Friday, June 20, 2008
Beating the Odds
During my growing-up years on the farm, cotton was pulled by hand, one boll at a time, thrown into a long ducking sack attached to the body by a strap at the shoulder, dragged down the dusty row until it weighed from 70 to 100 pounds, lifted onto the scale for weighing, then hoisted into the trailer and emptied. If I really worked at it, I could pull 400 pounds per day, but that seldom happened.
When I married into a family that owned a mechanical boll pulling machine, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The stripper was attached to the front of the tractor just outside the front wheels that ran between two rows of cotton stalks. Long tines something like a pitchfork pulled the cotton bolls and dead leaves off the stalk, which were rolled backward by augers and then blown into the trailer through a tall spout. Heavy green bolls fell into a box at the bottom of the spout.
Husband Harry drove the tractor, of course, and my job was to arrange and tromp the cotton as the trailer filled. Trying to avoid the blown cotton, trash and dust kept me moving occasionally from one side of the half filled trailer to the other, using the pitchfork to steady myself, and I was thankful my inexperienced kids didn't have such a dangerous job. Suddenly the tractor stopped at a small ditch just as I raised the fork. Out the front I flew like a witch with her broom. I could have hit the sharp spout, the metal boll box, the trailer hitch, the tractor wheel, the deadly tines of the pitchfork, the tough cotton stalks, or perhaps on my head, breaking my neck. Instead I landed on all-fours in the soft dirt. Not a scratch.
Just luck? Who knows? But with odds like that, maybe Vegas would pay better than farming!
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
When I married into a family that owned a mechanical boll pulling machine, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The stripper was attached to the front of the tractor just outside the front wheels that ran between two rows of cotton stalks. Long tines something like a pitchfork pulled the cotton bolls and dead leaves off the stalk, which were rolled backward by augers and then blown into the trailer through a tall spout. Heavy green bolls fell into a box at the bottom of the spout.
Husband Harry drove the tractor, of course, and my job was to arrange and tromp the cotton as the trailer filled. Trying to avoid the blown cotton, trash and dust kept me moving occasionally from one side of the half filled trailer to the other, using the pitchfork to steady myself, and I was thankful my inexperienced kids didn't have such a dangerous job. Suddenly the tractor stopped at a small ditch just as I raised the fork. Out the front I flew like a witch with her broom. I could have hit the sharp spout, the metal boll box, the trailer hitch, the tractor wheel, the deadly tines of the pitchfork, the tough cotton stalks, or perhaps on my head, breaking my neck. Instead I landed on all-fours in the soft dirt. Not a scratch.
Just luck? Who knows? But with odds like that, maybe Vegas would pay better than farming!
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Feather Mites
How Do Mites Know When the Feather Might Fall?
All birds have a tiny arthropod called a feather mite that lives in their feathers. These mites are a symbiotic organism, which means that they benefit the bird they live on and are benefited themselves by the birds. Feather mites eat oil and fungi, thus cleaning the bird and keeping the bird healthy. In return, the mites get both a place to live and a regular supply of food.
The complication in this arrangement is that once a year, the birds molt, shedding their feathers so that new ones can grow. If the mites were to stay on a feather being molted, they would ultimately die from the process. Spanish biologists studying this phenomena discovered that feathers about to be shed were free of mites. Before the feathers are shed, the mites get off and concentrate themselves numerically on feathers that are not shed. The question is “how do the mites know when the feather they are on is about to be shed and it is time to move?”
In a study of 63 songbirds in 13 species, all of them showed this capacity. The mites were able to pick up vibrations generated when the feathers to be shed begin loosening in the bird. This is another case where trial-and-error seems to be an unfortunate proposal. An error would be fatal, and so the mite would fall off when the feathers do and another trial is not available.
When God designed living things, he planned down to the shedding of feathers and for those organisms dependent on the feathers. These behaviors cannot be a product of the organism’s reasoning, but they can be the result of an infinite Intelligence that planned all aspects of the organism’s existence.
—Reference: Natural History, February 202, page 18
—John Clayton, Dandy Designs, September/October 2003
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
All birds have a tiny arthropod called a feather mite that lives in their feathers. These mites are a symbiotic organism, which means that they benefit the bird they live on and are benefited themselves by the birds. Feather mites eat oil and fungi, thus cleaning the bird and keeping the bird healthy. In return, the mites get both a place to live and a regular supply of food.
The complication in this arrangement is that once a year, the birds molt, shedding their feathers so that new ones can grow. If the mites were to stay on a feather being molted, they would ultimately die from the process. Spanish biologists studying this phenomena discovered that feathers about to be shed were free of mites. Before the feathers are shed, the mites get off and concentrate themselves numerically on feathers that are not shed. The question is “how do the mites know when the feather they are on is about to be shed and it is time to move?”
In a study of 63 songbirds in 13 species, all of them showed this capacity. The mites were able to pick up vibrations generated when the feathers to be shed begin loosening in the bird. This is another case where trial-and-error seems to be an unfortunate proposal. An error would be fatal, and so the mite would fall off when the feathers do and another trial is not available.
When God designed living things, he planned down to the shedding of feathers and for those organisms dependent on the feathers. These behaviors cannot be a product of the organism’s reasoning, but they can be the result of an infinite Intelligence that planned all aspects of the organism’s existence.
—Reference: Natural History, February 202, page 18
—John Clayton, Dandy Designs, September/October 2003
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
