PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

THE PEACHFRONT CONURE FILES
MY KENYA DIARY: IN QUEST OF EAGLES
MADAGASCAR DIARY: SERPENT-EAGLES, GOSHAWKS, AND MORE
TROPICAL STORM BILL CRUSHES OUR HOUSE LIKE A BUG PHOTOS
Hurricane Katrina Disaster Recovery and Photos
A Very Partial Index to the Entries
BIRDS***BIRDING***WILDLIFE GARDENING
SF/BOOKWORM***NUCLEAR/SPACE
POKER *** BLACKJACK*** TRAVEL
a donation is never required to read my site, but any you care to give will go to the bird food fund

photo copyright © 1987 by Elaine Radford, all rights reserved

100 things about me

Read this before you email me for the first time. Personal mail only. No spam. No mean people. If you can't say something nice, I'm not interested.

Recent entries
some death-defying species from madagascar, my death defied and her extinction defied, yeah both in one trip - 2009-08-11
the borg - 2009-08-10
appearing soon in your hometown - 2009-08-10
tweet - 2009-08-09
don't be talking about me in front of my face, yall - 2009-08-06

By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets.

A bibliography of my published books and stories.

Here's my card-counting FAQ.

Visit my original website but I recommend putting pop-up/banner blockers on first.

A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the localroger diary.

Visit Peachfront's Cookbook, for recipes that are fast, cheap, and good. A work in progress.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill blog by Mark Bittner about feral Cherry-Headed Conures in San Francisco.

rats versus logic

2003-03-09 - 11:32 a.m.

The rat is dead and disposed of. We are leaving the traps in place in case there are any others.
When I was a child, we were taught the now largely discredited theory that predators controlled the population of prey. We now know that it's the other way around: Prey controls the size of the population of predators. In years gone by, I would be flabbergasted that my yard could be simultaneously overrun by cats and by rats. These days, I have come to terms with the fact that this is just the way it works. The populaton of feral cats could not continue to expand in winter, without helpless baby birds and fledglings to prey upon, if they didn't have an alternate food source -- in this case, the rats which seem to go through a four or five year cycle of being a nuisance and then disappearing from notice and then gradually expanding until they are a nuisance again.
The whole process still seems counter-intuitive, though.
Hummingbird note: Adult male Ruby-Throat.

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All Rights Reserved, Copyright © 2002-200- by Elaine Radford