The Red Fox

THE RED FOX A common animal in the Taiga Biome is the red fox. It can grow up to 2 1/2 feet long, 15 to 16 inches tall at the shoulders, and weigh 10 to 12 pounds. It has a rusty-red fur, a white-tipped bushy tail and black legs, ears and nose. The nose is pointed, and the ears are wide and in the shape of a triangle. The sly, intelligent fox adapts well to different habitats. It specializes in hunting small mammals such as rabbits and hares. The red fox is very elegant, intelligent and a nocturnal

creature. It usually travels and hunts alone. It is a carnivore. The fox eats small animals like rabbits and hares.

The History Of Pizza

THE HISTORY OF PIZZA

Pizza first came to America in the late 19^th century.  It appeared when Italian immigrants arrived in America and began selling it in the big cities of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.  Before long, pizza had become many people’s favorite food.  The Italians carried their pizzas around in containers with false bottoms and charcoal to keep the pizzas warm.  They charged 2 cents per chew, and most people ate the whole thing.  In 1936, De Lorenzo’s tomato pies was opened in Chicago.  Pizza was referred to as a tomato pie.  Before the 1940’s, pizzas were almost completely limited to Italy.  Now though, they can be found all around the world!!

Pizza is popular for all ages, young and old alike.  With sixth graders it’s very special.  We treat it like it’s one of a kind, when in fact there are millions of kinds of pizzas.  The combinations of ingredients are impossible to imagine.  When my friend had a sleepover at my house, we ordered pizza and he had 7 slices of pepperoni! If you looked close enough, it probably would look like he was a vacuum cleaner for a pizza commercial!  As you eat pizza, the taste is so wonderful, so heavenly, and so awesome, that it floods your mouth with flavors of Italy.  In an instant, even if you were blind folded and someone was feeding it to you by hand, you would know that what you are eating is pizza. Tomatoes, oregano, garlic, parsley, Romano cheese and tangy meats add to the aroma and savory delight. This pie called pizza is a wonderful addition to the world of food.

A Short Summary of The Cay

A SHORT SUMMARY OF THE CAY

         

        The story, The Cay, by Theodore Taylor is a wonderful story about Phillip Enright, an eleven year old boy who lives on the island of Curacao in 1942.  Curacao isn’t safe at the time because there are German U-boats surrounding the island on three different sides.  The U-boats have actually already attacked the big Lago oil refinery on the island of Aruba. Everybody knew that the U-boats were going to try to attack the oil refinery on Curacao.  The Enrights had moved to Curacao because Mr. Enright, Phillip’s father, was an expert in oil refineries and wanted to help defend the island. 

Later in the story Mrs. Enright wants to go back to Virginia.  In the middle of the ocean the ship they were on is torpedoed, and 4 hours later he wakes up with a black man on a raft.  Phillip is distraught and even more, greedy.  He begs for more water and he doesn’t want to hand over his clothes for a shelter.  Three days after being on the raft, Phillip goes blind.  One day when the black man, Timothy spots land, Phillip stands up and falls into the water and becomes surrounded by sharks. Timothy jumps in after him and saves him.  The Cay shows how a young, white boy and old, black man who have different backgrounds but start to get along and fight against nature for their survival.

Figurative Language of The Cay

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE OF THE CAY

Phillip Enright is the protagonist in the novel The Cay.  His character has many flaws based on his prejudice to the things he does not know about and to the cultures of other people.   Unfortunately, Phillip acts, thinks and speaks like most of us would if we were unfamiliar with cultural, physical, and language differences.  Phillip’s major flaw is that he has not had enough experiences in his life with the world around him.  His demands and expectations of other people are unreasonable in that he believes that all black people are different.  This thought is based upon what he has learned from his mother.  Prejudice, in World War II and even now, is a learned behavior.  All men are created equal.  Tragically, this is something Phillip and our world has yet to learn.

Phillip is a boy that isn’t experienced with the world at all yet.  This is demonstrated as he tries to act grown up and suddenly switches to being like a child having a tantrum.  He’s like this because he can’t fend for himself when he is in a difficult situation.  When he sneaks off to Fort Amsterdam he thinks he is being grown up, but when he tries to beat up Timothy he is being like a child.  When he returns to Curacao after his experience on the Cay he is now fully grown up and not a child anymore.  He considers all of his old friends childish and boring so he goes to the Ruyterkade Market and stays around the noisy black people.  On the Cay as the hurricane started Timothy looked over at Phillip when he asked if there were people with rifles Timothy said ‘d, sea… crack like d’ rifle, which is comparing the sea and a rifle because they both can make loud cracks.  This proves that Timothy was perhaps used to hearing a rifle or he has seen war and been shot at.  Those were some of the last words Phillip actually heard Timothy say.  

Canadian Taiga Animals: The Canadian Lynx

The Canadian Lynx is a grayish-white color, and looks like a giant house cat.  It's a North American mammal of the cat family after all.

The lynx's diet contains the snowshoe hare, and the lynx is specialized in catching the hare.  The lynx can catch the hare, even with a continuous amount of snow falling on the ground.  Also the lynx can see the hare, which is white, which is difficult where there is a lot of snow.

The only animal that can catch the lynx is the siamese bobcat, so naturally, the bobcat is the lynx's only predator.

Every ten or fifteen years, the lynx population will decrease when the snowshoe hare population eats so much vegetation that there is none left to eat, so the hare dies.  Then while they have no prey, the lynx starts to die too.  This is an example of a food web.  The Taiga is a gigantic ecosystem, so it has a gigantic food web.  When one animal fails to survive in the food web of the Taiga, then it hurts another species.