Search results
Search results
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Under a Squirrel's Umbrella (for the Week of April 19, 2009)
April 17, 2009 Q. Dear Twig: I saw a squirrel use its tail as an umbrella. A. Excellent. Q. It was raining pretty hard. The squirrel was sitting there eating something. It was holding its tail up over its back. A. A scientist at the Grand Canyon saw tha ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Energy Vampire! Boo! (for the Week of April 22, 2007)
April 15, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: My brother said there are energy vampires. True? A. True. But not in a Dracula sense. In a "I'm a plug-in device like a TV set and I'll slurp up electricity even when you think I'm turned off" sense. A ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Turkey Beard? Weird! (for the Week of Oct. 19, 2008)
October 19, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: Did you know that turkeys have beards? A. Actually, I did know that. And I don't get to say that very often. Ha! Wait, not funny. The "beard" of a turkey hangs down from the middle of the turkey's chest. ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: E-cars Go! (for the Week of Feb. 17, 2008)
February 17, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: Are electric cars really real? A. Yes, indeed, they really are. They don't use any gasoline. They run on electricity from batteries — big, strong, rechargeable batteries. They hardly make a peep of sound. And they don& ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: E-cars Cleaner, Cheaper? (for the Week of Feb. 24, 2008)
February 24, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: What about the electricity you need to charge an electric car? Doesn't that make pollution and cost money, too? A. Yes. Good question. It does. It does both those things. But it seems to do a lot less of both compared ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Tire Taters! (for the Week of June 24, 2007)
June 22, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: My friend's dad is growing potatoes in old car tires. Why? How? A. It might seem weird. But, yes, you can grow potatoes in old car tires. It saves space and reuses trash. Here's how to do it. Set an old tire where y ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: To Be in Clover (or Not to Bee) (for the Week of July 15, 2007)
July 13, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: The lawn at my house has clover in it. Is that good or bad? A. It depends. It depends on if you like your lawn to have only grass in it. If you want to have honeybees around or not. And other factors, too. When I was a nymph, l ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Tree They Make Pencils Out Of (for the Week of Sept. 14, 2008)
September 15, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: What kind of wood do they make wood pencils out of? A. My feathered friend Weezerbird told me something at lunch last week. (He had grubs. I had leaves.) He said, "That place you work at [the Ohio Agricultural Resea ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Quills of Prickly Porky (for the Week of July 12, 2009)
July 12, 2009 Q. Dear Twig: Why don't porcupines stick to things? All those pointy quills and all... A. First, the quills ("kwills") on a porcupine mostly point backward. So when a porcupine climbs up a tree, for example, its quills don ...
-
Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Polar Bear Question (for the Week of Jan. 6, 2008)
January 9, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: The polar bears, remember? If the Arctic ice cap melts and shrinks, what will that do to them? A.: Bad things, it would seem. If the Arctic Ocean ends up losing the ice that it normally has in the summer (and it normally does ...