All of us, as a rule, are afraid of snakes. But do you know that certain species of snakes are afraid of human beings too? One such species is the garden snakes or gardener snakes. As the name suggests, garden snakes are usually found in the gardens in our homes.

As soon as a garden snake sees a person approaching it, it hides in the grass or shrubs in the garden. Most gardeners cannot spot garden snakes as they are green and remain invisible in the grass. The only way gardeners come to know of their existence is through their skins that they discard periodically.

The reason why garden snakes are green is that most snakes are of the color of their environment. They can be observed only if they make any movement and this happens when they hear any sound such as the footsteps of someone approaching. If you are watchful, you can spot the flash of their movement as they quickly go out your sight once again.

Since garden snakes do not harm you and your pets, it is better that you should allow them live unharmed.

What do garden snakes eat?

Garden snakes, like all other snakes, are carnivorous which means they live on animals. They catch their preys whenever they find the opportunity. Generally they eat whatever comes in their way, worms that eat leaves and stems of small plants. They also eat creatures like snails, slugs, earthworms, leeches and spiders.

Garden snakes eat rodents like mice like all other species of snakes. Garden snakes like to live near the water bodies.

They also feed upon the amphibious and aquatic animals such as toads, frogs, salamanders, fish, and tadpoles. Even though toads have poisonous skins, garden snakes can eat them with immunity. They also eat small mammals, small birds and lizards. Sometimes, they eat eggs and carrion.

Clouds bring us rain, thunder and lightning. How many of us know what clouds are and how they are formed?

Clouds consist of millions of condensed water droplets as well as ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of earth. The water droplets floating as clouds are made of various shapes and sizes.

Clouds form over other planets well. We often see the pictures of clouds on other planets such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Clouds are formed when air and more so warm air comes in contact with a cool surface. The air absorbs the water vapor and is cooled below its saturation point. When the cool air rises into the atmosphere, the condensed cotton like mass so formed is called cloud. Clouds are also formed by a process called convection which is caused by the warming of surface by insulation.

Sometimes the air blowing over the hotter surface becomes warm and light. When it reaches the watery or colder regions, it absorbs the water content. This is the reason why cloud formation takes place along the cold and warm fronts. Clouds also form on mountains.

Another process of cloud formation is based upon ice memory. When the air reaches those clay areas where the temperature is minus ten degrees Celsius, it forms into clouds around the same clay at minus five degree Celsius.

The colors of the clouds vary from cloud to cloud. Sometimes the color of the clouds helps us to predict weather. According to weather lore, if the clouds are red during day time, they predict bad weather, and if they are red at night, it would be fair weather. The white color of the clouds indicates that they were formed with warm air which contained water vapor. Other colors of the clouds are blue, green and yellow.

Although people may tend to reject these stories in weather lore as unscientific and figment of imagination, it has been proved by lengthy observations that predictions made by folklore on the basis of the color of the clouds prove fairly correct.

The advent of broadband internet has revolutionized the concept of marketing. The sales companies now do not need to print lengthy sales letters or brochures and post them to their customers. This kind of arduous and expensive process, called snail mail, is gradually being taken over by email or electronic mail marketing which is simple and easy to use.

Email is the modern method of exchanging messages over the internet. It uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMPT.

The simplicity and ease of email communication has significantly contributed to the growth of internet or email marketing. Millions of commercial email messages are sent across the world every day.

The ease of email messaging has also generated several communication problems in form of spamming or unsolicited mailing.

The legitimate process of email marketing involves seeking the permission of the visitors and then collecting their names and email addresses. Seeking prior permission is essential as people do not like to receive unsolicited messages.

One way to develop the lists of your prospective customers is to place your ads about your niche product or service in the search engines. When the searchers type their query in the search engines that matches the keyword about your product in your ads, the search engine opens up the page—the result page– that provides answer to the query.

As soon as the searcher clicks on your ad, your website page opens. You explain the benefits of your products, and ask the visitor if he would like to learn more about your product or service. If the visitor feels interested in your product, he provides his name and email id so that he may receive your mails and newsletters.

This process of enlisting the members for receiving your email messages is called building opt-in lists. You start sending the mails to your list members. Some times the messages are commercial in nature and other times they contain free gifts and other interesting information. The marketers develop a relationship of trust and understanding with their customers which help them sell their products.

There were times when the customer was considered a king in the market. He was always right in his opinion. It now appears all the business institutions, banks, stores, supermarkets, shopping centers, cell phone companies, handy men, in short sales persons every where have said goodbye to the old culture of customer service. No body, it seems from the present trends, cares for the customer now.

The shop attendants were ever ready to listen to you and answer every question that you asked even though it might have been an obvious one. They were so always eager to explain and provided all assistance that you needed. You were not kept waiting to receive their attention. You were made to feel important.

Gone are the days, when you were greeted politely by the smiling faces of shop owners or their attendants. You were addressed as Sir/Madam in clear welcome tones. Now there are long queues while the staff moves about unmindful of your presence.

You call their customer care service and you have to hear recorded script that keeps you on hold interminably for personal answers to your calls. Your packages are delivered late and there are no satisfactory explanations for the delay. Your credit/debit cards are blocked without any legitimate reason. You have to pay unjustified high charges and penalties by banks and financial institutions. You are even provided untrue information and you feel harassed. The overall standard of workmanship has gone down. Important information is often withheld. Above all there is a shortage of trained customer care staff.

What are the causes for this downfall in customer care service?

One reason why you do not receive that kind of care and attention is that you are financially indebted to every major institution that you deal with. You will have to buy their wares whether you like it or not. The people out there think that if not you someone else is going spend his money with them anyway. So why should they dance upon your order?

This probably is the reason why you may have to spend some 45 minutes of your lunch our waiting in a queue to clear just one transaction.

How to complain against the faulty customer services

Always keep a pen and paper while calling the customer care service and seek the name and job title of the person responding your call. Note it down. Ask him to connect you with the manager, if the executive does not serve you properly. If the manager too is not cooperative, go for legal action.

Fights between lovers and spouses are quite common phenomena in human relationships. There are several reasons why relationships break up. Some of them are:

1. Boredom

Living with the same person often becomes like doing the same work over and over again, staying at the same place, or, taking the same food daily. People feel bored. They want change, though they may not admit it openly. They start sneaking out in search of new relationships and once they find out one, they tend to break up with the current partner.

2. Clash of egos

Some people have great egos. It is difficult for them to tolerate an opposing or even a different opinion from their partners. So they often insist upon having their own way and start quarreling with their partners over small issues. Small bickerings develop into big fights in course of time. Separation becomes the only way out of such situations.

3. Possessiveness

This weakness appears more frequently among the married couples. Both the spouses feel possessive about each other. People often do not willingly allow each other the free space that they both deserve. The result is that both feel suffocated and run out of the wedlock to breathe freely.

Jealousy

This weakness is more commonly found among women. If the wife sees her husband talking with his colleague more often even about official issues, she tends to become jealous. No amount of explanation offered by the husband seems to satisfy the wife. A slight delay in coming back from the office turns the needle of suspicion towards the erring colleague even though the husband may have been detained in the traffic jam. This kind of suspicion has broken up many loving relationships.

Infidelity

This is one trait in man which his wife cannot accept. No woman can tolerate her cheating husband. Infidelity, of course, is not the exclusive privilege of men only. Some women too are prone to it. People engage sleuths to spy on their partners. They tap their telephones. Once the suspicion takes deep roots, relations break up.

Whenever you finish an arduous activity successfully, you feel like thanking God or nature for having enabled you to finish off the work at hand. You celebrate the successful completion of the work as a gesture of thanksgiving. There is an old tradition particularly in North America where the farmers celebrate harvest festival as Thanksgiving. They celebrate the occasion by eating turkey.

The tradition of eating turkey during thanksgiving celebrations goes back to the time of Queen Elizabeth of England. It is said that when the Queen was celebrating the harvest festival with baked goose, she heard the news of the victory of the British Navy over the mighty Spanish Armada. She was so delighted that she ordered an additional roast goose. In this way, goose became the favorite bird for celebrating harvest season in England. When the British pilgrims migrated to America, they replaced roasted goose with turkey as wild turkeys were more easily available than geese. Thus a new tradition of eating turkey came into being in America at the Thanksgiving celebrations.

The tradition of eating turkey to celebrate a success has its roots in America as well. It is related to the ‘History of Plymouth Plantation’, written by William Bradford. It is said that his documents were taken away by the British during the War of Independence, but were rediscovered in 1854. The recovery of the documents was celebrated by eating turkey as a gesture of thanksgiving. The male turkey is called ‘tom’ while the female turkey is called ‘hen’.

Whatever the historical reasons for eating turkey, one thing is sure and that is that wild turkey definitely makes a delicious meat for Thanksgiving celebrations. According to Benjamin Franklin turkey is the original native of North America and therefore a more respectable bird. The reason why wild turkey makes a delicious eat is that it feeds upon acorns and other natural products which give turkey the ultimate taste.

I feel that I could fly if I just jumped high enough. My hands tremble when I try to sit still. I have to remind myself to breathe.

Our story began about four years ago, where we first “met” in a book and literature chat room. He spent the evening asking me questions like “If you could meet anyone, alive or dead, who would you choose?” Or, “Do you prefer stepladders or staircases?”

My answer was Thoreau (though maybe now I’d change it to Socrates) and staircases because I’m klutzy and staircases were more likely to have handrails. I was new to the chat scene, only a few days and so when he instant messaged me with these questions, I thought it would be an amusing way to spend an evening.

The connection grew and we talked more, but I was already involved with someone and so I had to let him go. We’ve talked, via emails and instant messages intermittently though nothing came of it: one of us was always with someone. But I could never really shake the idea of meeting him out of my mind. The connection I felt with him has always been mysterious and strong; the sort of thing you doubt because it seems too absurd to be true.

And now it’s tomorrow. Eek! The culmination of something that’s been building for four years or more is finally coming to fruition. Tomorrow evening I will be meeting Mr. X face to face!

Now we’ve exchanged pictures so I know a bit of what to expect, but there’s always a reaction when you meet someone for the first time and this will be the tell. But readers, even if my heart sinks and it isn’t what we hoped, this moment here, this anticipation and excitement, is what it’s all about.

No matter what happens tomorrow, at this moment I am more alive then I’ve felt in a long time. Every single sense is piqued and I feel as though the air is just singing with joy. For anyone that has ever thought about taking a risk, but was worried about failing, the exhilaration at just having taken the risk is a reward in itself.

And for all you would be connecting chat romances out there, who might be too intimidated to meet, let me assure there are plenty of others who have done the same. One chat friend of mine met her husband in the same room I met Mr. X and now they’re married. Virtually every one I’ve talked to in room (which is a lot) has admitted to having met someone they knew from online and all seem happy to have had the experience, even if it didn’t work out. In fact, I had a random conversation with the airline employee who sold me my ticket and she said she’d met up with two different people she met from online!

I first decided to practice meditation after a painful break-up. Before that, I’d never been one to think much of it. Practiced for over 5000 years, meditation has been used among a variety of religions to achieve different goals from enlightenment to creativity to just having a more peaceful frame of mind.

I recommend its practice because it doesn’t take much time out of your day, only five minutes if that’s all you have, and the benefits can be felt almost immediately. One unexpected for me was great posture!

There are many different ways to meditate and if you have an interest, but this is what tends to work for me.

1. Find someplace that you can sit and remain uninterrupted. Take a moment and create a relaxing atmosphere, whether it be lighting a candle or incense or opening a window. It doesn’t matter what you do, but you should do something that can become a ritual to prepare for meditation.

2. Sit in a comfortable position. There are a few different recommended positions, such as lotus and half lotus, but I just sit with my legs crossed Indian style. While sitting, concentrate on keeping your back straight, this will help with breathing. Let your arms hang limp in your lap or whatever feels comfortable—I usually rest my hands wrists up atop my knees. You might want to keep your chin slightly down as well so that saliva does not build at the back of your throat.

3. Close your eyes and breathe. Some people might like to have music playing in the background, but I find this more distracting than helpful. As you take a breath in, think of nothing but that breath and count one. Exhale and think of nothing but exhaling and then count 2. Do this until you reach ten, nice and slow and as thoughts begin to intrude, like your day at work, your kids, etc., slowly acknowledge them and push them aside. Keep this up for at least 5 minutes. The breathing will increase the oxygen in your blood and you will feel calm and relaxed.

4. Sometimes it is hard focusing on only your breathing and so you might want to try a visual image. One that works for me is called “Light In, Smoke Out.” In this mediation, imagine all of your stresses and your negative feelings as smoke. Breathe them out with each exhalation. Imagine goodness and peace as light and concentrate on bringing in the light with each inhalation. I find this image incredibly helpful and stress relieving.

There are a wide variety of meditations to practice and add to your routine. One site I recommend is: http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/Meditations/basic_meditation.html.

However, doing this small thing for yourself every day and being able to concentrate on a moment and nothing else will make your mind and body want to meditate.

I f you are as old as I am you will remember childhood trip to museums - all exhibits definitely hands off, and most in glass classes, often in gloomy rooms with no windows and poor lighting. You would be dragged reluctantly from room to room, until everything became a blur, your legs ached and you could no longer tell your Tudors from your Egyptians – and all in silence or hushed whispers.

There were some interesting bits, but you never had long enough to look at them, the writing was small and often incomprehensible to the average child (or adult for that matter).

I am so glad to say things have changed or at least are changing. There is even a museum in Halifax, Yorkshire – Eureka – where older adults have been known to ‘borrow’ a very small grandchild in order to gain admission. I’ve even seen them with quite tiny babies, because adults aren’t allowed in by themselves. Everything there is definitely hands on, hands in, push this, press that, try it out.

There are galleries like Tate Modern where, on the ground floor, people can be seen lying on the floor in order to appreciate something better.

Even the most sedate museums have days and rooms set aside for interaction. How much better to learn about something by doing, rather than just seeing. A Roman exhibition accompanied by trying on a toga and sitting down to a Roman snack and then coping with an addition sum in Roman numerals will stay in the mind for a long time. There is a disused synagogue in Manchester. Not necessarily the most exciting of venues, but someone who used to worship there will explain things and there are telephones – the old bakelite ones – on which one can listen to the voices and stories of real Jews who came to Manchester. These were recorded in the 1900’s, but listening in like this is a very fresh way of learning about them, rather than reading.

So bravo to all those museum and gallery directors – especially the ones brave enough to encourage us to reach out and touch their precious exhibits. There will always be certain items that need to be protected of course, but we understand that. Just let us interact with the rest.

My younger daughter has recently redecorated her bedroom. All the usual young girl things are there - the beads and bangles, pretty lights, lots of clothes, yet all in her own style. After a summer spent in Namibia she has acquired a large number of photographs, over a 1000, and several giraffes - one a model made from crushed cider cans and another a wonderful batik wall hanging.

It wasn’t until I pointed it out that she realized that giraffes were taking over. Yet I remember a school interview she had some years ago. ‘Elizabeth’ asked her teacher. ‘What do you want most out of life?’

The answer surprised him ‘My own giraffe!’

Now she is in university at Cambridge studying animal behavior, and still loving giraffes, but also tortoises, bulls, hippos and a whole lot more.

Where did this animal emphasis come from? The answer is simple. Like her sister she was a very early reader. Not because she was pushed or even taught. Both girls could read well before they started school. By the age of 7 both were estimated to have the reading and comprehension age of teenagers. But what do you give such precocious readers to read? They were quickly bored by anything in the infant class room and weren’t mature enough in other ways for the books I had read as a teenager. We tried books for older children, but even these didn’t always suit. Then one of them picked up ‘My family and other animals’ by that very special writer Gerald Durrell. Most of us remember this book and others of his because of the humor, but while both girls enjoyed that side of it, they also read with increasing interest his very precise descriptions of the animal life around him. They were also privileged to grow up with the amazing nature series by David Attenborough – ‘Life in Earth’ and all the rest. So it is hardly surprising that one daughter is head of section in a zoo and is already drawing up plans for her own zoo, and the other is about to sign up for a course in animal photography.

So if your children are early readers do take care which books you offer them.