Everybody knows this and acts accordingly; but when you say it, it sounds bad and bold, and makes you uncomfortable to hear it, because the puritan blood is still undertowing in your veins.

Thresher maws are subterranean carnivores that spend their entire lives eating or searching for something to eat. Threshers reproduce via spores that lie dormant for millennia, yet are robust enough to survive prolonged periods in deep space and atmospheric re-entry. As a result, thresher spores appear on many worlds, spread by previous generations of space travelers.

Gill nets are designed to catch a fish by the gills.

She soon joined the Spreckels Company near Salinas, Calif., where she worked on a sugar beet that would be resistant to the curly top virus.