‽Bros

Because birds excrete pasty uric acid with their stools rather than urea in urine as we do, this component of their waste may be white in color when dry, and spread in a pool around the solid waste. In the case of these pigeons, the color of the solid waste was green, a factor influenced by the color of their pellet diet. You may see how the underside of the cage papers display a sort of watercolor created by the pooled uric acid carrying pigment with it from the accompanying stool.

What could go wrong?

models: Josie, Oliver, Patrick

Laura’s boyfriend of nearly a year has only seen her wear pants once.

During her junior year of high school, Laura began to “phase out” pants in favor of vintage dresses. By age twenty, she had eliminated pants from her daily wardrobe entirely.

Today, she estimates her collection at 120 dresses.

Laura’s reasons for dress-monogamy center around the inferiority of pants: how they smell, how they can make you smell, how the shirts they necessitate do not flatter the bosom, and how they end before the “stomach pouch” (“which women are supposed to have,” she adds).

Laura’s other friends who wear dresses wonder why they do not get as many complimentary comments about their clothes as she does.

“There is an answer,” says Laura, “And the answer is color.”

Some of her friends swear that they only look good in earth tones.
“Earth tones really look good on no-one,” says Laura. “They’ll say, ‘No, my skin tone,’ or ‘No, my hair color,’ but most people could look good in colors if they’d try.”

Is there a secret message here? All theories accepted via manila envelope.

“You want a medal? You’ll have to grow a mustache first.”

How she loathes her husband! His incessant watering has driven her to water her liver with Whisky.

Her distress is evident-

Her revenge divine.

When I point the camera at him, he says “Is this going to end up in Hollywood?”

At the dinner table, he argues forcibly that spiders have too long been a medical scapegoat for mysterious bites and infections. Many bites that are blamed on spiders, he says, are not in fact the work of spiders. Rose thorns are an overlooked threat–the prick of a rose thorn can allow bacteria such as staphylococcus to enter the body. Another possible culprit known as the “Kissing Bug” defecates immediately after biting its victim; when the bite is scratched, the waste is rubbed into the wound, causing infection and irritation.

Once, he says, he was “investigating a case” in which a woman claimed to have been bitten by a Brown Recluse spider. After inspecting the huge wound, he called the woman’s doctor and asked how the man had determined that a Brown Recluse was to blame. The doctor said “I guessed.”

In his study, he pointed out a type of beetle that resembles a stone in appearance and that plays dead for a remarkable amount of time when jostled. We waited and wait for his specimen to start moving again, but we soon began to accuse him of killing it.
When we checked again an hour later, the beetle had climbed out of its plastic cup and was roaming freely on the desk.

He points to a tupperware on his table–”I got all those last month without even trying,” he says. Inside there are dozens of vials of mayflies suspended in formaldehyde. There are live specimens too, beetles and a jerusalem cricket who hides from the light.

In the kitchen, a banana sits on the counter going all to brown spots. The entomologist takes up the banana and carries it from room to room, interrogating his guests:

Is this your banana?
Then whose banana is it?
See this label? Shouldn’t this be yours?
…By default, this is your banana.

Mystery solved.

The Skylarks meet every Wednesday morning; the group alternates hosting between houses with pianos. The youngest members are in their sixties, the eldest in their eighties.
This morning, they are short four members. Barbara, the host and piano player for the day, explains that one absent Skylark thought she had the flu, while another had taken her husband to the doctor’s with a “horrible sunburn.”

Above: Daurice, one of the eldest members of the Skylarks.

The singing group has probably been around since the nineties, says Susan, one of the younger Skylarks. She remembers when they were called the Temecularks, a reference to the arid town of Temecula near their homes, an odd place where strip malls and rural desert landscape alternate.
Unfortunately, says Susan, many of “the originals” are no longer alive.

Above: Susan.

The group asked me if I’d like to sing along to a song from the musical “Oliver.” I admitted that I don’t think I know the piece, and the Skylarks broke into a chorus of “Rump-a-tum-tum”s and “da da da”s meant to recall the tune to me. When that didn’t ring a bell, the women gave up and prepared to sing. Daurice flapped a hand at me: “You’ll know it,” she said. I did not.

Above: Barbara.

After a rendition of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” Barbara turned away from the piano and began to say “Certainly, it’s–”, but got no further before she was interrupted by Norma, who said “Surgery? Did you say surgery?”
“No, certainly.”
“Oh, good.”

Norma, I am informed by a Skylarks scrapbook page entitled “Our Norma,” is an author of books prominently featuring religion; in one such book, “Flower of Egypt,” faith in Yahweh fulfills a young woman’s life and marriage in difficult times.

Above: Norma.

Music is central to these women’s lives, and holds the potential to affect their quality of life positively, or in its absence, negatively. Norma recalls her childhood without a piano in the house:
“My mother loved to play the piano, but we lived on that Island, and we were very poor during the depression.”
Her father had refused to buy her mother a piano, and Norma later found out that he was playing poker at night and saving money to buy them a new house. Still, imagining what could have been, her mother at the piano with the family singing along, Norma feels she was deprived.
“Imagine all the memories my father could have given us if he’d just made that sacrifice,” she said. “What a wonderful life we could have had.”

You will know, when the time comes.

Though she loves animals and only eats meats she has never eaten before, she has a photo of a decapitated gorilla torn from a magazine on her bulletin board. “That might be my favorite thing that I own,” she says.

She’s amassed an extensive wig collection, though this hair is her own.

Sweet Revenge.