Fall Out, Boys

Recently eaten: tons of egg salad
Recent annoyance: hangnail

In honor of the first day of September, and quite possibly the beginning of the end of sweltering summer, here are some of my favorite things about fall:

1. Squirrels and their nut-crazed ways
2. Pumpkin pie, hell, let's throw Thanksgiving in there too
3. The ability to go outside again without wanting to kill everyone
4. Children go back to their schoolyard prisons, and away from the decent, productive members of society

And on a slightly unrelated devlopment on truancy, here is a solution for those pesky hoodloums that refuse to go to school:

Parasites Brainwash Grasshoppers into Death Dive
"A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects’ proteins reveal.

The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would – causing them to seek out and plunge into water.

Once in the water the mature hairworms – which are three to four times longer that their hosts when extended – emerge and swim away to find a mate, leaving their host dead or dying in the water. David Biron, one of the study team at IRD in Montpellier, France, notes that other parasites can also manipulate their hosts’ behaviour: “’Enslaver’ fungi make their insect hosts die perched in a position that favours the dispersal of spores by the wind, for example.”

There's nothing like a little brainworm to force the little bugger's hand. They may be introduced unobtrusively during lice checks, or hidden in juice boxes. Once that brainworm takes hold, little Johnny goes for a swim with the fishes and no one's the wiser. 'Cept for you, me, and the brainworms *wink, wink*

Your Children Are Destroying the Neighborhood

Sad, but true.