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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 ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Smelt It (for the Week of Nov. 11, 2007)
November 11, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: Guess what my uncle eats. Smelt! They're small little fish like minnows. Where do they come from? A.: I can't say for certain. Scientists list at least 16 different smelt species. They live in many places on Earth ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Send in the Clown Loaches (for the Week of Aug. 31, 2008)
August 26, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: Erm, what's a clown loach? A.: A freshwater fish from Indonesia that people keep in fish tanks sometimes. The "clown" part of the name comes from the fish's colorful colors. Its body is goldish, orange-i ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Science Class Under the Sea (for the Week of Oct. 14, 2007)
October 14, 2007 Q. Dear Twig: My teacher told us about a class called Project SeaCAMEL. What is it? A.: It's a live, underwater class in marine biology. Except you don't go under the water yourself (for better or worse) (when you're older ...
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Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Run, Hamster, Run (for the Week of Oct. 5, 2008)
September 29, 2008 Q. Dear Twig: My pet hamster runs in her wheel all the time. OK, not all the time, but a lot. At least at night. How far do you think she runs? A. "Eek, eek, eek. Eek, eek, eek." I hear that noise when I visit the home of my ...