June 3 2021 - Egyptian Plagues and Australia

 

You know those websites attempting to take a contemporary perspective on an ancient religious story.  Here's today's.   How do the ten plagues apply in contemporary times? "When Pharaoh persisted in his refusal to liberate the children of Israel, Moses and Aaronwarned him that G‑d would punish both him and his people. And, indeed, God sent the ten plagues, one after the next, until Pharaoh conceded." from chabad.org  What are the plagues? Water turning to blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and the killing of firstborn children. I didn't pursue the headline's story - how the plagues apply.  I was more interested in how they could have occurred in quick succession.  Time Magazine had an article with the possible theories of how the series of events might happen. They are volcanic eruption, red algae, and climate change.   So I wonder about the mouse invasion in Australia. This plague's specific causes are given as last year's abundant grain crops, followed by a mild wet summer which allowed for excessive breeding.  There have been lots of mouse plagues in Australia's history.  The first was recorded in 1872 and then every few years there's a plague somewhere - that's from the Wikipedia entry on mouse plagues.   Here in Canada, I've been unaware of Australia's circumstances.  That changed with the Weather Network'spictures and headline: "Australia's 'cannibal' mouse infestation could be followed by a snake plague."   Here are more headlines: Aussie Mouse Army 'Marches on Sydney' Biblical plague of mice and snakes panics rural Australia ... When will the mouse plague end 'You can't escape the smell': mouse plague grows to biblical ... If you think the snakes in Australia are bad, wait until you see ... And then? This reference:  Gerard Dallow from a Sydney-based organization called Micropest who told nine.com.au that "snakes are likely to follow" the rodents, potentially leading to a spike in their population numbers.  Australia is home to 100 species of venomous snakes.   There are articles of snake invasions in past years so this would be a worry in Australia.  What could follow the snakes? The other plague I found is the 'spider plague' caused by historic flooding in March 2021.  The AccuWeather article quote: "Lowe added that there are no more spiders than usual, but people are just seeing more of them, especially since most of the spiders seeking shelter are ground-dwelling."  He then went on to say there could be an increase in specific types of spiders because of the rains. I am feeling lucky to be in Canada - with our worst-case scenario of mosquitoes in the summer.    This is one of the Ringling Museum miniature figures for today's picture - giving encouragement to the Australians in their time of difficulty.

Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Message in a Bottle

Just a few months ago, the world's oldest known message just got older.  It is almost 132 years old - thrown into the sea as part of a German oceanographic experiment in 1886.   The bottle was found in January by a Perth, Australia family walking on a remove beach in West Australia.  The previous record was 108 years old.  The note had faint writing and the name of the ship, Paula. They took the find to the Western Australia Museum, and the message was researched with colleagues from Germany and the Netherlands.  They found an archival record of Paula's meteorological journal, recording that a drift bottle had been thrown overboard.  They matched the handwriting on the journal and the message in the bottle.   These were experiments to track the ocean currents.  Thousands of bottles were thrown overboard in the 69-year German experiment.  Six hundred and sixty-two messages were returned.  The last German message in a bottle was found in 1934 in Denmark. There is one listed as longer than these - 151 years found in 1935 in Japan. There are questions whether this is authentic-  the couple's intentions had been questioned, but so far the evidence confirms authenticity.  Here's the Youtube video. Messages in bottles have diverse intentions - from scientific experiments tracking ocean currents, to distress calls, to memorial tributes of deceased loved ones, and invitations to imagined and past love interests.  The message in a bottle has been with us since Grecian times.   Scientific bottles are designed for the purpose - they are formally named  'drift objects' and provide information about currents to help researchers develop ocean circulation maps.  The U.S. Coast Guard launched bottles as recently as 1966, and started using them in 1846.  A low percentage are recovered.  It is thought to be less than 3 percent overall.  Recovery rates decrease as bottles are released further from shore.  A rule of thumb is that bottles released more than 100 miles from shore have recovery rates below 10 percent.  Wikipedia has the list of long-duration (>25 years) events involving messages in bottles HERE. We look at the fleeting flowers of spring - these are Ranunculus in the Sunshine Express Greenhouses.

Eels vs Peaches

It's a train day today!

This is a layout in Australia when we visited the narrow gauge show in 2009. It was in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney.  We also saw the Louisianna Layout at that show.  It is now on permanent display in the Orlando Museum, along with the Sundance Layout.  You've seen pictures from both of these wonderful layouts. 

Parramatta is a very old town - founded in 1788.  Its name is interesting.  It means 'head of waters", "the place where eels lie down" or "eel waters".  The Parramatta Eels Rugby League chose their name from this association.  We in Grimsby named our hockey team the Peach Kings.  Do you think the eels would triumph over the peach kings? Perhaps by name alone.

A Bit of Darwin

I was looking through the pictures from our 2009 trip to Australia for some garden images to enter in a contest.  I found this image of a sculpture in the Sydney Botanical Garden that is inscribed with Darwin's words.  Darwin visited this garden on his travels.  This was a celebration in 2009 with the mirrored sculptures forming the name Darwin, and were a celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species. 

Charles Darwin's observations of Australian floral and fauna during his visit in 1836 formed a key part in the development of his theory of evolution through natural selection and his subsequent publishing of Origin of Species.