October 20, 2005  VICTORIA, British Columbia (AP) — Mr. Floatie, a community activist who dresses up in a feces costume to decry the pumping of raw sewage into the waters off British Columbia’s capital, has withdrawn his name as a candidate for mayor. James Skwarok, the man inside the costume, said the city apparently took issue with his candidacy because only real people can run for municipal office. Mr. Floatie has become a regular sight at public gatherings. He passes out pamphlets drawing attention to Victoria’s practice of pumping sewage directly into the Juan de Fuca strait.

It appears the stars have aligned to make this a nutty fall. Not only have there been some really goofy news stories, but Nature herself has gotten into the act by serving up a bumper crop of nuts, particularly acorns. That’s good news for wildlife and people because living in a nutty world has some advantages.

If you walk through a southern New Hampshire woods on a windy day you may think the trees are pelting you with acorns, perhaps out of revenge for all those newspapers you read. In fact, this year’s abundance of acorns has nothing to do with you. It’s part of a long-term strategy of the oaks to outsmart seed predators, like squirrels, blue jays and bears. Oak trees and other seed producing trees have a bit of a conundrum when it comes to reproduction. The more seeds they produce, the better chance their genes will survive, but it also means more seed predators can flourish to eat their seeds. If unchecked, the trees would need to produce tons of seeds just to get a few past the tons of seed predators.  A long time ago the oaks unionized and agreed to only produce big bunches of acorns in a random number of years to keep the seed predators guessing. This built-in feast-or-famine cycle keeps the seed predators off balance and allows the long-lived trees to dominate the landscape. 

October 21, 2005  OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Lawyers for convicted criminal Eric James Torpy negotiated a 30-year plea bargain, but Torpy instead requested that his sentence be 33 years, to match the jersey number of Larry Bird. The judge said OK.

Naturalists have named these nutty cycles “mast years.” Several trees produce mast (a dry fruit crop), with common examples being acorns, hickory nuts, beechnuts, pine seeds and samara (those helicopter-like seeds from maples). Mast is critical to the survival of many Granite State animals. For example, acorns may comprise more than 50 percent of the fall diets of white-tailed deer and wild turkey. This year in New Hampshire and the rest of the New England, the mast crop has been the largest in recent years. The duration between mast years varies, but it is typically three to five years.

October 23, 2005 STEILACOOM, Washington (Tacoma News Tribune) — Middle school student James Watkins was suspended from school for three days for wearing a penis costume outside a dance at Steilacoom High School. Watkins said he was just trying to be funny, and others were laughing and having their picture taken with him.

Bear hunters have long realized that the more mast there is in the woods, the harder it is to attract them to bait stations (in New Hampshire, as well as 27 others states, it is legal to invite a bear to dinner and then kill it before dessert). The N.H. bear season ends Nov. 8, but so far this year the number of bears killed is about 25 percent below the five-year average. The reason is due in part to the availability of natural foods.  Fish and Game biologists say mast surveys (yes, they go into the woods and count nuts) have documented that wild foods are more available this year than in recent years, especially acorns. The only exception is beechnuts, which seem to be nearly non-existent this year. Other wild foods are having a banner fall, including wild apples, cherries, raspberries and blackberries.
October 20, 2005 SYDNEY (Reuters) — Australian authorities have apologized to the family of an elderly man who was given a parking ticket while he lay dead in his car in a suburban shopping center. The 71-year-old man, known to be seriously ill, went missing nine days ago and his body was found in his car in a shopping mall. A parking ticket had been placed on the car the day before his body was found.
This year’s abundant acorn crop also means more affordable housing for one small insect, the acorn weevil. This small, long-nosed insect feeds on and lays its eggs inside acorns. The white grub-like larvae emerge once the acorn has hit the ground, burrowing into the soil to pupate and emerge as adults in the spring. It’s kind of fun to sleuth out acorn weevils from a pile of fallen nuts. The easiest thing to do is to place a batch of acorns in a large bucket of water. Those acorns that float often contain insects. A bit more dramatic test that will impress family and friends is to bounce acorns off a hard surface. Solid acorns dropped from about two feet will bounce. Those that have been eaten out by insects will land with a thud. Once you have made your best weevil guess, carefully open the acorn and see if you were right.

October 17, 2005 LONDON  (Times Online) — Electronics company BT, which manufactures computer chips that store music, is creating an MP3 player that can be implanted into a woman’s breasts. It is part of a multi-tasking approach to breast implants. Sensors around the body could be linked into a system of computer chips that may also be able to warn wearers about heart murmurs, blood pressure increases, diabetes, and breast cancer. BT Laboratories’ analyst Ian Pearson said flexible plastic electronics would sit inside the breast. A signal would be relayed to headphones, while the device would be controlled by Bluetooth using a panel on the wrist. “It is now very hard for me to think of breast implants as just decorative. If a woman has something implanted permanently, it might as well do something useful,”

Nuts, in either the trees or in the news, are actually good for us.  Plentiful acorns in the woods ensure that we can enjoy frolicking squirrels, boisterous blue jays and weevil hunting. Reading stories about the nutty things people do is also good for a society. It makes us feel better about ourselves. We don’t feel as bad about the stupid things we do in our lives, because some poor sap has done something even worse—and the whole world knows about it. For good acorn viewing and collection areas check out Pawtuckaway State Park in Nottingham. (www.nhstateparks-.org/ParksPages/Pawtuckaway/Pawtuckaway.html).  To read more crazy news stories, check out page 31 or visit http://dir.yahoo.com/-News_and_Media/Weird_News/, which contains a list of crazy news sites like Chuck Shepard’s News of the Weird, the Daily Rotten and MSNBC: Peculiar Postings.