Unlike my Steve Wilkos show discovery, the following revelation is a great one!  My daughter brought home a Weekly Reader from school – you know, it’s like a newspaper for kids.  We used to get those when I was in school too, and I really enjoyed them.  So we’re sitting in the waiting area of H & R Block waiting for my husband to get our taxes done, and my 9-year-old daughter says to me, “Mom, did you know that they found an animal that they haven’t seen for, like, a really long time?  They thought there weren’t any more left in the world!  It looks like a Furby!”  We talked about extinction for a little bit, and then my daughter said she couldn’t remember what the animal was called or where they found it.  So when we got home, she showed me the Weekly Reader, and I found that she was talking about the pygmy tarsier.  Scientists believed this type of primate went extinct because no one had seen any specimens for about 70 years, but they recently found two males and a female tarsier alive in Indonesia.  The animals each weigh only about 2 oz.!

So yes, it’s safe to say this is a much better discovery for me than the Steve Wilkos show.  Here’s hoping the pygmy tarsier can re-populate and once again establish itself as a thriving species!  And thanks to the Weekly Reader which has been publishing great kid-oriented articles for decades.  These stories help youngsters develop many different kinds of interests in the world around them!

I have just finished watching a show on Animal Planet and it both disturbed me and gave me some hope. It was called The Vanishing Frog, and so many of our frogs are dying out because of a disease called chytrid fungus. This disease is spreading quickly throughout the entire world and so far, 33% of our frog population is in danger! As many of my friends and family know, frogs are my favorite animal and I want to be able to help them. There is a website, savethefrogs.com and I am going to find a way to help out as much as possible. Frogs are very important for our medicines as well. If that doesn’t help convince you the importance of frogs, I’m not sure what will. I would like to ask everyone that I know to help me with my quest to save my favorite animal from going extinct. Spread the news around to anyone you know. We cannot sit around and do nothing while these animals are dying! Things that affect frogs will eventually affect us as well. To save these frogs, we have to start now! We cannot wait, for there are frogs dying and without them, we are in danger! The show made me hide my face many times because of all the pictures of dead frogs and I refuse to sit around and let them continue to die! Please, help me!