Category Archives: Quick Hits

WMEO 9 BREAKING NEWS- Back Bay Braces for… Elephants?

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Filed by Anchors Banner & Balboa Dateline: Commonwealth Avenue Mall, Boston.. WMEO 9  We Meow-You Listen

🎙️ Banner (Orange, Overcaffeinated, Zero Chill):

LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND ALL WHO APPRECIATE A GOOD PARADE OF ABSURDITY— We interrupt your regularly scheduled bird‑watching to report that Boston has officially lost its mind.

Moving trucks are clogging Back Bay again, but instead of college kids hauling futons, they’re unloading elephants. Not real ones. But 100 life‑sized elephant sculptures, which is somehow even more chaotic because you can’t bribe them with peanuts to move.

I repeat: ONE HUNDRED ELEPHANTS. FIVE BLOCKS. This is the greatest thing to happen to Boston since someone finally fixed the Green Line.

I attempted to climb one for “journalistic purposes” but was removed by a volunteer who said, and I quote, “Sir, please stop narrating loudly.” I regret nothing.

🎙️ Balboa (Black, Soft‑Spoken, Perpetually Worried):

Thank you, Banner. I would like to reassure viewers that these elephants are friendly, quiet, and unlikely to bite—unlike some anchors I could name.

The installation is part of The Great Elephant Migration, a global fundraising initiative bringing awareness to conservation efforts. The sculptures will line the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, creating a peaceful, tree‑lined corridor of gentle giants.

I personally inspected the scene. The elephants appear sturdy, respectful, and uninterested in stealing anyone’s kitty grass. I approve this event.

However, I must note that the moving trucks were loud, and I hid behind a hydrangea for several minutes. This is normal. This is fine.

🎙️ Banner (interrupting):

BALBOA HID BEHIND A HYDRANGEA. THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE.

🎙️ Balboa:

Please ignore him. We encourage all residents to visit the installation, take photos, and appreciate the artistry—while also remembering that climbing the elephants is not allowed, even if you are a very handsome orange cat with a press badge.

A grassy slope in front of a large brick building is filled with dozens of life‑sized elephant sculptures. The sculptures vary in size and pose, arranged across the lawn and near rocky areas at the bottom of the hill. The scene looks like a herd moving together, but the elephants are clearly art installations rather than real animals. The contrast between the realistic sculptures and the formal building behind them creates a striking, surreal visual.

WMEO 9 SIGN‑OFF

This has been Banner & Balboa reporting live from Back Bay. End of bulletin. Please resume your regularly scheduled scrolling.

 

Owl Awareness Day 2026

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A great horned owl perched on a wooden surface in a sunlit forest, showing its orange eyes, feathered ear tufts, and mottled brown plumage with detailed texture.

Great Horned Owl- photo credit Deb Neumann

🦉 August 4th • International Owl Awareness Day

European Barn Owl = photo credit Deb Neumann

Today we celebrate one of nature’s most extraordinary nocturnal hunters — the owl. Beyond their iconic stare and ghost‑silent glide, owls play a crucial ecological role and face growing threats worldwide.

🌙 What Makes Owls Amazing

  • Silent Flight: Fringed wing feathers and soft down absorb sound, letting owls swoop in like feathery ninjas.
  • Tube‑Shaped Eyes: Their eyes aren’t round — they’re long, fixed tubes. Owls can’t swivel them, so they rotate their whole head instead.
  • 270° Neck Rotation: With 14 neck vertebrae (double ours), owls can turn their heads almost all the way around without cutting off blood flow.
  • Asymmetrical Ears: Offset ear openings let them triangulate sound in 3D, locating prey under snow, leaves, or darkness.
  • Reversible Toes: Their zygodactyl grip lets them rotate an outer toe backward for a perfect “grab‑anything” hold.

Great Horned owl – photo credit Deb Neumann

🌾 Why Owls Matter

  • Natural Pest Control: One owl family can devour 1,000+ rodents a year, reducing the need for chemical pest control.
  • Declining Populations: Roughly a third of native owl species are experiencing population drops.

🛡️ How You Can Help

American Barn Owl -photo credit Deb Neumann

  • Skip rodenticides — poisoned rodents = poisoned owls.
  • Install nest boxes where natural tree hollows are scarce.
  • Keep cats indoors to protect fledglings and small wildlife.

🦉I leave you with this thought on Owl Awareness Day

Real owls may not deliver mail like Hedwig, but they do deliver pest control, ecological balance, and some of the coolest adaptations in the animal kingdom. Celebrate them today by learning, sharing, and helping keep their habitats safe.

female snowy owl in flight-photo internet

WMEO 9 BREAKING NEWS ALERT- Elephants Invade Boston

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Cat correspondents at the WMEO 9 news desk reporting on a breaking news alert about elephants invading Boston.”

🐾Dateline: Boston, MA — WMEO Headquarters-We Meow, You Listen. 

This is a Breaking New Alert!

Just in to the WMEO 9 newsroom.

Beginning next week, the city of Boston will unveil The Great Elephant Migration. It’s a spectacular mile‑long outdoor installation featuring 100 life‑size elephant sculptures crafted by artisans from India. The exhibit will stretch along the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, transforming one of Boston’s most historic boulevards into a breathtaking parade of color, culture, and conservation.

WMEO 9 sources confirm the exhibit will run August 8 through September 13,  New England residents will enjoy plenty of time to stroll among the herd, snap photos, and learn about global wildlife protection efforts.

Banner, Senior Field Correspondent, has issued the following statement:

“We intend to cover this story with the seriousness it deserves. Also, elephants are very big.”

Balboa, Investigative Analyst, added:

“I will be monitoring the situation closely. Especially if any of the elephants appear suspicious.”

Stay tuned to WMEO 9 for continuing coverage, including on‑scene reporting, exclusive photos, and a special feature titled “Elephants: Big, Beautiful, and Probably Not Interested in Cat Treats.”

This has been your WMEO 9 Breaking News Alert. More updates as the herd arrives.

End of bulletin. Please resume your regularly scheduled scrolling.

 

Celebrate Happiness, Friendship, and Intelligence with the Sunflower

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A wide field of tall sunflowers in full bloom, each with bright yellow petals and dark centers, surrounded by lush green leaves. The flowers face different directions, creating a lively, sunlit scene filled with color and texture.

Happy Flowers

Never too late to celebrate a little Happiness.

I reminded everyone last year to take a moment for the happiest flower on earth — the sunflower. This simple gesture can inspire a little more Happiness in our lives. This year, National Sunflower Day snuck past me. It falls on the first Saturday in August, not a fixed date, so August 1 was the big day… and yes, I missed it.

But these flowers didn’t mind. They’re still standing tall, bright, and cheerful, and many fields will keep blooming well into fall thanks to staggered plantings. Their bright yellow color is a sign of happiness, friendship, and intelligence.

Sunflowers grow everywhere — one of my favorite photos came from a field in Hawaii.

Sunflower and butterfly 2018

Closer to Home

But you don’t need a plane ticket to enjoy them. Ward’s Berry Farm in Sharon has a sunflower maze that’s pure summer joy, and the familiar sunflower field along Route 138 in Easton often returns each year, easy to spot right from the road.

 

So here’s to a flower that radiates joy, even when we’re a day late.

 

 

 

 

Happy Belated Sunflower Day. Sharing a little sunshine with you.

Sunflowers

Field of Sunflowers

Let’s Call a Spade a Spade

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“A shiny metal spade with a wooden handle standing upright on bright green grass, its flat blade reflecting light.”

Sometimes my best source of inspiration comes from you — my loyal readers and followers. Believe me when I say I read every comment and appreciate the time and thought you put into them. So when Grooves or Grammar commented on my post Say What? A Stroll Through American Slang, I paid attention.

Grooves wrote:

“I sometimes wonder about ‘let’s call a spade a spade’. I think the meaning is clear, but why a spade, rather than anything else? The phrase would have been just as clear with pretty much any other item. Very useful phrase, though, especially when I’m having conversations with students who are trying to come up with increasingly unlikely excuses for homework not being done…”

And I thought, Wow — that’s a great expression and I’d totally forgotten it. So I did a little digging (pun intended), and here’s what I discovered.

This may sound as American as apple pie these days, but it actually goes all the way back to ancient Greece. The earliest version appears in classical Greek writings. Plutarch used a phrase meaning “call a fig a fig and a trough a trough,” which was all about speaking plainly.

Centuries later, the scholar Erasmus translated that Greek phrase into Latin — but he made a mistake. He swapped the Greek word for “trough” with a similar‑sounding word meaning “spade.” That mistranslation stuck.

Then in 1542, Nicholas Udall, an English (not American!) playwright, schoolmaster, and scholar, translated Erasmus’s Latin into English — and that’s how the phrase entered English exactly as we know it today. It could’ve been almost any object, but thanks to a translation quirk, we all ended up with spades that have nothing to do with gardening.

So Keep those cards and letters coming (Dean Martin)

Keep those comments coming (or as the old saying goes, those “cards and letters”). I love when they make me think — or make me “dig” for answers.