always thought they had squirrels, but a few weeks ago she heard crying on their back porch. It was a baby raccoon who was soon whisked away by its mother. She showed a photo of it around and generally thought it was the cutest thing ever.

Then they saw several on the roof and through the ceiling. They thought it was a mother and her two babies, but at this point three raccoons have been trapped and taken away and these little guys were still staring at us from the roof on the night of Eli's birthday party. I imagine they wanted some cake and taquitos.

The question is thus: are there 40 raccoons living in their ceiling? Or are they catching everyone else’s raccoons?

We had raccoons in my parents’ attic. One summer night, we were cooking outside and three little masks faces peered down at us from the roof. Their expressions clearly said “Why, yes, I would like a bratwurst.”

I asked my dad how he had gotten rid of them and he said that when it got really hot they left and then he patched the hole. It does strike me as possible we’ve got something walled up in there.

For the record, raccoons were native only to North America, although their Manifest Destiny attitude has allowed them to populate parts of Germany (from a bombed fur farm in WWII), however, you can find them in zoos in places like Hong Kong.

It’s so odd to go see a zoo animal that’s a pest at home. But, if they aren’t living in your personal attic, their antics and cleverness are really quite charming.

Urban Legends!

I woke up this morning and thought it was Friday. Then I thought it was Thursday. Now it turns out it’s Wednesday! Curse it!

Anyway, my evenings have been very busy doing some pretty cool stuff for someone of undisclosed gender who frequently reads this blog, so I can’t discuss that either.

I made a new set of bottle cap pies on Monday night (While I watched Bones! Yeah!) and I really intended them to be for my cousin Gretchen. However, less than an hour after I put them up on Etsy, they were sold to someone else. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Gretchen will get her own set personally delivered.

Now, time for Snopes! Snopes is a great website devoted to Urban Legends. I can’t imagine how hard the web keepers must work to keep it going because it’s always full of new legends and rumors. It’s a terrific resource when you get those constant forwarded emails filled with dubious information.

I love reading Jan Harald Brunvand’s urban legend books, but whereas he can really only deal with classic urban legends like the Spider Nest in the Beehive, Snopes stays up to the minute.

If there’s an article on Barrack Obama NOT being Muslim, I know a few people in the office who ought to read it.

One of their nicest features is the photo gallery.

How about a test? Which of these photos are real?

Click the link below to find out! Links go to the relevant Snopes.com page

True or False? Click to Find Out!

True or False? Click to Find Out!

True or False? Click to Find Out!

True or False? Click to Find out!

Mushroom Mania!

I am not hunting Smurfs in this picture. I was never very clear on what purpose Gargamel had in mind for them.

In fact, I never knew this mushroom existed in reality before a few years ago!

It’s very prevalent in fairy tale illustrations, Christmas decorations, and, of course, as Smurf domiciles. However, I always thought they were strictly a flight of fancy. I should have known, too, because I spent a childhood obsessed with fungi. There’s a certain area next door to my parents’ home that sprang up a lovely crop of white toadstool after summer rains. I’d harvest these mushrooms, smush them into paste and pretend to feed them to my stuffed animals. I did this sort of thing with a great variety of garden plants—tulips, berries, begonia leaves, horse chestnuts, etc. I was always careful to avoid the nightshade growing all over the back fence because my father assured me it could kill little girls.

Naturally, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned just how poisonous most of the other plants I played were. How on earth did I survive into adulthood?

Anyway, these cute little guys spring up all around Northern Europe. In Norway they’re called “fluesopp” or “fly mushroom.” Knut tried explaining that people used to think they were the source of fly larva? Who knows? Their caps can grow to about the size of a spread hand and they’re generally jolly and cute. They’re also exceedingly poisonous. Knut informs me that Vikings used to take a tiny nibble just before battle to fuel their berserker rages. Apparently they trigger some sort of nasty hallucinogenic reaction—not for recreational use! As a result, Knut and I referred to them as “insanity mushrooms.”

Because I was so taken with them (Norway is an awesome source for fungi. We used to go on fungus walks in the Fall.), I had to show them to any Americans who visited. No one else knew they really existed either!

My mom still refers to these as “insanity mushrooms” which makes it very amusing when we shop for Christmas ornaments.