Into every gauge, a little rain will fall

I just talked to a woman who said that in the past few months she had lost her boyfriend, her job and her baby. And she’d had a flat tire. She wondered if her problems might be “magnetic” and if she should talk to me or to a priest.

I told her I was very sorry for her troubles and that the priest might be a pretty good bet.

You know, a lot of times people ask me if I make up these questions. Trust me, folks. Ask anybody who knows me and they’ll tell you I’m not smart enough to make up stuff like this.

As it is, I think I’m ready for some time off, most of which I think I’ll spend in a dark room with a cool towel over my forehead. Or maybe just sitting with my arms around my knees rocking and humming. Perhaps gurgling.

So what shall we talk about today?

I’ve got a note here from a woman who thinks it might be fun if I helped her come up with a name for a body scrub she has developed based on Arizona sand.

Pass.

And I’ve got one here from some guy who thinks the way the runways are numbered at Sky Harbor International Airport has something to do with Phoenix politics.

Pass.

You people are often a great mystery to me. That’s why I like you so much.

Let us ponder this matter.

Since the official rain gauge for the Valley is at Sky Harbor Airport and since storms, like the one the other night, always seem to miss the airport, why don’t they move the official gauge somewhere else?

Why would they do that? It’s not like we’re in some sort of competition with other desert cities to see who gets the most rain.

And where would you have them relocate the official gauge?

Dysart and Bell roads? During the storm last Thursday, the gauge there showed 0.83 inch of rain. The one at Thomas Road and 16th Street showed 0.04 inch.

Which was more representative of the Valley’s rainfall that night?

The storms of the monsoon season aren’t like our winter rains that come in, if they come in at all, on broad fronts and soak the whole region.

The storms of the monsoon are spotty things that pop up here and there depending on an unstable brew of cool air and hot air and varying moisture levels. So over the long run, moving the gauge wouldn’t matter much.

Try not to worry about stuff like this, OK?

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com

Pondering Alaska’s frost, frosty reader

The other day, I read that they had the first frost of the season at Fairbanks, Alaska.

I like that. There is something reassuring in knowing that second by second, minute by minute, summer is slowly winding down.

Every day, there will be just a little less daylight, a little less sunshine until we hit the winter solstice, and then second by second, minute by minute, we start the cycle all over again.

I don’t know. I just like thinking about that.

Anyway, do you remember a few weeks or so ago when this lady asked why she couldn’t educate her kids about the flora of the desert by picking a few specimens of flowers and so forth on public land?

Now, I admit I did get a bit snippier with her about this than probably was necessary.

I recall I opined that it would be better to teach her children to respect public lands than to go about debauching it by picking flowers and so on and so forth.

I still think so.

And one of you wrote to complain I snarked on this woman because she was home-schooling her kids. Home-schooling? None of my business.

But, anyway, she wrote back the other day and said that she had checked with the Bureau of Land Management and they had said that they agreed with her that I am a big, fat loser jerk; although those weren’t her exact words.

And they said that if she just wanted to collect a few flowers that was OK with them, although other jurisdictions are stricter.

So, go for it, lady. Just leave some for the rest of us, OK?

Meanwhile, you people seem to be worrying about dogs a lot lately.

Can a dog be taught to climb a tree?

I suppose it’s none of my business, but why would you want to train a dog to climb a tree? Maybe for a circus act?

I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of dogs in trees a bit unsettling.

One thing I read said the gray fox is the only canine that can climb a tree. They even hunt in trees. They hug the trunk with their front legs and push up with their hind legs. They come down bottom first.

However, I kept looking and found a video of a dog climbing a tree, although its owner had to help it down, so I don’t know if that makes it a true tree-climber.

And I found some pictures of dogs in trees, but I don’t know how they got up there.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com

Dogs: When they’re happy, they show it

Today, as we so often do, we are going to take up one of the truly deep mysteries of life, a question that has puzzled philosophers, theologians and scientists ever since humankind first domesticated animals.

Why does a wet dog always wait to shake until it is near a person? My dogs get out of the pool and run over to me before they shake. Is it a greeting or a way to share the feeling?

Nobody knows for sure, but I found a few ideas.

Here’s one: They want to show you how great they are. Say your little girl is just learning how to swim or maybe how to dive, and you’re sitting there watching and she does something really good. What does she do? Chances are she will get out of the pool and come over to tell you about it.

It’s the same thing with a dog. It’s like: “Hey, look at me! I jumped in the pool! Wasn’t that great? I got wet! See how wet I am! Am I a great dog or what?”

Here’s another one: happiness. It’s hot out. The dog is hot. You let it go for a swim and cool off. The dog is delighted. It feels great, and it runs over to show you how happy it is. And shakes all over you.

Another suggestion: It’s a funny trick. The dog knows that if it shakes water all over you’re going to squirm and make funny noises. This is a good game for the animal.

Last idea: The dog is a jerk.

As long as we are discussing pets, here’s another one.

Which is more dangerous to humans, a cat’s bite or a dog’s bite?

The cat wins this one.

One thing I read said about 40 percent of cat bites end up getting infected.

And there is always cat scratch fever, which can make you pretty sick with swollen lymph nodes, fever, fatigue and joint pain.

For some reason, you are more likely to get cat scratch fever from a kitten than from an adult, but I’m not sure why that is.

Anyway, about the difference between cat and dog bites: If a dog bites you, chances are it will be a tearing or slashing kind of wound with a fair amount of blood. The blood helps wash away any germs the bite might have deposited.

Cats, on the other hand, have those sharp little needlelike teeth.

So a cat’s bite is more of a puncture wound without much blood than a rip. And the germs get deposited under the skin where they are harder to get at and clean away.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com

Don’t query history major about health

Today’s question:

My question is this: I am taking thyroid medicine, and some of the women on my husband’s side of the family have had thyroid problems. We recently found out that my mother-in-law, who has had an extremely healthy diet all her life, has thyroid cancer. This news has brought about concern for my young daughter, because thyroid disease seems to be hereditary and prominent among women.

In addition, we have become big users of kosher salt over the years. I never use table salt anymore, and I am concerned that my family may not be getting enough iodine in their diets. Does kosher salt contain iodine and is it enough to supply my children with the levels they need, and, if not, what other foods should be implemented into our diet?

A couple of things here.

First, I’ve been letting the questions run on longer than usual lately so they take up more space. Maybe you’ve noticed. Maybe not.

That’s because I am winding down toward one of those periodic mental-health breaks you people drive me to every few months, and with longer questions, I can do shorter answers. That means even less effort for me than I normally exert and less wear and tear on my bathrobe.

Second, jeez, don’t be asking me medical questions, OK? I was a history major, for crying out loud.

Do you know how much I worry about you people already, wondering what you might be up to next without you asking me life-and-death stuff you should be talking over with your doctor?

Of course, I suppose there is always the chance your doctor was a history major, too. Or, even scarier, an English major.

This is kind of interesting: One piece I read said you really only need one teaspoon of iodine over your lifetime. I wonder if that’s true.

Anyway, kosher salt seldom, if ever, includes additives such as iodine.

Good old table salt usually has iodine added to it and that should be enough to hold you.

Seawater has a lot of iodine in it, so seafood is a good source of iodine.

So are dairy products. The dairy products count because there is a fair amount of iodine in the stuff they feed dairy cows. Or so I am told.

Plus, breads, cereals and red candies are good for iodine, especially, because the red dye in some of that stuff has a lot of iodine in it.

But, please, just ask your doctor, OK?

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his columns by going to www.azcentral.com

Our diplomacy plan becoming very popular

Judging from your responses to Sunday’s column about dope-slap diplomacy plan, I think we may be on to something big.

For those of you who missed it, the plan is this: We get together a group of ordinary people, to the extent that you people are ordinary, and we travel around the state and country and world and wherever we find people who can’t get along and are being jerks about it or are just sort of messing up, we give them a Three Stooges’ dope slap and a good talking-to and tell them to stop annoying us. Then, we give them cookies or pie.

Anyway, this seems to have struck a chord with you guys. I am never quite sure what will strike a chord with you guys, but the response has been very strong. One reader said she has already started baking cookies.

There does seem to be some confusion about what constitutes a dope slap. And some of you want to know if you can use the Three Stooges’ eye-poke instead.

No, I think we should stick to the dope slap, which is a whack briskly delivered with the open hand to the back of the recipient’s head. It is not meant to inflict pain so much as it is meant as a reprimand.

We’ll get going on this as soon as I get a huge, no-strings-attached grant from a major donor. Meanwhile, let us ponder today’s question.

With all the hype about the new Cardinals stadium, one would think that I would have caught the explanation of why some of the seats are red and some are gray. I have a season ticket in a red seat. My friend thinks red is for season tickets while gray is for single games. Can you help me out here?

I put this matter to my colleague Kent Somers, who covers the Cardinals for us, and he put this matter to Mark Dalton, media relations director for the team, who said this:

“There are 21 vertical slots where light comes in the stadium. There are gray seats at those slots. Around the middle of the field, there is an asymmetrical circle that’s reflective of the way light comes in from the material on the roof. It’s a mandala shape.”

Do you know what a mandala is? I was pretty sure I did, but I checked anyway.

A mandala is a ritualistic geometric pattern. Many Native American tribes used or use mandalas to symbolize the circle of life or good health or protection from evil. Stuff like that.

So the color of the seats has nothing to do with ticket prices.

And let’s hope the dope-slap campaign doesn’t have to start with the Cardinals.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com

Guys, maybe it’s time you clammed up

Today, we are going to do a little marriage counseling, restoring tranquility and harmony to a trio of Valley households torn by controversy, plagued by discord and disputes that threaten to rend asunder the fabric of matrimonial happiness.

Or something like that.

I wonder if you could help us. My husband believes that leaving the window blinds open to let in the natural light keeps the room cooler than if you keep the blinds closed and turn on task lighting/overhead lights. I believe the latter to be the more effective means to keeping a room cool. As a result, we follow each other around the house, turning on/off lights and/or opening/closing blinds, cursing the other person.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t know where you women find these guys.

Closing the blinds or curtains helps keep the house cooler by blocking the radiant heat of the sun. It’s that simple.

For your part, you should be turning off the lights and ceiling fans in rooms that aren’t in use. A ceiling fan cools you by speeding evaporation of moisture from your skin. If no one is in the room, it’s just burning energy.

Wives, 1, husbands, 0.

Whenever I let my husband do the grocery shopping he buys brown eggs. He always says they are “more natural” than white eggs. I say there’s no difference. Please advise.

White eggs come from white chickens, white Leghorns, mostly. Brown eggs come from red or brown chickens, Barred Rocks or Rhode Island Reds, mostly.

Other than that, they are exactly the same thing.

The hens that lay brown eggs produce a pigment that colors the shell as the egg grows in the chicken.

Wives, 2, husbands, 0.

OK, guys, if you pull this one out you will at least avoid a sweep.

My husband and I take several car trips a year, and we always have the same argument. He says mileage signs give the mileage to the city limits. I say they tell how far it is to the center of the city. I’d like to get this settled once and for all.

Mileage signs generally give the distance to some central-city landmark, such as a city hall or a post office.

That’s just as well. With all the annexations by various cities and towns around the area over the years, the highway crews would be constantly changing the mileage signs.

Wives, 3, husbands, 0.

Sorry, guys.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com

Could be time to dope slap globe’s villains

Do you ever go out in the morning to pick up the paper from the driveway or stop at a convenience store to buy a copy and pause for a second and think:

“Do I really want to know what this is going to tell me? Maybe I should just leave it here. That way it won’t be so scary.”

I mean, lately everything just seems to be mostly rotten, doesn’t it? Liquid bombs on airplanes, wars, Darfur, serial killers, the way your butt looks in those pants. Sometimes it all just seems a bit bleak, doesn’t it?

But I know you can’t just put your head in the sand, and you have to be an informed citizen and all that.

And there are still the funnies and the crosswords and the coupons and non-scary stuff like that.

And there are funny or weird stories in the paper most days.

For instance, did you see that one the other day about the guy in Nebraska who has managed to get arrested something like 260 times for various crimes and misdemeanors? That was a dandy. Dude, don’t you think maybe it might be time to review your career path? Maybe talk to a guidance counselor or something?

So, full of hope, I pick the paper up off the driveway anyway and trudge back into the house and make coffee.

I don’t know. Sometimes I think I should get together a bunch of you people – ordinary people, to the extent that you guys are ordinary – and we would charter a plane and go flying around to all these various trouble spots, including those here at home, and just give everyone involved a Three Stooges dope slap. And tell them to shape up and act like normal people who have the sense that God gave a goose.

I mean, if a bunch of us all showed up at the Legislature or in Washington, D.C., or London or Tehran or Tel Aviv or wherever it is that little weirdo from North Korea lives, and we spread out and gave everyone on all sides of the problem a brisk dope slap and gave them all a good talking-to, don’t you think that might help?

A good talking-to like your mother probably gave you more than once.

That should fix things up, don’t you think?

And then we could bake cookies or some pies for everybody we had dope-slapped and chewed out and tell them we hoped they didn’t make us have to come back again.

Too simple? Maybe. Me, I’m thinking Nobel Peace Prize.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his columns by going to www.azcentral.com

Yes, picking wildflowers is against the law

I have here a long note from some lady who is homeschooling her children and wants them to collect and identify wildflowers, but the books she uses tell her not to pick them. Her question finally boiled down to this:

Is there really anything wrong with picking the flowers? Is picking flowers on public land against the law? Is there some kind of unwritten nature-person kind of law that says picking flowers is the wrong way to study them? It just seems ridiculous to me that we, exploring a little wash or canyon, shouldn’t pluck a bloom with a few leaves attached to preserve for education.

Are you new here?

What are you going to do when you get to the lesson on saguaros? Rent a backhoe and drive out to the desert and dig one up? As long as you’ve got the backhoe, why not help yourself to a couple of petroglyphs? That would be educational.

It is illegal to remove native plants from public lands. As a matter of fact it is illegal to remove just about anything from public land that is supposed to be there in the first place. Sure, maybe nobody is going to miss a couple of flowers your kids might dig up, but if you get to do it, why don’t we all?

Just leave stuff alone, OK? I think it would be more important to teach your kids to respect public land than to have them amass a flower collection.

And if you want them to study wildflowers firsthand, why not buy some seeds and plant your own? Or take them to the interpretive center at South Mountain Park.

Do birds ever get hit by lightning?

Yes.

I found a science newsletter put out by the Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences that listed three instances of birds getting nailed by lightning.

The online version of Kenya’s Nairobi Daily Nation recently reported that 49 pelicans got hit by lightning as they flew through a thunderstorm. I guess they just came raining down out of the sky.

The January 1930 issue of The Auk, an ornithology journal, reported an eyewitness saw 27 pelicans fly through a thunderstorm and get hit by lightning in Utah.

And in 1840, John James Audubon, the famous bird painter, said he saw two nighthawks struck by lightning while he was working in Florida.

Too bad for the birds, but that would be something to see, don’t you think?

 *Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his columns by going to www.azcentral.com

Guy bugged as critters eat, um, his shorts

This is a very much boiled-down version of the original form of today’s question. Trust me, this is the short version. The original just went on and on and on.

People, let’s try to remember that brevity is soul of . . . um . . . well it’s the soul of something that is probably pretty good, so let’s try to keep them brief, shall we?

I have holes in my underwear. I bought new underwear a couple of months ago, and now I’m finding small holes in the material. The holes are usually very small, clean-cut and appear in both the T-shirts and briefs.

I know that moths, or their larva, eat material, but I haven’t seen any moths around, and my undies are either neatly folded in the drawer or in the clothes hamper or on my body.

The only bugs I’ve seen are small spiders and little black bugs. Do you know what these bugs are and could they be eating my shorts?

Should I get out the permethrin?

I wonder what permethrin is. It sounds nasty.

Anyway, I put this matter to good ol’ Carl Olson, renowned bug expert at the University of Arizona, alma mater of my two sweet patooties.

More important, he is chairman for life whether he likes it or not of the Valley 101 Well-I-Seen-Me-Some-Kind-Of-Bug-Whatya-Think-It-Was? Advisory Board.

In return for his services, Olson, just like all members of the various Valley 101 advisory boards, is invited to the annual all-expenses-paid gala Valley 101 Advisory Board Barbecue and Pie Jamboree at an exclusive resort high in the Colorado Rockies, an event that, unfortunately, has been canceled for the sixth straight year because of, um . . . rain, or the Black Death or something like that. I forget.

Anyway, without actually examining your underwear drawer, which I don’t think any of us want to do, Olson surmised that you are infested with some sort of dermestid, a variety of bug that includes larder beetles, hide beetles and carpet beetles.

They eat lots of stuff, and museums sometimes use them to clean bits of flesh off of skeletons.

You might try cedar blocks, he said, but your best bet probably is a thorough cleaning of your dresser.

These are tough guys.

Olson said he knows of someone who once found dermestids eating the rolled oats in rat poison with no ill effect.

Just like my masters.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his columns by going to www.azcentral.com

Twinkie isn’t considered a ‘hostess gift’

So, do you remember Sunday’s column? Don’t worry about it. I can barely remember it myself.

But as I recall it was a question from some guy who had spent the summer hosting various friends from all around the country, and they had all brought him small gifts from their home states, such as bratwurst and salsa and so on and so forth. Now he is going on some sort of return visit tour to see all of these friends, and he wanted advice on what sort of especially Arizona-ish gifts in the $10 range he might take to give to them.

These I now know, thanks to your calls and messages, seem to be called “hostess gifts.” I didn’t know that before, but then I have not had occasion for some time to deal with a lot of hostesses that I can recall, and besides I like to think that my very presence should be gift enough. Don’t you think?

And besides, what about the host? Shouldn’t he get something? Like a pair of pliers or a saw or something?

Anyway, I had put this matter up to you people and, as always, you did not disappoint. And, as always, many of you didn’t make a whole lot of sense. For example, I don’t think sewer roaches are unique to Arizona. And I don’t see why a bag of genuine Arizona desert sand would make an especially good gift.

People: Your doctors prescribe the medications you need for a reason. You have to take them as directed.

However, I did get a bunch of reasonably reasonable suggestions, and by far the most common one was an Arizona Highways calendar. Doh! I should have thought of that right off the bat. Inexpensive. Handsome. Useful. Sort of like me, now that I think about it.

The next most-common suggestion was Arizona honey, which apparently comes in a bunch of different flavors, such as mesquite and so on. I didn’t know we had so many different flavors of honey particular to our state, but there you have it.

Other suggestions: jalapeno corn bread mix, dream catchers, saguaro salt and pepper shakers, various types of Arizona-grown olive oil and anything involving a Kokopelli, although I think those are almost as kitschy as that howling-coyote-wearing- a-bandana stuff you used to see all the time.

One person suggested Cardinals’ tickets for after the first game, but I don’t think that was a very practical idea as a gift for out-of-towners. Or for anybody else, probably.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his columns by going to www.azcentral.com