Being smelled out

 Theophrastus, the ancient biologist, suggested that our noses are above our mouths so that they can be used to test food before we eat it.

It seems like such an obvious principle I tend to forget the rest of the story. As Roy Bedichek said, nature has done a lot of experimenting. The olfactory organs of many insects are in their antennae. The “noses” of ticks — they are called Haller’s organs — are in their feet.

I was thinking of Bedichek’s observation because the ticks are out.

And although I know that my theory that all ticks lurk in blackberry vines when the berries are ripe is an example of observer bias, I found ticks on blackberry vines almost immediately.

When a large animal such as a man with an interest in natural history is near, the tick on the blackberry vine extends her forelegs and waves them. The Haller’s organs are in the forelegs, and the tick is combing the air for compounds such as pheromones and carbon dioxide that will allow her to find her host.

It’s the equivalent of a dog putting its nose to the wind.

It’s hard for me to imagine. Like Theophrastus’s thinking, mine is conditioned by my sensory system, which favors sight and hearing over smell. It’s hard for me to understand forms of life in which smell — or what we think of as smell — comes first.

• Sources: Roy Bedichek, The Sense of Smell; London: Michael Joseph, 1960.

Meredith Swett Walker, “An Up-Close Look at the Tiny Sensory Pits That Ticks Use to Smell”; Entomology Today,” Jan. 16, 2018. It’s here:
http://entomologytoday.org/2018/01/16/up-close-look-tiny-sensory-pits-ticks-use-smell/

The budget alternative

 The ancient Greeks consulted oracles. The famous ones, such as those at Delphi and Dodona, were expensive. In addition to the cost of the trip, the seeker had to provide gifts for the staff and sacrificial animals for the gods.

The budget oracle — if you could get there — was at Mallus in Cilicia, now in southeastern Turkey.

Its founders were said to be two legendary friends, Mopsus and Amphilochus, Greeks who fought in the Trojan War. They founded the city together and ruled it together. When they had a falling out, they killed each other in a duel. As the smoke rose from the funeral pyres, their ghosts reconciled, and to celebrate they agreed to found an oracle together.

If you were an ancient seeker, you came to the temple and wrote your question on a wax tablet. You spent the night in the temple and told your dream to one of the seers on staff. Cost: two coppers.

• Source and note: Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: 2; Penguin Books, 1968, p. 346.

An osprey at work

 We watched an osprey fishing over Alexander Lake Sunday afternoon.

I once spent a morning in Scotland doing nothing but watching ospreys catch salmon in Loch Fyne. When we lived in Galveston, I’d go to the West End and watch ospreys in the marshes.

Ospreys have a reversible toe that allows them to clamp down with two toes on either side of a fish.

Pandion haliaetus is smaller than an eagle and bigger than a red-tail hawk. If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, the giveaway is the way the osprey holds its wings in flight — a peculiar M shape. (If you were a kid flapping your arms to imitate an osprey, you would have to bend them at the elbows.)

A cool front came through the Piedmont Sunday — the temperature was only 67 at noon — and this bird was flying into a light wind from the northeast. It hovered like a harrier, and I was hoping to see a dive. But then it plodded on. Even superb fishermen don’t always catch fish.

The Locrian girls

 Greek mythology and history are full of weird stuff. The story of the Locrian girls might be the weirdest.

When Troy fell, Princess Cassandra ran to the temple of Athene to take refuge. A Locrian ruler dragged her from the sanctuary as she clutched the statue of the goddess. This villain was known as Lesser Ajax to distinguish him from Greater Ajax, a tragic hero in The Iliad.

Greek gods and goddesses were worse than cartel bosses, and Lesser Ajax came to a bad end. But Athene was not satisfied and went after his friends, family and countrymen. She struck Lesser Ajax’s hometown with plagues and famine.

The local authorities consulted the oracle at Delphi. And so each year for a thousand years, two Locrian girls were smuggled into Troy to serve as servants in Athene’s temple. Troy was rebuilt, and the new Trojans didn’t want Locrians in their territory. The new Trojans made it clear that the girls and their guides and Locrians in general would be killed if caught trespassing.

Borders were porous in those days, and girls were safe in the sanctuary of the temple. They usually served their terms and were smuggled out when replacements arrived.

The Locrians reasoned — more than once — that the curse might have been lifted. But every time they stopped sending girls to the temple, something bad happened.

The story is all the weirder because it ended around 264 BCE, in historical times. At least some people thought this strange practiced ended about a thousand years after the Trojan War.

• Source and note: Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: 2; Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 338 and 344.

A crop report

 It’s peculiar how symbols tend to fossilize.

Georgia is the Peach State. But The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported these figures for crops produced by Georgia farmers in 2025:

• Peaches: 62 million pounds.

• Blueberries: 116 million pounds.

When it comes to peach production, Georgia is No. 3, behind California and South Carolina. The license plate on my pickup truck still has a peach on it.

• Source: Olivia Wakim, “Blueberries taking bigger bite of business in Peach State,” The Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 10, 2026.

How many heroes does it take?

 How many mythical heroes does it take to pull off the concept of the Trojan Horse?

Robert Graves’s answer: 3.

• One to come up with the idea, inspired by the goddess Athene: Prylis.

• One to build it: Epeius.

• One to take credit for the whole thing: Odysseus.

Epeius was an interesting character. His father was caught embezzling temple funds, and the gods decided he should be punished by having a cowardly son.

Epeius’s name became an eponymous adjective. As the builder of the wooden horse, Epeius was the only one who knew how to operate the trapdoor and its lock. People enjoyed inventing stories about how he was persuaded to go along with the storm troopers.

Graves says the sense of the adjective changed with time.

 

In early saga Epeius’s reputation for courage was such that his name became ironically applied to a braggart; and from braggart to coward is only a short step.

 

I think something similar will happen when people make sense of the most notorious braggart of our own times.

• Source and note: Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: 2; Penguin Books, 1968, p. 336.

A man who loved quotations

 My great friend Melvyn would have been 95 today. He set out to be a concert pianist but had to find something else. He became a professor of medicine who followed politics, loved opera and literature, painted landscapes, built dollhouses for children and rooted for the Astros. He was also a collector of books of quotations. He went through them like popcorn.

In winter, he liked to get under the covers with a new book. He would first check the section on Shakespeare and then see what the quotable people had to say about love. He’d frequently wake up in the middle of the night, glasses still on his nose, but the book on the floor. He was always peeved that his place had been lost.

It surprised him when people quoted him — so he’d be surprised now:

 

I am predictably surprised when a former student comes to visit and quotes to me something that he/she remembers that I said, some memorable phrase to build a life on, the saying of which I do not remember at all. I know I should deny authorship, but I blush and stammer and say, “Oh gosh,” and slither out of an embarrassing but pleasing situation. It’s a little like telling a lie, and I know that’s wrong, but I also know it’s a mistake to mess with people’s memories.

You can quote me on that.

 

Everyone should have a friend like Melvyn. If you haven’t found him yet, get out of the house and start looking. It’s worth it.

• Source: Melvyn Schreiber, M.D., Sunday’s Essays; privately printed, p. 151.