Saving Oregon’s Beloved Enchanted Forest Off a seemingly sleepy exit on Interstate 5 in Oregon sits a trippy theme park. Enchanted Forest, which has occupied 20 acres on a hill in the woods between Portland and Eugene for 49 years, is what Disneyland might look like if it had been designed by Ken Kesey and filled with 1960s-era sculptures and animatronic relics of fairy tale characters. Like its counterparts, the Enchanted Forest is precariously positioned in a pandemic, deemed non-essential and thus unable to operate normally. But despite being deemed non-essential, small, nostalgic businesses are beloved by the people who have a connection to them. It’s that nostalgia that may save Enchanted Forest right now.  READ MORE →

Protective Poison Armor Recently, a team of researchers including scientists from the University of Utah and the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya took a look at the secretive nature of the elusive African crested rats, the only mammals known to sequester toxins from plants, specifically the Acokanthera schimperi plant. The team’s results revealed that the rats get by with a little help from their friends and significant amounts of fatal poisons coating their flanks. Researchers don’t yet know why the rat is immune to the poison’s dangers, but the substance certainly helps the creature get by. READ MORE →

WICKLOW, IRELAND Victor's Way Indian Sculpture Park The unusual spiritual visions of an Irishman were created in stone by craftsmen in Mahabalipuram, India, and now populate a sculpture park in County Wicklow, Ireland. Covering 22 acres, the park includes a series of dancing figures of Ganesh, Shiva, and other Hindu deities. Intended to represent the spiritual progression to enlightenment, this collection of 14 statues took 20 years to complete. READ MORE →

GASTRO OBSCURA An Alaskan Hospital Menu You’re not going to find jello cups on the menu at Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. Instead, patients and visitors choose between reindeer pot pie, smoked hooligan, birch sourdough biscuits with fireweed jelly, herring roe, and salmon-belly or seal soup. Depending on the season, the hospital’s Executive Chef receives a variety of donations, sent in by a state-wide network of hunters and gatherers who keep ANMC’s traditional foods program stocked with the ingredients that Alaska Natives have routinely enjoyed for generations. READ MORE →

ISHINOMAKI, JAPAN Cat Island On the island of Tashirojima in the Miyagi Prefecture, the cats outnumber people, and the people like it that way. It’s no accident that the cats who inhabit Tashirojima—or what has become known as “Cat Island”—in Japan have come to be the island’s primary residents. Cats have long been thought by the locals to represent luck and good fortune, and doubly so if you feed and care for them. READ MORE →