Scroll to the bottom of the page for this fable from China.

Thieves (Les Voleurs) with Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil is somewhat confusing, as the story is told out of sequence. The young woman everyone is lusting for seems neither lovable nor mentally stable.

But the acting is wonderful, Auteuil is an old favorite, and it is interesting to see how Deneuve is aging. With grace.

Leftover chicken and a salad made for an unexciting dinner.

Elephants in parts of India go after the rice beer brewed by inhabitants, sometimes with disastrous results .

Rotting berries attract birds of all kinds, which then blunder into windows. When the pyracantha berries reach a certain stage in the fall, local birds descend on the bushes, and the loud thuds of their bodies plowing into our windows becomes a frequent occurence. Most recover after having the stares for a while.

How the quest for ripe fruit - neither underripe nor overripe - by primates led to the distillation of spirits in modern life.

Can you catch something that comes in on little cat feet? It works in Nepal .

Some animals can eat the toad without ingesting the toxin. How they do it is described here . The toads consider lavender beetles a treat, but something in the beetles kills the toads.

Another item that will not make it into the food triad competition: cane toad .

Mandy Barnett, I’ve Got a Right to Cry .

If you live in the Bay Area, it seems as if spring has packed its bags and gone to Tahiti or Cancun.

The little mantis lost its grip on the fruit fly, and is probably enduring taunts about its skinny body. I think it might have the last word.

One day, the nymphs will be bigger. The biggest is about 1/2 inch long.

My breakfast this morning was not a candidate for the food triad mentioned earlier. The options were eggs, oatmeal, or peanut butter mashed with a banana. Eggs sometimes upset my stomach. Some days, I cannot face another bowl of oatmeal. But pb, banana, and V8 make an unholy trinity.

In a recent study , heavy drinkers (25 drinks per week) imbibed less when treated with kudzu extract.

No side effects from the kudzu, other than a tendency to wrap around telephone poles and any other free-standing structures (just kidding).

The old plan was to periodically toss out old prescription drugs. The new plan is to give them to people who otherwise could not afford the drugs they need. Some states already have programs in place. Others, including California, are looking into it.

Determining the sex of a baby porcupine has never been easy. But now, thanks to DNA technology, it’s a piece of quill, um, cake.

According to this report , many Americans curtail their activity due to a fear that they will fall and injure themselves. Because they become sedentary, their muscles weaken, and they actually raise their chances of a bad fall.

In a earlier post, I mentioned the balance belt that won the MIT Entrepreneurship Competition this year. If a person wearing the belt begins to fall in one direction, they would feel a vibration in the opposite direction, thereby correcting their balance.

He makes creatures from unusual combinations of materials, and enlivens them with movement. In one work, a pale pink fish-like object of silk, crystal, and silicon glides about in an aquarium. Another is draped in sequins, glitter, and a python skin, and dances to jazz.