Possums Are Not Cute!
And Other Myths about Nature’s Most Misunderstood Critter
Hardcover | Kindle Edition
By Ally Burguieres
Publisher: Quirk Books
Release Date: May 10, 2022

Hello, I’m the person on your social media feed who shares memes that say “Hello, I’m an opossum, please don’t hurt me, I mean you no harm” every two weeks. That’s because the opossum, which is commonly referred to as “possum,” the name of its distant cousins from down under, is so misunderstood. People often mistake these climbing critters for rats or raccoons who could carry rabies and consider them :::gasp::: ugly! Well, spoiler alert: They are none of those things!

In Possums Are Not Cute!: And Other Myths about Nature’s Most Misunderstood Critter, wildlife rehabber and advocate Ally Burguieres aims to dispel the myths about opossums, specifically the Virginia Opossum, which is the only native marsupial in the United States. If you see a white and gray little beast with a pointy snout rifling through your garbage pails or eating the food you leave out in your yard for the feral cats, that’s the Virginia Opossum. And they are actually quite adorable … and harmless, too! They’re also here to stay, thankfully, because they happened to be very beneficial to our society, as this new full-color hardcover book delightfully explains.

BookExpo 2019 hit the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City last month, and besides the aisles and aisles of wonderful words, there were also… puppies and kittens! Dr. Gary Weitzman – National Geographic author, veterinarian, and President & CEO of the San Diego Humane Society, was in attendance to promote his new pet reference guide, Complete Guide to Pet Health, Behavior, and Happiness.

So far, 2019 has already been a good year for cats in film. Last month’s Captain Marvel, the latest release for Marvel Studios, had an orange tabby named Goose play a major role in the superhero film, and in this weekend’s Pet Sematary, a Maine Coon cat named Church was front and center.

In the new Pet Sematary, a Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves his family, including their beloved cat, Winston “Church” Churchill, from Boston to a small town in Maine so they can live a quieter life. Unbeknownst to them, on their property is a pet cemetery, as well as a mysterious ancient burial ground. After the sweet and friendly Church is run over by a truck, Louis, under the guidance of his friendly elderly neighbor Jud (John Lithgow), buries the cat in the burial ground, a place where the dead rise. But when Church returns, he’s not the lovable lap cat he used to be, much to the family’s horror.

Valentine’s Day is here! Are you still searching for a last-minute gift? Or perhaps you already have all your gifts purchased and ready to go for the big day, but you’d like to add a little something extra? Well then here are some lovely stress-free last-minute charitable gifts you can give this Valentine’s Day.

See below for our list of Last-Minute Charitable Gift Ideas For Valentine’s Day.

Here’s what you do: Make a charitable donation online — in some instances you can do so in the recipient’s name — then print out an e-card or other message offered. You can add this to an existing gift or give it on its own. If you want, you can run to a Walgreens or CVS (some kind of pharmacy type place), grab a tiny box of chocolates and/or tiny teddy bear, put it together with the charitable gift message/print-out into a pretty gift bag (add tissue paper if possible to pretty it up), which will make the presentation lovely and not make it seem like you waited till the last minute.

Oh, and these are tax-deductible! And you’ll be helping others, while giving the gift. So, it’s a win all around.

A lot of effort is put into perfecting a Pixar project. From the search to the story to the animation, it takes approximately four years for the studio to complete work on one title. Perhaps that is why they are recognized for being one of the top animation studios in the world. But as much as they thrive on their original storytelling, they’ve done well for themselves making sequels. Finding Dory proved that a Pixar sequel is sometimes well worth the wait, and somehow, we keep getting sequels for Cars.

So when it was announced that there would be a Toy Story 4 and The Incredibles 2, Pixar fans got excited. Now comes word that they will be switching release dates. More on their switch and which films they will be competing against below.