After banana trees and whales, I've been thinking about otters, seals, storks and sponges. I can't quite spin all of them into one story tonight, but the old myth of the stork does come to mind. Remember when maternity stores had an image on their storefronts of a stork carrying a baby in its beak? To avoid awkward conversations about sex and childbirth, children were sometimes told their baby siblings would arrive in a tidy, cheerful fashion by stork. The stork, like a hobo with his bundle, bore the new arrival - Special Delivery you might say. However, I can't say I ever heard of a single kid who believed this.

I read tonight of people in Bulgaria who, on March 1 each year, began the process of saying good-bye to winter. They put red and white hand-crafted amulets called martenitsi on their wrists. Toward the end of the month, the first stork of the year would arrive, migrating to set up a nest for babies. (That would be baby birds.) The Bulgarians considered the stork's appearance the first sign of spring, and the amulets were taken off and stored away until next year.