Tattler avoids drowning

It’s quiet, sunset, low tide. Chains click on old bicycles along East Cliff drive. Monterey Bay is gray-blue, flat, and greasy straight from the open Pacific to the power plant stacks at Moss Landing. The smell of krill scales the cliffs and washes over the old wooden benches where longboarders contemplate their rides. There’s only [...]

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Grasshopper takes on chickens

They’ve tried mass culling, plasmid-based reverse genetics, and the mysterious production of great numbers of eggs for making flu vaccine. But in the fight against avian influenza, or bird flu, the gloves are now officially off. Jackie Chan has gotten involved. The World Health Organization, the U.N. and UNICEF developed a public service announcement in [...]

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I’d like a small island without so much rat in it

Invasive species are a major problem in our modern world. That’s because we’re generally happy with the way things are and less happy when some vagabonding drabcoat like a starling or a wild pig or even a smallish purple thistle moves in and starts carpeting the place. Also, frequently enough, the invaders got a lift [...]

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Idyllic backyards tremble as mutant grass busts out of the golf course

It’s happened, just like the hippies said it would. A genetically modified grass has drifted off an Oregon golf course and hybridized with some closely related local grasses more than two miles away, New Scientist reports. The grass, called creeping bentgrass, is a kind popular with greenskeepers for its ability to form short, dense mats [...]

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Grouse season nixed; dukes to starve

A shortage of red grouse on British moors is leading to plans for cancelling the 2006 shooting season this year, for the second year in a row. At present, it’s not clear what England’s landed gentry will do for their suppers. And what will they do for the rest of the day, for that matter? [...]

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