Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

Oh, Mark, you’ve done it again.  I haven’t thought much about harvest mice since my college mammalogy class, and probably only then because they are the smallest types of mice (only a little bigger than shrews). But not only do I mash on you:

but I look up photos of the sweet little things (even if that’s a bunch of very large berries, that’s still one very small mouse):

and find out, with the intensive farming methods used today, the British harvest mouse lives in a very dangerous habitat, its round ball of grasses that serves as a nest no match for machinery.  Fortunately, clever Brits have discovered that old tennis balls from Wimbledon make sturdy manufactured housing for the wee ones in various wildlife preserve areas:

Of course, there are always a few that are somewhat more militant in defending themselves (“That’s no moon…”):

The hoatzin is a South American bird with lots of interesting details to its overstuffed body;  Mark Trail tells us all about it in the 25 Sunday 2010 strip!  There’s lots of information on the Internet about it as well, and it’s worth checking out.

I think the crocodilian in the original strip was probably somewhat happier than this poor guy…

…and for good reason!

[Sinite is an Old Mohawk term for “Beaver.” I figure if Tarzan can have Tantor and Simba, Mark can have his little North American buddies.]

Remember Abbey Spencer’s run-in with the nice old couple the next ranch over, who raised nice chickens?

Well, Mark doesn’t appear to remember that either, as he invites Ms. Spencer on a natural high nature hike.  (Who says that plants aren’t as interesting as animals or natural disasters?)

And Mark seems a little woozy and more uninhibited than usual after the field trip (then again, just being in the physical presence of Abbey might have something to do with it):

When life (or Jack Elrod) gives you Mark Trail running…

Poachers going after those tasty, tasty Canada geese! Aren’t they endangered or something like that?

I think I’m on to something.

In these days of shrinking newsprint and the ever-constant threat of our favorite comic strips being dropped, maybe a few ought to be combined.  Not forever, like some creepy muley-tigron-manpigbear hybrid, but only occasionally, when the situation merits it.

As an example, Mary Worth is embarking on a new storyline, and frankly, it looks dull.  If this were Sweeps Week, old Mary might be in the dustbin.

However, there’s some camera-swinging, gun-flinging action!!! over in Mark Trail, and it’s just what we all wait and pray for!  So in this case, maybe a little Mark Trail fleetness dropped into Mary’s favorite mercantile emporium will save the day:

Pretty freakin’ exciting, huh?

And speaking of action, Bonnie and Ernie actually show up for dinner at Mary’s! Is this action, or just plain stupidity?!  Only the grindingly-slow events of the evening will tell…

Sunday’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith had one of the characters slavering over the ripe, plump tomatoes in a gardening catalog (shouldn’t that be termaters in Hillbillian?).  Crankshaft has been plannig his spring planting for months.

Certainly gardening can’t be that sensual and seductive, can it?

[The description of the White Satin carrot is a fer real and true entry in the Territorial Seed Catalog. Do you really think I need to make this stuff up?]

I mean, what the dickens are you doing,  Mark?

You KNOW we’re only going to point and giggle:

Still, part of Mark’s charm is his apparent cluelessness about some things (or maybe that’s just his rock-solid, carved-in-stone facial expressions):

Considering that, it’s nice that he has a firm grip on some things at least! Go, Mark!