Kakuro No-No

As you know, MoCoLotion loves his daily dose of the puzzle page of the Examiner. Particularly Kakuro.

On the ride home last night, I found myself violating one of the fundamental rules of Kakuro: posting the same number twice within one add-sum.

Surely, a big newspaper syndicate such as Universal Press had done its homework and spot-checked the puzzle for accuracy. So I panicked. Had the Concerta worn off? Did a recent Lasik procedure leave me seeing things that just weren't there?

But I read and re-read it over and over. You try adding six unique digits from between 1 and 9 together to come up with 17. Just not happening. Mr. Know-It-All is apparently not the only syndicated contributor to the puzzle page just coasting through life.

So here it is, in living black-and-white, from this morning's Examiner. Yesterday's Kakuro solution.
I won't give up on the Examiner just yet. But for a Kakuro fix that won't leave you scratching your head, check out Krazydad's collection.


Oh, and while we're at it, here's Mr. Know-It-All's exhaustively-researched lead story this morning.

Ka-ching!

Strategies For Surviving On Metro

Washington's Metro was state of the art and universally praised when first pressed into service in 1976 and seems to ride on its laurels from three decades ago--as best evidenced by the orange/yellow/brown color scheme still prominent in many of their cars.

What's sad is that it wasn't cool then, and it's not even retro-cool now. In fact, it's not even retro now, they just never got around to updating it in many of its oldest cars. Breakdowns are frequent, and screwups on the part of operators have increased dramatically since they were given manual control over the doors. Riders are rowdier than ever. The supporting infrastructure--escalators, elevators, lighting--is also showing its age.

Carpet--unheard of in a transit system and supposed to symbolize luxury--totally stinks with mold when the weather gets the least bit damp, and poses a genuine threat to public health. But let's face it--unless there's padding (and there never was), and unless it's maintained and kept clean, carpet isn't much of a luxury. Metro is planning on removing it in favor of more durable, sanitary, low-maintenance flooring, but it can't happen fast enough.

So here are some survival strategies from a longtime rider for those new to the system:

Avoid the 1000-series cars at all costs. It's been raining for five days straight, the relative humidity is 1000%, and your only car offering is a 1000-series relic from the Jimmy Carter era. Besides the aforementioned moldy orange carpet, look forward to no working air conditioning.

I can only liken the odor and overall experience in rush hour to being trapped in a Porta-Potty on a 90 degree day with a wet golden retriever.

What's the operator thinking? If you get on the train, and the first thing you hear is "Yellow Line to Mt. Vernon Square...Sorry, Red Line to Shady Grove," you want to get off while you still have the chance.

Mysterious station announcements. An announcement comes over the station loudspeaker that sounds like it's coming from Charlie Brown's teacher...except for key words like your destination and "shuttle," which come across clear as a bell. ("Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah Vienna, wah wah wah shuttle wah wah wah wah.")

Head back to the street and find the nearest taxi.

The WMATA Afterschool Special. Boarding at a downtown transfer station at 3:45 on a school day? On a very special episode, enjoy a live reading of John Singleton's Boyz 'n the Hood. (Not suitable for all audiences.)

Don't believe the destination. On some lines, some trains aren't supposed to go to the end of the line, but do so anyway. Take MoCo's line (Red). It doesn't happen very often, but trains labeled Grosvenor sometimes receive last-minute orders to continue all the way to Shady Grove; some labeled Silver Spring continue all the way to Glenmont. So if you need to get to the furthest stations, board whichever train is going that direction (especially if seats are readily available in rush hour), even if it means you'll probably need to get off and change trains eventually.

In the interest of full disclosure, be aware that this strategy actually could backfire. Last year I took a Silver Spring train in the hope that it might continue on to get me to Forest Glen. The train died somewhere around Takoma and we waited a half-hour for a special train to pull us to the station so we could unload. While helplessly stranded, I watched at least five northbound trains pass us on the southbound track. Doh!

Check your calendar. If it's a Saturday or Sunday, drive to the nearest Metro parking lot. Then keep on driving to your destination.

Stand to the right. This is fairly common advice, but I'd also encourage those walking to walk to the right, as well, provided there's nobody standing there. Because someone on the left will be running.

Murder and Mystery In My Backyard

I am not a "pet person." Don't get me wrong, I love animals (and not only when accompanied by a side of mashed potatoes and green beans), and enjoy interacting with other people's pets. But one look at the poor condition of our only real houseplant will confirm just how much responsibility we take for living things in our home.

In addition to a lack of responsibility, between myself, the MoCoSpouse and one of the MoCoKids, we have allergies that would make our quality of life with a cat or dog second only to living next to Chernobyl. Finally, we enjoy a "lock and leave" lifestyle, while our pet-owning friends have to rearrange their lives just to run out to the 7-Eleven for a quart of milk.

In short, I view having a pet as sort of like owning other high-maintenance money pits like a boat or beach house. Better to be a good friend of someone who has one than to own it yourself. Reap many of the benefits with none of the responsibility. Before parenthood, I used to say the same thing about my role as an uncle.

So you can only imagine my excitement when we moved last year. With the new house conveyed a small low-maintenance pond with a waterfall, stocked with five attractively-colored fish. I naively referred to them as "koi," but the little research I did online (along with my assessment of the previous owner's frugality) suggests they are, in fact, the far less expensive pond comets.

The seller assured me the pond (now dubbed "Lake MoCo") was virtually maintenance-free. They had the fish for years, rarely fed them and made no plans for anyone to care for them when they would leave for weeks at a time--they seemed to be thriving living off the algae generated by some of the water plants. Winter was no problem; the pond shouldn't freeze over if we left the pump running, the fish would do fine under the ice if it did happen to freeze over, and fish don't eat in winter anyway.

And having now been in our house for nine months, all this has largely proven true. We've enjoyed the companionship of our pond comets and sharing them with our visitors, and are proud to declare ourselves "pet owners" alongside the guy with the mastiff, pot-bellied pig or Siamese cat. One fish, a silvery-white one about three times larger than any of the others, has been named "Bruce."

But what we didn't realize was that with the pond would also come a web of mystery, mayhem and even murder.

It began last fall. Approaching the pond one morning, something didn't seem just right. Floating in the pond was a bird. Not waterfowl, mind you, but a sparrow. Dead as a doornail.

Having no idea what to do with a dead bird (beyond sticking it on a rotisserie and sprinkling it with olive oil and Season-All), I grabbed the nearest available tool--a shovel--are removed it from its sea of tranquility before burying it in the garden.

Then a strange phenomenon began occurring each time I approached the pond. Something was rapidly jumping into the water as my presence was sensed, not only outdoors, but when I was viewing from inside the house, as well. It took a few days before I realized I was dealing with a bullfrog.

And armed with a new camera with a powerful telephoto lens, I was finally able to capture him from a distance.

Soon I realized my pet collection included not only five pond comets and one bullfrog, but at least three other bullfrogs as well. On several occasions, I caught them sunning themselves en masse, then going into a synchronized dive routine reminiscent of an old Esther Williams spectacular as I approached. I occasionally got close enough for a super-closeup of the bullfrogs with my telephoto, but for the most part, they remained shy and aloof.

All nature seemed to co-exist peacefully in my pond for another few weeks. Then the day came when one of the frogs wasn't so shy, as he floated on top of the water to sun himself. From a distance, I marveled at his sheer size fully stretched out (I will continue to refer to the bullfrog as masculine, even though I really have no clue and the females are typically larger), easily 14 inches from his outstretched front paw to his feet. As I approached, I expected an immediate dive which never materialized. 20 feet away, 10 feet away...not a twitch.

To my horror, I figured out why Jeremiah wasn't moving as I drew closer. Jeremiah had presumably moved on to the great lily pad in the sky. Kicked the bucket. Morto. Ceased to exist. Dead.

I continued to marvel at Jermiah's size as I surveyed the scene, thinking that doing so would somehow excuse me from the inevitable task of dead animal removal. I am by no means an expert on amphibian and reptile morbidity, but suddenly I qualified myself as the official coroner for Lake MoCo and was able to establish the exact cause of death upon examining the scene.

In Jeremiah's mouth was a bird, also apparently dead. A starling, much like the ones I'd seen taking drinks from Lake MoCo over the last few days. Totally intact, but apparently too much for Jeremiah to handle. Cause of death: choking.

But I was still in denial, and went inside to place a call to my brother, Grizzly. Grizzly has always been the country mouse to my town mouse. Surely, he would know the real story. Grizzly wasn't home, but his father-in-law--who is equally at home with nature--was there babysitting.

"Hi, Bob. What do you know about bullfrogs?"

"Not a whole lot. What's your question?"

"Well, I have one in my backyard pond, it's stretched out on top of the water, and it has a bird in its mouth."

"It's probably dead."

"Oh...Are you sure it's not some sort of eating ritual? I mean, I watch a lot of Animal Planet and snakes take forever to eat something, I'm thinking it might be doing the same thing."

"No, I think it's dead. You might want to get it out of there before it starts rotting."

So I found the ritual funeral shovel and removed Jeremiah with his prey intact, posed them for a final photo at their burial site, said a few kind words about the victim and prayed for gluttonous Jeremiah's soul before laying them both to rest under a small pile of mulch, forever locked in eternal embrace.

Then I immediately headed for the computer and Wikipedia to learn more about bullfrogs. Bullfrogs are not the cute, cuddly creatures portrayed on obscene Ocean City T-shirts and Saturday morning cartoons waiting for a fly to come around. They are major carnivores, pretty much at the top of the food chain for creatures that size. I had no clue, thinking maybe they just stopped at flies.

But bullfrogs don't get as big as Jeremiah by waiting hours to stalk one measly fly, not any more than I got to my size munching on celery sticks. What I found is they'll try to eat anything so long as it's not larger than themselves, provided that it's moving when they get it into their mouths.

But birds? Most of the references I found online indicated that this wasn't a dietary staple, but not totally out of the question, either. So I bet myself that I could find some video on YouTube, and sure enough, I was right.

I told the tale to MoCoSpouse, who was less than interested in the scientific aspects than she was grossed out and knowing that the pair were properly disposed of. I assured her they were. As luck would have it, one of God's other creatures managed to dig them up just a day later and drag the pair into the middle of the lawn, where I learned about their presence quite audibly from MoCoSpouse.

Then I grew concerned. How safe were Bruce and the rest of our fish? How could they possibly co-exist peacefully in the role of potential hors d'oeuvres with at least three remaining bullfrogs in Lake MoCo, as they presumably have for years?

We decided to let Mother Nature take its course as winter approached, and Lake MoCo grew calm for the next four months as we neither fed nor saw any of the fish, who apparently wintered at the bottom. Where bullfrogs go in the winter, I still have no clue.

Which brings us to the present. A few weeks ago, spring arrived, water temperatures reached the 50s and it was time to bring Lake MoCo back to life. In went the food; up came four hungry pond comets. Surely there was a miscount. No such luck, four pond comets. Again came denial, and the thought came to me: If the pond was the "world" as my fish knew it, then maybe the missing comet was the last snowbird still hanging out in the south while his friends headed back north. With no competition for the early bird algae dinner at 3:30 pm in the pond's virtual Boca Raton bottom, I might be tempted to do the same.

I faced up to the sad truth. Sometime over the winter, one of my comets met its maker. I tried to understand, rationalize, justify. The best I could come up with was that the missing comet looked very similar--solid red/orange--to another, and this was God's way of hoping I wouldn't notice and be spared the pain of the loss of a longtime companion, easily replaced for perhaps $10 at the local aquarium. Or perhaps this comet gave its life so some other creature could survive the long winter.

I'm not sure who the culprit is; bullfrog, bird, raccoon, natural causes, or maybe even another of the pond comets. For now, my eye is on Bruce, the great white, who somehow managed to emerge from his winter fast appearing a lot fatter than when he started.