Word: skittishness
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...fault and made doomy jokes about it; it is like having a violent beast in the basement, knowing that one day it may burst up through the living-room floor. But there is no preparation for the moment. Only certain animals feel premonitory vibrations undetectable to humans. They grow skittish. Horses glare with a wild panicked...
...area the size of Israel. In the mid-1960s, 40,000 elephants thundered amid the scrub thorn, acacia and baobob trees. Last year's aerial survey spotted only 5,363 live elephants in and around the park, and 2,421 carcasses. The survivors are skittish creatures, often clustered in fear and quick to flee at the scent...
Some analysts are encouraged that investors have been going back into the market slowly and cautiously, in comparison with the mob scene in mid-1987, which made everyone skittish and panic-prone. That is not the mood this time around -- at least, not yet -- and markets rarely hit their peak until all types of stocks are overbought, professionals become exuberant, and even small investors are snapping up stocks with abandon. Peter Lynch, manager of Fidelity's $11.5 billion Magellan mutual fund, recalls that "in the summer of 1987, torrents of cash were coming at us out of money-market funds...
...years before last summer, there had been 233 such fires, which consumed a modest 34,157 acres. But the policy became increasingly controversial last July and August as the fires and smoke repeatedly drove tourists from the park. This, in turn, made federal officials in Washington as skittish as yellow-bellied marmots on the lookout for hungry eagles...
...City on the stage with his 1987 Turandot. When Zeffirelli's designs turned out to be too big and expensive, Gianni Quaranta, Zeffirelli's set decorator on several films, was engaged instead. Quaranta has conjured up a storybook Nile replete with towering statues, colorful friezes and a couple of skittish horses to pull Radames' chariot during the Triumphal March. Employing the two-tiered hydraulic stage lift a la Franco, Quaranta triggered the evening's longest ovation by gratuitously transforming Amneris' private chambers into a huge public square. Such technical sleight of hand was novel when first used back...