Author Archives: Doc

More Christmas Eve

There is a small balcony overlooking the sanctuary in the First Presbyterian Church.  Tradition holds that it was built (a hundred years ago) to seat the hired help who came to worship with (though not seated with) the rest of the congregation.  One ascends to this lofty, if somewhat cramped, perch by a narrow, spiral […]

Zoonotic Ectoparasites

I started to put this under "Strange Beliefs".  People think that veterinarians know everything. Somewhere between the Encyclopedia Britannica and Google, the veterinarian was(is) the resource to rely on.  I’ve been called at night by a person wanting to know if polar bears eat penguins or fish (polar bears=North pole, penguins=South pole — trick question; […]

Antifreeze poisoning

You know that old saying, "Lightning never strikes twice in the same place"?  We tend to think that when something unusually bad happens that we ought to be safe from that particular disaster for some time into the future.  You know: there’s a bad airline crash and you’re supposed to fly out the next day.  […]