Word: rodent
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...There was a time in my primitive past when I dealt with mice by setting out the ancient instruments of death - the medieval cheese-baited mouse-whackers that terminate the hungry midnight rodent like the Inquisition nailing a Cathar. In bed, I would hear a trap going off in the middle of the night: THWACK! A little extinction in another part of the house. In the morning, I would dispose of the carnage...
...directly in the face, and I am astonished at a hard, still, appraising look in his eyes, which reminds me of the fixed gaze of a magazine editor I once worked for (a man whose evolution, it must be said, ran rapidly in the other direction, descending toward the rodent stage...
RATTED OUT Forget the mystery surrounding Robert Blake's wife. The real puzzle plaguing Los Angeles is how the official "traveling bear" logo, below left, featured on California's welcome-center signs, morphed into the unidentifiable rodent-like creature, below right, on three city signs. Caltrans, the agency in charge of the state's road signs, says it has "no idea where the graphic came from" but vows to replace them all with the good old iconic grizzly bear, at a cost of $4,000 each...
...rats in question were fed a low-fat diet until they reached what can best be described as "rodent puberty" - at which point they were all given a very high-fat meal. (Sort of the rat equivalent of freshman year at college). The rats whose blood showed a very high incidence of triglycerides (i.e., fat) after the meal were the same rats who became obese...
...much of the fascination is in the rodent-like life of the island's defenders, who live underground in tunnels that riddle the granite hills. Everywhere partly obscured metal doors lead to steps down narrow, intermittently lit passages with an oddly clammy warmth. Some carefully managed routes surface beneath concrete emplacements prettily enshrouded in bougainvillea. Other tunnels meander for kilometers to hideouts set in cliff sides, where you can gaze through slits in the concrete across waters dotted by fishing boats at the not-so-distant shoreline where other tourists stare back...