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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Tree They Make Pencils Out Of (for the Week of Sept. 14, 2008)
September 15, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: What kind of wood do they make wood pencils out of? A. My feathered friend Weezerbird told me something at lunch last week. (He had grubs. I had leaves.) He said, "That place you work at [the Ohio Agricultural Resea ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Polar Bear Question (for the Week of Jan. 6, 2008)
January 9, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: The polar bears, remember? If the Arctic ice cap melts and shrinks, what will that do to them? A.: Bad things, it would seem. If the Arctic Ocean ends up losing the ice that it normally has in the summer (and it normally does ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Quills of Prickly Porky (for the Week of July 12, 2009)
July 12, 2009 Q. Dear Twig: Why don't porcupines stick to things? All those pointy quills and all... A. First, the quills ("kwills") on a porcupine mostly point backward. So when a porcupine climbs up a tree, for example, its quills don&# ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Part of the Pig (for the Week of June 21, 2009)
June 21, 2009 Q. Dear Twig: OK, I'm curious. What's the part of the pig that pulled pork actually comes from? A. Dear Curious: I gave you a clue last week. "It starts with a b and ends with two t 's, but isn't that at all." ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Gift of Pbbbbbt! (for the Week of June 17, 2007)
June 13, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: What does it mean to give someone a raspberry? A. Close your mouth. Stick out your tongue through your lips. Puff out your cheeks. Then blow out a sharp burst of air. Pbbbbbt! That's it! That's what it means to give s ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Susque-whatta? (Plus a New Reader Contest!) (for the Week of April 20, 2008)
April 20, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: "Susquehanna." Now that's a beautiful word. A. Your question? Is that a question? Bueller?... Bueller? All right. Yes. Yes, it is. It is a beautiful word. A smooth-flowing, cool-sounding, vowel-impacted word. Su ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Tasmanian Devil in Devil of a Pickle (for the Week of June 1, 2008)
May 29, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: We also talked in class about an animal called the Tasmanian devil. It's endangered. Why? A. The short, awful truth: A weird new cancer. Only Tasmanian devils get it. People don't. Neither do other animals. In just the ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Stuck (or Not) on Porcupines (for the Week of Feb. 18, 2007)
February 15, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: Why don't porcupines stick to things? All those pointy quills and all... A. First, the quills ("kwills") on a porcupine mostly point backward. So when, for example, a porky climbs a tree, its quills don' ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Squirrels A-fallin'! (for the Week of Oct. 21, 2007)
October 21, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: Do squirrels ever fall out of trees? A.: Yes. And I base that, for starters, on two accounts. First, once, I was sitting in an oak tree, enjoying the fall (get it?) sunshine. Across the road an eastern gray squirrel had just ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Spreading Better Butter Words (for the Week of Sept. 7, 2008)
September 8, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: Why do they call it butter? A. It has to do with cows, it seems. Here's the story in a rich, creamery nutshell: A long time ago, the Greek words bous, meaning "ox" or "cow," and tyron, meaning &qu ...