A creature that is fragile, shy and virtually harmless. Is that any way to describe our horror image of the vicious tarantula of movie fame? Yes it is because by and large these spiders are timid creatures. Although they are venomous there is no reliable report of the venom killing any human.

When tarantulas mate it is more like they are dancing the tango. Their front legs touch and then she sidesteps with him following. He caresses her and gradually face-to-face they entwine their front limbs together. The tango continues with the male hooking his front legs over her fangs and with his second set of legs bends her backward. Then the moment arrives when he reaches under to transfer his sperm into a furrow in her mid section. Because a female may kill her sex partner after the dance is complete the male quickly scrambles out of reach of her legs.

Although the sex dance is intricate and charming these creatures don’t do much but sit and wait as predators. They can’t leap or construct intricate webs or ensnare an insect with silken threads. No, they just wait for the next passers by and attack the unsuspecting one in its path with their venomous fangs.

Tarantulas can live to more than 20 years and grow to the size of a dinner plate which is too big to stomp under foot like a regular spider. But they aren’t the gargantuan scary size as seen in the 1955 film Tarantula. In this scary flick a hundred foot tarantula crushed houses and eats cattle.

No wonder the tarantula has developed an undeserved reputation when in reality it is such as shy and virtually harmless spider to the human race.

Wyoming is an Indian word, but it is not from the Shoshone or the Arapaho, which are the local Indians. It is from the language of Delaware Indians, who named Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley. The name means “big river flats” and is a fitting one for this state that has a series of dry basin floors between the Continental Divide.

This is state is a natural cathedral of endless prairies and mountains and in the far northwest corner of the state the sudden majesty of the Tetons borders the grandiose of all parks, Yellowstone.

There are no big cities in this state to write about since the entire state is a population of 501,242 according to the Census Bureau as of 2003. Cheyenne, Wyoming is the largest city.

Between the sage brush in the center of the state there are gas wellheads and pipeline stations. Just by drilling a water well one can hit gas and discover a blue flame from their faucet. One story which may be more fiction than fact tells of a man lighting a cigarette in his cellar and blowing himself right outside to the open spaces of Montana. Although coal is under 55 percent of Wyoming the greatest area for coal is the Powder River basin. It is estimated that at a site owned by ARCO about a ton a second is mined. Every day they can fill up eight or nine trains with each train being a mile long.

The major event of the professional rodeo circuit is Cheyenne’s “Frontier Days”. This is the frontier that in the 1800’s, great trappers such as Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, and the famous Kit Carson, made fortunes trapping beavers for pelts. Cheyenne’s “Frontier Days” represents those days of Wyoming history and their major event in that commemoration is the professional rodeo circuit which ranks this event as their most important rodeo of their season.

The world’s smallest hitchhiker is the lowly flea. This is a parasite whose main goal in its short life of a few weeks to a year is to find a host and hitchhike. This microscopic creature performs this feat through the use of antennae and bristles sensitive to vibration, heat and air currents. The carbon dioxide of a passing host as it is exhaled also helps this hitchhiker.

In order to cling to its host who attempts to reject him by being attacked with tooth and claw the flea is armored with clinging power. They have living burrs studded with bristles and combs. They can maneuver between fur hairs because their bodies are flat from side to side. They have a blood-siphoning tube which is a saw like lance that penetrates the skin. Some fleas are permanent hitchhikers sucking whenever hungry and others hop on to other hosts.

While on the host the female chigoe flea of South and Central America as well as Africa expands from the size of a pinhead to the size of a pea in eight to ten days filling with eggs. If a male is in the proximity of her and mates hundreds of eggs she releases will be fertile.

There are more than 2,400 species and subspecies. The majority live on mammals with a few living on birds. Fleas are categorized according to their movement patterns: sedentary fleas, stick-fleas and mobile fleas which we know best.

The rabbit populations of Australia and Europe in the 1950’s were almost exterminated by the flea. The mosquito transmitted the viral disease from Australia to Great Britain.

Man is the best host for the mobile flea because we have clothing allowing the flea to hide. The fleas seem to prefer women. Perhaps they have a hormone that attracts them. Further study of this hitchhiker of mankind will have to determine their preference for this gender.

3M began in 1902 with the intent of mining mineral deposits to be used as an abrasive for grinding wheels. The mining did not pan out and the company moved to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1910. Their new flagship product was a waterproof sandpaper. This met success in automobile manufacturing since this type of sandpaper did not cause dust.

There second major product was the invention of masking tape in 1925. This was the first of now a long line of Scotch® Pressure-Sensitive Tapes. In the following years new research developed the Scotch® Cellophane Tape for box sealing which is now and extensive line of Cellophane tapes.

Post it ® notes was a solution waiting for a problem. The formula was made to put sticky glue on the back of a piece of paper that could be taken on and off of a surface. It was Art Fry who while singing in the church choir noticed that his bookmark would fall out of his hymnal and he would lose the page. He tried using this new sticky note product and the world now has found countless additional uses for this new product named Post it® notes.

Today 3M, is an $18 billion diversified technology company with operations in more than 60 countries and serve customers in 200 countries. They have dominant positions in consumer and office products , display and graphics; electronics and telecommunications, health care, industrial, safety, security and protection services and transportation

3M is one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average and also is a component of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

America’s birth as an independent and lustily growing young nation took place when Boone was in his prime, and events of the country’s early life are intertwined with his. Daniel Boone (1734-1820), was a famous American pioneer and frontiersman who blazed the Wilderness Trail and founded Boonesborough, Kentucky.

In 1769, Boone blazed the first known trail from North Carolina to Tennessee. Boone spent the next two years hunting and exploring in Kentucky, where he was captured twice by Indians and escaped both times.

One myth about this first hero of the frontier is that he wore a coonskin cap. He was a Quaker and preferred the wide brimmed beaver that Quakers wore.

Boone represents the frontiersman– a strong, silent figure moving swiftly through virgin timber, sighting a deer, felling it with one shot of his flintlock.

Daniel married Rebecca Bryan, by most reports a tall brunette, who was to be his wife for 56 years. Of her ten children, two were killed by Indians. She could mold bullets, shoot a flintlock, and skin a deer.

A contemporary relates that after one long absence hunting and exploring, Daniel returned to find a new child in Rebecca’s arms. She confessed that one of his brothers was the father. Well,” Bone reportedly replied, “If the name’s the same, it’s all the same,” and he loved the child as his own.

To the end of his days, he hunted and trapped the western reaches–some say he went as far as the Yellowstone country. Rebecca died March 18,1813, and Daniel lived 85 years. He lived his last years with his children.

In 1807, John Colter of the Lewis and Clark expedition walked through the Yellowstone and Grand Teton region. It is nearly 200 years later and one can walk this region and view in wonder almost every species he would have seen. 18 species of carnivores including wolves, black and grizzly bears, 7 species of hoofed mammals, 22 species of rodents, and more than 300 species of birds not to mention the 900 species of flowering plants.

The two worlds of summer and winter in this magnificent region require the migration of animals and birds. Migrations are a necessary requirement for these species to survive the two worlds of winter and summer. Hawks and humming birds may migrate as far as Central and South America.

The Grand Teton National Park is on an expansive 310,000 acre tract of managed nature that covers from the Rocky Mountains to the valley of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Geysers such as the famous Old Faithful which one can set his clock by and mud pots and river valleys make up this awe inspiring part of the world.

The birth of this magnificent scenery began about 13 million years ago which was a time of violent earthquakes that eventually created the Teton range. Glaciers more than 12,000 years ago carved the canyons and formed steep peaks the highest of which is the Grand Teton over a mile above the flatlands. The myriad forms of wildlife continue to reform the scenery with their grazing, nesting, birthing and hunting through this treasured landscape.

Without the companionship of the moose, magpies swans and so many others the scenery would be beautiful but a lonely place for humans to come to. Take out the sounds of ducks in the rivers and the trilling of the blackbird and an integral part of this beauty is lost.

Snowglobes are a wonderful Christmas present and they are so easy to make. You’ll need a circle of wood; the size depends upon the size of the globe you will be using. You can use a globe which goes to a light fixture, found at a hardware store, or you can use a clear glass bowl from a store which sells dishes or from a craft store. The wooden circle should be about 2-3 inches wider than the mouth of the bowl. Decorate your wooden stand the way you want: you can spread glue, then artificial snow, then a Christmas tree with presents under it, or you can place a tiny train set on the wooden piece, but however you decide to make it, be sure that you have enough room to put the bowl over the top without damaging the scenery. Glue the bowl to the wood with wood glue, hot glue or white glue, which should be as white as dental veneers.  Allow to dry, then decorate the portion of the globe where the bowl meets the wood, by surrounding with pine branches, pine cones, small bells, or whatever you select.

Additional ideas: Place strands of gold beads around the wood piece where the glass meets. You could also place berries, tiny gifts, or drapery tie-back cord in gold or silver.

Scenery: You can put in small, snow-covered houses, paint the wood silver and place mini ice-skaters or an glue an L-shaped picket fence with various size trees lining it.

Bamboo, the giant grass is the world’s most useful plant. Many of its botanical cousins: rice, corn and Kentucky bluegrass may have a few uses, but it is bamboo that has been the raw material to fashion implements in peace and war. No growing plant has so many varied uses as bamboo. There are well over 1,000 uses for bamboo.

Bamboo has given man the tools to work with, instruments to make music, toys to divert his children and weapons with which to fight his fellow man. Bamboo provides us with paper, a stylus to write with and a brush to make ink line drawings.

No other living think grows to tall in so little time. The commonest bamboo of Japan called madake grows almost four feet in 24 hours. Plants range in size of field grass to giants of 120 feet and a foot in thickness.

One peculiarity of bamboo is that it flowers only at long intervals of 30,60, or even 120 years apart. Once it flowers the bamboo dies. The grove can survive because the fallen seeds will take root but the grove now takes time to regrow.

The Chinese were the first to appreciate the beauty and usefulness of bamboo. They learned how to split and glue bamboo which gives it a strong, slender and springy usefulness. This application makes it a fantastic fishing rod that can cast an artificial fly a great distance even against a breeze.

Europeans import bamboo from China and use it in horticulture, as supports for tomatoes, melons, hops and fruits. Scandinavia imports it for ski pole. And to marked the borders of roads, buried under snow and is used in furniture making.

In India, bamboo is used in place of steel as reinforcement for concrete. It is laminated with plastic under pressure to make building walls, windmill blades and boat hulls. It replaces steel bolts in construction. Paper of many kinds from heavy brown kraft to fine coated printing stock is made in India. In fact, 66 percent of all paper used in this country comes from these useful grass.

The Japanese utilize bamboo for decoration. Baskets, flutes, bows and arrows, plant pots, pipes, boxes, benches, chairs, flower stands, dolls, scarecrows and garden fences are created from bamboo in Japan.

On June 6, 1925 with the remaining assets of the Maxwell Motor Company, Walter Chrysler founded the Chrysler Company. In order to compete with the many brands that General Motors had, Chrysler founded at the medium high end the De Soto brand and at the low end was the Plymouth. The Dodge Brothers automobile company was purchased. By adding the Imperial in 1955, Chrysler now had five brands of cars to meet GM’s five brands.

Chrysler has been on a financial roller coaster throughout its years. The Airflow models of the 1930’s was not well accepted and it was the Plymouth which was not an Airflow model that got them through the depression years. The first wind tunnel ever created was used to develop these models but they brought Chrysler down the financial roller coaster when the models did not sell well.

Through the 1940’s and 1950’s the only innovation was the recessed headlights. Other than these headlights it was a quiet period without new automotive ideas from this company.

In 1955, the development of the forward look brought them such classics as the 1957 Plymouth and the Imperial. However, over production and quality problems brought the company down financially.

In the 1960’s they produced muscle cars namely the Plymouth Barracuda, Plymouth Road Runner, and Dodge Charger. These models were racing successes at NASCAR and their engineering image improved.

Around 1970, a devastating gas crisis plummeted the sales of larger cars and trucks made by Chrysler. With no strong compact lines as back up Chrysler in desperation to avoid bankruptcy petitioned the United States government for $1 billion dollars in loan guarantees. The loans were approved.

They invented the minivan of which Chrysler brands are still in the forefront and the development of a few innovative cars allowed Chrysler to repay at a fast pace the loans by the early 1980’s.

In recent years, the PT Cruiser has caught the imagination of many and has improved sales.

The Cayman Islanders enjoy a standard of living among the highest in the Caribbean. With no direct taxation, the Cayman Islands is a thriving offshore financial center. More than 40,000 companies were registered in the islands as of 2000, including almost 600 banks and trust companies; banking assets exceed $500 billion.

The three islands–Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman together contain only about a hundred square miles of land. That would make the area 1.5 times the size of Washington, D.C.

The seas here is clear as gin. There are miles of virgin reefs, spectacular coral canyons, abundant underwater wildlife. The green moray eels are a tourist favorite. There are countless school of fish and all are so accustomed to humans that tourists feel very comfortable viewing and touching the fish.

The island of Grand Cayman was severely damaged in a near-miss by the Category Five Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, destroying many buildings and damaging nearly all. Power, water and communications were all disrupted

Christopher Columbus became the first westerner to visit the Cayman Islands on May 10, 1503 and named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there.

The Cayman Islands remained largely uninhabited until the 17th century. A variety of people settled on the islands: pirates, refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, shipwrecked sailors, deserters from Oliver Cromwell’s army in Jamaica, and slaves. The majority of Caymanians are of African and British descent, with considerable interracial mixing.