Hello to everyone from First Congregational Church! Welcome to my website. Thanks to all those who helped hand out supplies. I really appreciated it. Sometimes kids get impatient having to wait.

You folks were a captive audience with lots of good answers to my questions. Someone suggested counting people in a park by using a helicopter. I forgot to mention that scientists actually do that. In fact, I wrote a story about wolves and elk (Highlights 7/08) where scientists counted elk by climbing aboard helicopters and taking aerial counts.

Someone asked about ingredients in the clay - whether it has latex. I called the 1-800 number on the package. The clay comes from Mexico and contains paraffin and less than 1% sulphur. That's it. No gluten. No wheat. And no latex!

If you don't have time for anything else, check out the grizzly bear video that I made after visiting Alaska last June (under wildlife/science videos). There are bear cubs in that video and it talks about the grizzly bear study in Montana.

On Sunday, I saw a coyote hobbling on three legs through the woods in the backyard. So, yesterday when the cat zipped across the deck I thought she was running from a predator. I watched her run low to the ground across the grass. It hardly looked like the place to go to escape. She crouched down and within seconds lunged into the pine needles under two hemlock trees. She turned toward the house with something gray in her mouth. Then she raced back to the deck and dropped her trophy by the door - a little mole. Thankfully, she knew better then to try and bring it inside. NO THANK YOU!

Growing up with cats, I always saw the catch, but never watched the hunt. This time, it was swift and precise.

I was absolutely delighted to find a little surprise in my mailbox today. Out of over 100 entries, I received a letter of merit in the 2007 SCBWI magazine merit competition! The article was a true story about beavers and appeared in the December 2007 issue of Spider. SCBWI has not yet posted winners, but I'm interested to find out if the article I read while staying at the AMC hut at the base of Mt. Washington is one of the winners. It was a captivating article in Cricket about research on Komodo dragons.

Also, although its been quite a struggle, things are now moving along quickly on my article about research on crystal jellyfish. This article is for high school students and will appear in ChemMatters in December.

Information has now been posted about my upcoming program at a mother/child banquet at First Congregational Church in Vernon on March 26th. It's under church events.