Meat sweats

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Apollonia told me recently that one of her sons had a little disturbance after having dinner at her house. “I don’t know, Ma,” he said. “Maybe it’s the meat sweats.”

Meat sweats?

I have done some research on this, and if you want to have a good time with Google, you should do the same. Just do a search for the phrase “meat sweats” and see what comes up.

Long story short: people who eat a lot of meat at one sitting often begin to feel very warm, and then they begin to perspire.  Picture the contestants in a hot-dog eating contest, or somebody in one of those restaurants that give you another five-pound burger for free if you finish your first one.  In your mind, they’re sweating, aren’t they? Of course they are.

There are lots of explanations. Myself, I get a funny choking feeling if I eat a lot of beef; it turns out to be something called “esophageal stricture,” which can be caused by lots of things, including eating too much meat. Also, your body metabolizes protein differently, and large amounts of protein can activate all kinds of strange processes . . .

But no. Most doctors agree that there’s no such thing as “meat sweats.” It’s a symptom of fullness; your body is signaling to you that it’s full, and no more food is necessary.

So let’s have some dessert.

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BatWorld

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At nightfall I like to watch the bats wheeling and swooping over the housetops.  Except that Partner says they’re not bats.  “They’re birds,” he says.

 

 

“Look at them!” I say.  “Birds don’t fly like that!  Also, most birds don’t fly in the dark!”

 

 

He shrugs.  It’s one of those disputes we’ll keep having even after we’ve been put away in the old ladies’ home.

 

 

It’s late autumn now, not really bat season here in southern New England, but I am reminded of this mostly because of the sudden passing of my old boss Sharon.  She and I shared a basement office on the main campus for a couple of years in the 1980s; it wasn’t much, but we got by.  One morning she came in with an odd look on her face.  “There’s something stuck to the wall outside in the hallway,” she said.  “I think it’s a bat.”

 

 

I raced out to see.  Sure enough, it was a tiny bat, clinging to the wall in the hallway, crumpled as if it’d been injured.  I’d seen it as I came into the office that morning, but I’d assumed it was some odd stain on the wall; it was a basement after all, and all kinds of odd things end up on the walls.

 

 

Anyway: Brown University had a bat-research project, and a bat hotline.  We called, and they came over with their butterfly net and gently removed the tiny thing from the wall.

 

 

Today, over twenty years later, Brown still maintains its bat research lab.  I was just reading an article in a campus publication about how carefully they care for the sick and wounded bats.  I can still picture that poor little fellow (or girl) back in the 1980s, who looked as if he/she was in pain, and how glad we were that someone came to take care of her.

 

 

I hope he/she lived to swoop above the treetops again.

 

 

Even if Partner doesn't believe those are really bats.

 

 

The persistence of life

 

 

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Back in the early 1990s, two apartments ago, I ordered a Pereskia aculeata from an exotic-plant catalog. The catalog picture showed lavish green leaves and big exotic-looking flowers. According to the listing, Pereskia was a primitive cactus, with normal-looking leaves, but with spines, and with the same water-hoarding habits as other members of the Cactaceae family. And then there were those big beautiful white flowers.

 

 

My order arrived in the mail. The Pereskia was -

 

 

A stick. With maybe three leaves on it.

 

 

I stuck it in a pot, with some fertilizer and lots of good wishes.

 

 

It lost one leaf, then two. It just sat there for a very long time – a couple of months, actually. I nearly threw it away several times.

 

 

Then it showed some activity.

 

 

That was twenty years ago, and much activity has occurred in the meantime. There are now potted descendants of that damned twig all over New England and the Northeast.

 

 

The original still lives here at home with me. It's a weed! The catalog didn't tell me that. It's a nasty twining thorny nuisance in the Caribbean and elsewhere. I've never yet had it bloom, anywhere. It sprouts, and flourishes, and spins long ropelike spiny nooses that ruin the curtains and growl at me when I get too close. One in a while my original Pereskia leaps at me from the windowsill and tries to kill me with its spines. It did that just the other day, in fact.

 

 

But just look what it did it my office.

 

 

I brought a small inoffensive-looking shoot into the office, and I set it on my windowsill, and watered it weekly. It blinked at me shyly, and took one look at the nearby cord for the Venetian blinds, and it jumped.

 

 

Two years ago I noticed it was actually climbing the cord. Fine, I thought. That's a fool's errand. See how high you get. The ceilings in my office are ten or eleven feet high, or more.

 

 

To my utter disbelief, the vine made it all the way up the cord.

 

 

And now – as you can see in the photo above - it's on my ceiling, making itself at home.

 

 

Some scientists believe that life doesn't need an especially friendly climate to survive. All it needs is something to cling to.

 

 

Well, scientists: I think I have some data for you.

 

 

Life (at least in my neighborhood) does whatever it has to do to survive.

 

 

Life finds a way.

 

 

(Next question: is it going to work its way back down again?)

 

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SlugWorld

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The Pacific Northwest, where I grew up, is motherland for slugs of all sizes. The commonest in my particular neighborhood were Ariolimax columbianus, which some people call “banana slugs”; they're about the size of a small banana, they're yellow/brown with dark spots, and they glisten in the sun. See the above photo if you're not familiar with them.

 

 

They also turn into little mounds of foam if you pour salt on them.

 

 

We imported little brown slugs from my Grandma Boitano's house one summer when she gave us some plants. These we called “Italian slugs,” because we called everything that Grandma gave us “Italian.” Italian slugs were a little more durable than their banana cousins, but salt did the trick on them too, eventually.

 

 

I am given to understand that, up in the wilds of British Columbia, our friend Ariolimax can grow up to foot long, and can engulf a small animal, given enough time, and given that the animal stays very very still. I'd like to see that.

 

 

My favorite slug story is that of my school friend Kate. She has a dim recollection of toddling through the garden with something clutched in her hand, and her mother yelling, “Spit it out! Spit it out!”

 

 

The thing in her hand was a banana slug.

 

 

No, I'm sorry: I meant to say half of a banana slug.

 

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Look at the pretty pretty butterfly!

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Partner and I are planning a trip to Florida in October, which means (of course) Disney World. Partner has been there several times; I've only been there once, with him, in 2002. He pretty much had to drag me there, as I was very dubious about whether or not I'd enjoy it. 

 

 

Of all of our vacations together, it was one of the best.

 

 

I will limit myself to one recollection. We were walking in the Animal Kingdom – maybe through the India part – and suddenly an enormous butterfly landed on Partner. These butterflies, I don't know where they get them, but they have an affinity for people, and they're very tame; they will land on you with no fear at all. They are enormous and very beautiful.

 

 

They also grip you like bejeezus with their little butterfly feet.

 

 

It doesn't hurt; it's kind of like a very small pinch. But they are very determined not to fall off, and they make sure you know it.

 

 

As you can see in the above photo, we played with the butterfly for some time. It finally got bored, left us, and found a family with small children. It decided it liked the little boy best, and landed on his head. The rest of the family was delighted. “Oh my god Bobby! How pretty! Look at the pretty pretty butterfly!”

 

 

Bobby did not look as if he was entertained by this at all. He looked alarmed. You could tell that, while the rest of the family was enjoying the pretty pretty butterfly, he was feeling the pretty pretty butterfly's claws digging into his skin.

 

 

I was a little afraid that Bobby might panic and squash the pretty pretty butterfly, but the Disney organization evidently trains the butterflies to know when they've reached your limit. It flew away at last.

 

 

On an old episode of “The Simpsons,” Bart announces that he'd like to come back as a butterfly. “Why?” Lisa asks.

 

 

Bart smirks. “Because,” he says, “no one ever suspects the butterfly.”

 

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