Today’s guest post comes from Beth-Ann.
There is an albino squirrel in my neighborhood. My inner geneticist sent me to check him out to confirm his pink eyes and complete lack of pigment.
Most white squirrels are not albino. They have a pigment defect known as leucism. They cannot produce melanin, but because they do produce other pigments their eyes are colored and not pink.
Albino squirrels are rare not only because of the unusual nature of their mutations but because their associated vision problems and poor balance interfere with the needed squirrel life-tasks.
I am not the only one fascinated by albinism. In many traditional societies people with albinism were thought to be prophets and seers; while other societies isolated those without pigment because they were so different. Melville’s Moby Dick was inspired by a real albino whale.
I am equally fascinated by organisms of unusual colors.
I love talking to the sheep farmers at the State Fair about black sheep. Traditionally black sheep were shunned because their wool had little commercial value since it couldn’t be dyed. Now crafters actively seek naturally colored wool. Did you know that white sheep have pink tongues and black sheep have bluish black tongues?
Every year I journey to the Farmers’ Market to buy blue potatoes, purple and yellow carrots, and golden beets. I once made a salad with 5 colors of peppers and 4 colors of potato. I am glad that the seed catalogues arrive at my townhouse annually even though I have never had a garden. I peruse them in search of more unusual vegetables for my imaginary garden.
Whitey and I want to know, “How important is color in your life?”
Trail Baboon 
Good morning to all. As a seed saver who has grown some of the those unusually colored vegertables that you buy, Beth-Ann, I have a big interest in colors and particularly the colors of vegetables. One of the rare peas the I have grown has yellow pods. It was discovered by another seed saver who liked unusually colored vegetables. He found it when he was growing some seeds he requested from a government seed collection. Some seed companies are now selling this pea that had been hidden away in the government collection. It has been suggested that this pea might have been one of the peas that Mendal (is that the right spelling for Mendal?) used in his pioneering studies on genetics. It’s called Golden Sweet.
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It’s Mendel.
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Thanks. I knew that the spelling I used didn’t look right and didn’t want to take time to check it out.
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Jim, it was close enough to figure it out. Only one letter off.
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Jim, That recolors my whole view of Gregor Mendel. I always tell my audiences that the good monk must have been very smart. His ratios of recessive to dominant traits in his peas were perfect. To me that means he knew what they should be and he fudged that data. Alternately the angels blessed his garden!
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I don’t know if the information I have that Mendel might have used Golden Sweet in his research is correct. This pea that the seed saver, Robert Lobitz, named Yellow Sweet was collected in India. Apparently it’s unusual color had not drawn the attention of anyone working with the government seed collection until Robert started offering it to other seed savers. It seems that if Mendel used it in his experiments it might have been grown at Mendel’s time in Europe and apparently was somehow dropped by pea growers in that part of the world. I guess some people in India were keeping it going and it was collected there by someone who entered it into the government seed bank.
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From Wikipedia
Mendel’s experimental results have later been the object of considerable dispute.[12] Fisher analyzed the results of the F2 (second filial) ratio and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1.[14] Only a few would accuse Mendel of scientific malpractice or call it a scientific fraud—reproduction of his experiments has demonstrated the validity of his hypothesis—however, the results have continued to be a mystery for many, though it is often cited as an example of confirmation bias. This
might arise if he detected an approximate 3 to 1 ratio early in his experiments with a small sample size, and continued collecting more data until the results conformed more nearly to an exact ratio. It is sometimes suggested that he may have censored his results, and that his seven traits each occur on a separate chromosome pair, an extremely unlikely occurrence if they were chosen at random. In fact, the genes Mendel studied occurred in only four linkage groups, and only one gene pair (out of 21 possible) is close enough to show deviation from independent assortment; this is not a pair that Mendel studied. Some recent researchers have suggested that Fisher’s criticisms of Mendel’s work may have been exaggerated.[15][16]
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
Love, love, love color. I love taking art classes where they teach color techniques, then you see tints and hues magically emerge from the clay or paint
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good morning – and very interesting, B-A! thanks.
color and light are important parts of my life. i put up LED lights on the barn – i love to see them glimmer against the snow. we live on a dead end road – no one will see those lights except us, but i did them anyway. when i get up during the night, i glance out at the lovely colors and smile.
also, i chose the Alpine breed because of the wide variation in color – always a black nose. the breed has other characteristics that must be there (erect ears, “dished” nose, and height specifications. but almost any color is fine as long as it is not that of a Toggenburg or all white, like Saanens.
at kidding time we are allways surprised at the variation in colors – and that is so much fun!
better get out there – expect Juju will be ready to go to T today – hoping for colorful kids from them!
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Barb is their any relationship between the color of the goat and the color of the tongue?
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nope. all of their tongues are pink, as far as i can tell. i can never get into their mouths far enough to look at palates. they don’t like me poking into their mouths. don’t blame them 🙂 i know that my blood is red (from poking a finger back between molars to sweep out something from a goats’ mouth that didn’t belong there. she bit down,not intentionally, and crunched my finger between those strong molars!
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snort…
thanks for a well painted picture barb!
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Before commenting on color, I have to publicly acknowledge Sherrilee’s superb home upkeep service. She comes on time, is in a good mood, works well and brings a pecan pie. That’s what made America great! Thanks again, VS!
I don’t relate to color as an absolute so much as I appreciate color in context. I designed my living room around such colors as brown, pine green, tan, cream, and sage green. I wanted an effect that would be masculine and comfortable without being oppressively dark.
I feel sorry for albino animals. There is a Far Side cartoon in which a deer has a target right over his heart; another deer standing by says something like, “Bummer of a birthmark, Hal.” An albino animal is like that, and I’m sure their stark white color draws the attention of predators.
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Steve, I saw Whitey on Saturday. He looked good and I’m thinking that the snow will help him hide better.
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It will. While living in Greenland it was fun to observe the arctic fox change from black to white over a relatively short period of time.
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For years there was a black squirrel that ran the wires outside my classroom window. Black is just a color variation of the grey squirrel. He lived quite awhile and was the only one around. He was distinctively marked. The biology teacher and I tracked him.
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A few years back, Loring Park had a population of white and black squirrels that equaled or outnumbered the gray.
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Hey Steve,
The Daily Beast has an article on Nick Nolte today. He looks so different now!
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That’s a great article, Jacque! Thanks for the tip.
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Much better than the last picture I recall of Nick Nolte!
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That is one of the Far Sides that I had saved somewhere, Steve.
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The seed saver who found the yellow pea also introduced some entirely new interesting colors of vegetables that he developed himself. I have a beautiful bean the has dark pink pods that he named Red Swan. The man I am talking about is Robert Lobitz, who recently passed away, and who was a small scale vegetable farmer from near Paynesville, MN. He developed new kinds of beans by making selections from seed that came from bean plants that had been cross pollinated by bumlebees. He said that bees did the crossing for him. Usually plant breeders have to do cross pollinating by hand when developing new kinds of beans.
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Talking about pollination, this is another great TED talk and video:
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A local bee keeper told me that he doesn’t have much trouble with decline in his bees because he takes good care of his bees. He thinks that the very large bee keepers who haul large numbers of hives across country to provide pollination to large growers have problems because they don’t do a good job of caring for their bees. Also, the large growers might not need to have so many hives brought in if they were not killing many of the native pollinators with the pesticides they use and if they didn’t clear away almost all of the native plants that wild bees need to survive.
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Managed bees are not as much at risk because hives can be moved out of harms way. It’s the wild bees that are most vulnerable to the spraying of herbicides and fertilizers. It’s a global problem.
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I think I have seen that Red Swan – does is get really large? I have some neighbors who had a large bean with pink pods that shot all the way up a power pole on the boulevard over the summer. A real Jack-and-the-Beanstalk kind of beanstalk.
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Red Swan is a bush bean. Maybe the bean you saw is a Hyacinth Bean. I have seen, but haven’t grown them. They are very colorful and have very long vines. The pods are said to be somewhat bitter and can be used to eat. The dry bean seed is toxic and shouldn’t be used as food.
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The pods would be beautiful paired with beets.
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Love colors – especially finding the subtle differences between this green and that green, this purple and that one (the new green to go on my walls upstairs is almost virtually the same as another green – Husband couldn’t see a difference really – but one is slightly bluer, the chosen one slightly more neutral). One of my favorite painting assignments in college was to paint a white still life – first you constructed your personal white still life (cutting a box “just so” to let light in at a particular angle), then painted the all-white objects, finding the subtle differences in color. Blues, purples, pinks, greens, oranges and yellows begin to pop out pretty quickly when all you’re looking at is “white.” I love winter because of all the different whites. 🙂
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Interesting assignment. When we were choosing colors to paint the kitchen and dining room of our old house, Jim was quite adept at seeing color differences. Plus he remembered the actual hue of the blue I wanted to match in the linoleum we had installed. Relying on his color memory, he picked a perfect match! I was impressed.
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I’m intrigued by that art assignment, Anna… I may even be inspired to dabble with the concept myself (or pass the idea along to my artist husband)! Thanks for sharing it 🙂
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You will never look at “white” the same way again…it was a ton of fun. If I were to re-do it now, I know I’d paint things differently and probably see even more of the undertones in the white.
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I love color! On flower petals, butterfly wings, bird feathers, foliage. I love it in stained glass windows in churches, in tapestries and woven rugs, vibrant and bold; colors that take your breath away. I like the subtler hues too, the sky blue pink of a morning sunrise, or a rainbow shimmering through a haze of mist. When I meditate I often visualize color, warm, comforting, calming colors, and when I listen to music it sometimes evokes images of color in my mind.
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This topic is very close to a Cliffy, so I’ll take it all the way there:
As a child gathering all those carrots in the fall, I was intrigued by the shapes and colors of carrots. Not much color variation, but some. But best was the twining together. I have a cousin in the Russian River Valley, runs a B&B and grows wine, who posted a perfectly-twined pair of carrots. I do not remember perfect twining like she got.
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We’ve had some twisted carrots that were hilarious.
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some of those carrots are downright naughty 🙂
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Exactly.
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One of my heirloom tomatoes from a couple summers ago was almost x-rated. it had a long, um … protrusion sticking out right in the middle. I took pictures of it, but I’m not sure where they are.
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the pictures were probably confiscated.
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Clyde, no need to be polite-this topic is a Cliffy to the max.
I just visited colored carrots.com and saw incredible dishes made of untwisted but colorful carrots.
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I think my soul would wither up and die if I didn’t have color in my life. Winter in the north woods is beautiful, but here in the city, it can be so drab…white, sparkly snow is one thing – and dirty, gray snow is not nearly so beautiful. In my part of the city, it seems that everyone very “blah” shades of houses, so on a day like today I look out and see several shades of beige and gray houses, gray sky, some brown tree trunks, and some snow that is starting to get dirty. Why does snow and bare trees look beautiful in the woods but look kinda ugly here in the city??? Back when I was young and had dreams of becoming a nature photographer, I knew I could never do black & white photography like Ansel Adams because I felt that color was so important to why I took pictures. I find Fall and Spring exciting because of all the colors…so many different colors and so many shades of the same color – like when I look down the street when the oaks are turning color and see so many shades of red and orange. Now that I wrote all that, I’m looking around my house and even though the only white walls we have are in the closets and the laundry room, I think I need more COLOR in here.
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Go for it Edith! I’ve never regretted filling my walls with deep rich hues… especially when winter rolls around.
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I’ve got lots of pictures I need to frame and hang…sounds like a good winter project.
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I forgot to say…I’ve seen some white squirrels (don’t know if they are albino because I didn’t check the eyes) around here and I really detest city squirrels, but the white ones creep me out.
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OT Help, Help, Help! My grandson–not quite two years old-visits me in a few days. My home has nothing in it to amuse a kid with a great deal of energy. Does anyone have any toys they could lend? His motel has a pool, so he’ll start each day by swimming, but I gather this kid has incredible energy.Anyone have a crib they could lend me?
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I am excited for you. Does a nearby library have toys to check out? a few do? Bet the St. Paul Library site would tell you. Any neighbors grandparents with toys you could borrow?
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Steve, you probably have lots of stuff that your grandson can use as toys. Large cardboard boxes make great things to play in. Put some cloth over a table to make a hiding place. My mother-in-law once amused my daughter for a considerable length of time by blowing on a bit of lint.
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I’ve got some old blocks and a few things like that.
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I’ll bet your daughter will be resourceful with what you have around the house. Here are some of the things my 2-year-old loved to play with:
– the metal pots and pans (upside down for a drum, get a wooden spoon)
– spoons rubberbanded loosely together make “castanettes”
– take cushions off couches & chairs to make a fort (stand them on end propped up…)
– with any luck someone near you will have some balloons
– at night, flashlight hide and seek (he’ll want a partner)
– you’ve got paper and pencils, right? bet your daughter will bring crayons.
– play dough recipe: http://tipnut.com/10-homemade-playdough-recipes/
If I think of others, I’ll email you.
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Also water play, either standing on a chair at the kitchen sink (you’re right there to make sure he stays on chair) with a dishpan full of all your little plastic or light metal kitchen thingies – measureing spoons and cups, funnels…
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Let me poke around – we may have a few 2-year-old-appropriate things still around. I know we have passed on a bunch of those toys already, but may have something. Will check at home tonight and shoot you a note.
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Hmm, 2-year olds like pots and pans and wooden spoons or a little water in a sink with little plastic containers or piling up pillows and knocking them down. Wild animal pictures on the computer? Of course, they usually need the attention of an adult to enhance the fun of the play. kid songs and hugs are good pastimes too. No crib here, but I have had kids nap on the floor with blankets. I think you get to have the fun and the parents have to take over when the child is fussy.
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How wonderful for you, Steve! Tupperware and all manner of plastic containers. I always (and still do) keep them in the lowest drawer or cupboard, easy for young kids to reach. All teenagers in my house now, so I don’t have much to share. I’m sure your imagination and all other suggestions will come in handy.
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Yup, kitchen stuff (bowls, pots & pans, eggbeater, measuring cups, colander, etc, etc) and boxes and blanket over a table are all good for hours of play. If he’s ever quiet enough, you can check out some library books and read to him. Blow some bubbles for him to catch. (If it’s cold enough out, do it outside and they freeze.)
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Greetings! I enjoy lots of bright, energetic colors, but I don’t analyze them or seek them out in general. But yesterday, I deliberately went out to shovel the snow on driveway by myself because it was such a beautiful day. Blue sky, sparkly white snow, brown trees and evergreens are inspiring to me. Unfortunately, most of the walls in our house are white because it’s a rental. Not much I can do in the way of painting or decorating.
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Hang colorful pictures? Brightly colored throw pillows on the couch?
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I have a mind that road trips while I’m out on a run. One of the places it wanders to from time-to-time is “would you rather lose your sight or your hearing?” Depending on the day, my answer seems to waver… but having to give up seeing colors has always been impossible for me to fathom. So much emotion is induced by color & memories triggered by particular hues… I just can’t imagine giving that up!
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same here.
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I meant same here for giving up colors, not same here for thinking about this while i’m out on a run.
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We have a true albion squirrel this year, too, B-A, he comes under the bird feeders when the other squirrels are away. I was able to see him from far away all fall while we were doing yard work and wondered – how will he survive – but now that I see him against the snow, he could just make it though the winter.
I pay attention to color all the time. I too like making a stew with every color in the rainbow except maybe bright blue… Sometimes we grow white eggplants, purple beans, yellow roma tomatoes…
And although I’m not as matchy-matchy as my mom (and that whole generation of 1950s housewives), I am conscious when, say, my magenta sweater clashes with a bright red table in a restaurant. 🙂
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One of my black-and-white cats has a black-and-pink pattern on the roof of his mouth, which he exhibits by yawning widely and often.
My neighbors’ dog has a black tongue.
There has been at least one white squirrel around my neighborhood for many years. It must be an inherited trait; it’s been too long for it to be always the same squirrel. There was one year when a white squirrel visited my yard regularly, but usually I spot them a couple of blocks to the west.
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re black tongue: it’s a symptom of the nutritional deficiency disease pellagra (skin bacame rough and dark, tongue black). def. of niacin and/or tryptophan and present in the southern US where corn was a staple in the diet in the early 1900s . (etiology discovered cause in 1937 at U of Wis.) why not in Mexico? because they soaked their dried corn in lye (ashes, essentially) which somehow liberated the niacin from the corn kernel and prevented the (one of my favorite test questions) THREE Symptoms of ______ deficiency: diarrhea, dementia, death.
(if you’ve ever seen the film “Andersonville” you know they portrayed the many nutritional deficiencies in the prisoners so vividly)
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There are often families of Leucin squirrels that inhabit an area for years. There are several cities who have festivals in honour of their large populations of white squirrels.
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WOT: You gotta love it. The signs in Lunds and Byerly’s egg departments today read: “Due to unavailability, eggs are not available at this location.”
Oh . . . so THAT’S why the eggs are not unavailable! Thanks for explaining it 🙂
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Of course, I meant “so THAT’S why the eggs are not available.”
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Was that yolk?
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They almost make it sound like all the chickens are out on strike! 🙂
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Brilliant. I wonder who thought up that sign.
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An addendum to my “chickens are out on strike” comment:
I just returned from my local co-op and noticed the egg shelf there was bare as well (no signs tho). I knew it wasn’t for the same reason as the larger grocers (chickens kept in bad conditions)… our shelves have been bare for weeks now & we use small farms. The answer I got was that the chickens just aren’t laying eggs! Too funny… they really ARE on strike! I suggested finding a way to make those chickens happy… play music for them or something 🙂
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Yep; I can attest to that. All summer I’d been getting 20+ eggs / day. The last month I’ve been down to 8 or 9 and the last few days just 5 or 6. This from a flock of 30+ hens.
Some of my chickens are a couple years old so their production would be down anyway; fewer, larger eggs. I do have some younger hens from this spring and summer that haven’t started laying yet, but it’s been hard to keep my customer quota’s filled!
I have a light on a timer so the amount of sunlight isn’t the issue. And since they’re free range I thought maybe some were laying off in the weeds and I just wasn’t finding them. But the last couple days the weather has kept them around the coop and nope- still no more eggs.
So we just wait it out.
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My friend, Helen, for whom I occasionally chicken sit, has 6 hens. One of them, Little Red, flies the coop and fenced-in chicken area every morning. Helen leaves the garage door open, and Little Red has created a small nest, in the garage, wherein she lays her daily egg. She essentially roams free in the yard all day, and doesn’t return to the coop till night time. The remaining 5 hens manage to produce, on average, 2 to 3 eggs a day between them.
The other morning, on our way to our Silver Sneakers work-out, Helen told me this. She was having a conversation with the five hens remaining within their enclosure because she thought they were complaining that Little Red had special privileges. She told them that since she was producing an egg a day, and all they could muster between them was 2 to 3, that she thought Little Red deserved that privilege. She was having this conversation in a normal conversation voice when she realized her next door neighbor was observing her and listening in.
I suggested that the remaining hens were on strike because they didn’t think they were treated fairly. That perspective gave her pause.
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Ben, in my childhood, it was normal for egg production to fall off in the fall, earlier than this up north. I seriously doubt a light on a timer impacts free-range chickens much. Wild birds, according to a couple of studies I read in a fun book my son gave me, seem to know what the sun is doing even in the dark. The eggs would start coming back after awhile from the older hens when the pullets started laying. My mother had the theory that there was some sort of communal impact on egg laying.
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My favorite colors are pink and yellow. Pink, the color of the stain a smashed raspberry makes on a white cotton napkin and yellow, the color of cornmeal mush. I don’t like yellow and red together, reminds me of catsup and French’s mustard; I think it has more to do with the mustard than the color.
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Hi,
I have written about how much fun it is to make colored shadows and that I’ve been experimenting with that lately…
but I included some links and apparently it’s waiting for Dale to verify them so let me just say,
I’ve been playing with colored shadows.
Strong, colored side light with strong, colored back light makes the shadow the color of the side light with the backlight color all around it. Cool! When it works…
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Ben, will this be part of a show or just remain your cool option?
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It was part of a lucky accident during ‘Little Mermaid’.
It’s just something to keep in my bag of tricks and use it when I remember and it works for the show…
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The costumes in our High School’s production of The King and I are vivid-crimson, saffron, orange, blues, golds, all with shiny and sparkly accents. The cast’s skin has been darkened with makeup and their hair dyed black or donning black wigs. My daughter wears an elaborate and sparkly head piece for a dance number along with huge gold wings. Today on the bird feeder we saw blue jays, purple finches, blue and pinky nuthatches, and faded gold finches. This week, at least, we have color all around us.
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Yes, I love how someone named the finches that are red “purple”. All the bird colors you mentioned are at the feeders on the north side… The back yard is largely white and gray-brown (what DO you call tree color, anyway?), but for the red birdhouse we managed to get hung before the snow hit. Shows up great.
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