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You can find vegan pastry dough in many stores, and if you stock up when it's on sale it can even be inexpensive. By experimenting with the dough, we invented many kinds of turnovers.

To make the traditional triangle-shaped turnover, cut the dough into even squares about three inches long. To get rectangle-shaped pastries, you can cut the dough into four-inch by three-inch rectangles and fold it over. Then, you can slice the dough on top for ventilation -- or to make the pastries seem more professional. Note: Line the cookie sheet with foil, as filling often comes out during baking.

Desserts are one of the easiest things to make. For nine simple apple turnovers, peel an apple and dice it, then put a small mound of pieces in the middle of each square. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top of the apple pieces, and fold each pastry into a turnover shape. Crimp the edges together and seal them with water. They are done when the pastry is golden-brown. (If you cut the dough into rectangles and fold those over, you could top the pastry with sugar so that it sparkles.)

To make nine baklava turnovers, pour about ¼ cup walnuts into a bowl and pour a little milk (soymilk works well) over them. Using a spoon, put some of the mixture on the pastry squares, and add sugar on top. A few cubes of butter in each pastry improve the taste, but than can also be omitted. Fold them over and crimp.

I experimented several times with bear claws, and although I never made the store-bought kind I found some other fillings. To make twelve "bear claws," mix 1 cup brown sugar, ½ cup white sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and ½ cup ground almonds and walnuts together. Fill the pastry squares with the mixture, then fold them over and crimp. Before baking them, press sliced almonds into the top of each pastry. When they are done, they can be sprinkled with sugar.

Another time, I decided to try to make cinnamon rolls. They were not bad if you weren't expecting a... cinnamon roll? First, open the pastry sheet but do not cut it. Then, mix together some cinnamon and sugar (⅓ cup sugar and two tablespoons cinnamon is fine, but it doesn't have to be perfect) and spread it over the dough, pushing it in. (Leave about half an inch at one end of the pastry so that it will hold together. Then, carefully slice the dough into long, thin strips. (Where you would get three turnovers, you get four strips.) Next, scatter a few chopped walnuts on top. Roll up the strips and push the end in, to stick it to the pastry. Then, lightly dust them with cinnamon. After they've baked, they can be sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Jam turnovers are very easy. Simply put a spoonful of jam in each pastry and crimp. However, these always find a way to leak. Katrianna likes eating the crystallized jam that's been baked. Strawberry jam is our favorite, but any type will work.

Pastry is not exclusive to desserts. Salty or even healthy pastries can be made with equal success. Just filling the pastry with cheese (cheddar works best) makes a very popular snack. If you choose to make these in rectangles, you could put a little salt on top.

Trying to replicate samosas, we filled them with potatoes. Some also had peas in them and others included cheese. Additionally, we tried putting the yellow, mild turmeric, which fights cancer and other diseases, in the turnovers. They were surprisingly good. My sister often adds all sorts of other vegetables and herbs when she makes them (but her recipes are "top secret!").

Whatever you do with the pastry, it usually turns out well. It's also very easy to prepare and bake.

In the deep dark chasm,

California condors are remarkable birds. They have a nine-foot wingspan, the largest of any North American bird! They are so large that they are more often mistaken for airplanes than other birds. Due to their size, Native Americans called them "thunderbirds," because the sound of their wings flapping purportedly made thunder. They are mostly black, with white patches under the wings. Another myth, from the Chumash tribe, tells that condors once had white feathers, but were burned when they got too close to a fire.

The critically endangered condors are in the same family as vultures, and many vultures are scavengers, meaning that they eat the remnants of dead animals. Unlike some vultures, however, condors do not have a particularly good sense of smell, instead using their sharp eyes to find food. They do not have talons and cannot carry prey, so they eat 2-3 pounds of food at a sitting and then sit for a day to recover! They are so big that they intimidate most would-be competitors for food. Even bears ignore them, and golden eagles are the only species that will fight them. Dominant, older birds eat before the younger ones.

Condors mate for life. When a male spots a potential mate, his head turns bright red and he walks towards her with his wings spread. If she lowers her head, it means she accepts. Although no actual nest is built, they lay their eggs in hard-to-access caves in rocky cliffs. Incubation takes two months, with the parents taking turns sitting on the egg.

At one point, there were thousands of condors in the wild. Ten thousand years ago, they lived on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, from British Columbia to Baja California and from New York to Florida. However, they were endangered by many factors. They were hunted (particularly for museums) and poisoned by DDT. They got lead poisoning by scavenging dead animals killed by hunters who used lead bullets. Their habitat was also destroyed, and, as more people moved in, condor collisions with power lines increased. Additionally, people collected the condors' eggs. In the Gold Rush, condors were even turned into pets. The entire California condor population was reduced to 22 birds.

Captive breeding programs saved the condors. In the wild, condors are slow breeders, but they "double-clutch," or lay a second egg if the first one is lost or taken. So scientists took the condors' first eggs, allowing the pairs to raise the second eggs. The first eggs were put in an incubator until they hatched, when the chicks were fed with condor puppets and recordings of condor sounds were played to them. In twenty years, the population grew to 200 birds.

Today there are 369 condors in the world, and 190 of these are wild. However, they are not safe. Some of them have been killed by coyotes or eagles. Some still flew into power lines, but now before new birds are released they "undergo a power pole aversion training program which uses mock power poles that deliver a small electric shock to the birds when they try to land on them," according to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. This has effectively stopped the collisions. They are also accidentally hunted, or are poisoned by chemicals. Lead poisoning from scavenged meat is still one of the biggest threats. Since reintroduction, 15 condors have died from lead poisoning. (Nine of the cases were proven, and six were recorded as very likely.) Recently, lead ammunition has been banned within the condors' range. Although some people refuse to comply with this law, it has reduced the risk. They have been reintroduced to parts of California, Arizona, and Utah. They are still very rare, but their populations are increasing. Captive breeding and careful conservation seem to have saved this magnificent raptor.

When most people see the word "panda," they think of the big, furry, black-and-white Giant Panda. But the lesser-known Red Panda, three times smaller, is also in danger. Today classified as vulnerable, its status could quickly change to endangered.
 
The red panda is a living fossil. It has no close surviving relatives, and most resembles raccoons and skunks, not giant pandas. Living in temperate (neither tropical nor arctic) mountain forests from Nepal to China, they spend most of their time in trees. They are both nocturnal and crepuscular, meaning that they come out in the early morning and evening. The red panda is also called the cat-bear, lesser panda, and fire fox. The browser "Mozilla Firefox" was named after them.

Their diet is two-thirds bamboo, but they also eat acorns, flowers, berries, lichen, mushrooms, roots and grasses and occasionally insects, fish, eggs, and chicks. Like giant pandas, they have a bone that acts like a thumb, helping them hold the bamboo. However, because bamboo is low in calories, they spend most of their time eating and sleeping. They drink by dipping one paw into water and then licking it!

The red panda is threatened due to many factors. Deforestation reduces their habitat and grazing livestock can trample their bamboo. In China, they are poached for their fur, which is considered good luck by newlyweds and used in traditional ceremonies. Although the practice of capturing red pandas for zoos has ended, they are sometimes sold to private collectors and are occasionally kept as pets in Nepal and India. Even without interference in the wild, the red panda has a low birth rate and high death rate.

However, red pandas are officially protected throughout their range and hunting them is illegal. Parks protect them in every country they live in and some villages are involved in conservation, as well. Although some originally trapped wild red pandas, many zoos have developed successful captive breeding programs. If we protect them now, the red panda will flourish in the wild.

Before 1851, no one had heard of a black-footed ferret. That was the year in which John James Audubon and John Bachman wrote a book together titled The Quadrupeds of North America. This was the first work to mention the species, but it was still more than twenty-five years before their existence was proven. (Audubon, who sometimes killed fifty birds of one species to produce one painting, only got to see one ferret while working on his book, which was not enough evidence to prove that the black-footed ferret was a new species.)

Although they lived throughout the Great Plains, the ferret population has been falling ever since we first knew about them. One reason for this is that the ferrets are so dependent on prairie dogs, a species of ground squirrel. Not only are these rodents their staple food, the ferrets also cannot dig their own burrows and are squatters in prairie dog towns. When settlers moved west, many became farmers. They plowed under the prairie dog towns and hunted or poisoned many of the animals. Both the prairie dogs and the ferrets grew increasingly fewer.

Then, in 1981, a Wyoming dog named Shep found a ferret. Eventually, the animal was identified and its colony -- of about 130 animals -- found. However, this population quickly plummeted due to canine distemper and sylvatic plague. In 1986, the remaining 18 animals had to be removed from the colony. The ferret was extinct in the wild.

At this time, there were only fifty captive black-footed ferrets in the world. After years of captive breeding, the first place to reestablish a small colony was Wyoming in 1991. Now, there are fifteen established fesnyngs (or businesses: the name for a group of ferrets) in the wild, in eight US states as well as Mexico and Canada.

There are, however, still threats to their survival. Their close relationship with prairie dogs does not aid their recovery. Prairie dogs are often viewed as pests because they prevent farmers from growing crops in certain areas by rooting up the plants around their burrows. Their tunnels also make the ground less stable and more prone to collapse if animals are turned out to graze.

Because of these things, many people dislike prairie dogs. Even today they are hunted, both commercially and privately. To eradicate colonies, they are poisoned, which indirectly affects many other species. Two of the popular poisons, Rozol and the recently approved Kaput-D, contain chemicals that thin the prairie dogs' blood until they bleed to death. Not only is this horrible for the prairie dogs, any animal that eats them will encounter the same fate. Black-footed ferrets, swift foxes, American badgers, ferruginous hawks, and golden and bald eagles all prey on prairie dogs. An infected animal is easy to catch because it becomes unable to move quickly or control its motions, so many of these predators are suffering secondary poisoning. Additionally, mountain plovers and burrowing owls live and nest in prairie dog burrows and can also become infected.

Another threat to ferrets is disease, particularly sylvatic plague. Luckily, the animals can be immunized against the disease, and all ferrets born in captivity are required to be given two shots of the medicine. Although prairie dogs are also susceptible to this, it has been found more difficult to protect all of the wild colonies from the bacteria. One widespread method was to spray each burrow with flea-killing pesticides, but scientists realized that this was probably too expensive and hard to do and maintain. There had to be an easier way to accomplish this. Finally, they developed a medicine that could be mixed in with food left for the prairie dogs to eat. This also proved more efficient than the pesticides. Additionally, these studies will benefit other species susceptible to the sylvatic plague, both wild rodents and some pets.

There are now more than 1,500 ferrets throughout the established colonies, so the species has been upgraded from extinct in the wild to endangered. Although the number is low, it is still a success considering how few animals lived at one point. Black-footed ferrets are considered the most endangered mammal in North America, but the numbers are still rising to the extent that they may become relatively common over time. The current ambition is to establish ten breeding populations in the wild. When this is met, the ferret can be listed as threatened, instead of endangered. When this happens, the ferret will have returned.

The BP oil spill threatens hundreds of different species, from crabs to dolphins to pelicans. However, the five species of sea turtles living in the Gulf of Mexico -- leatherback, hawksbill, green, loggerhead and Kemp's Ridley -- all of which were endangered or threatened before the BP oil spill, may be hit the worst. 200 dead turtles have been found along the Mississippi coast alone. The Kemp's Ridley sea turtle, which was critically endangered and the rarest sea turtle before this disaster, may have the hardest time surviving. As well as being hunted (in parts of Mexico, they are eaten and used for leather in making boots), they are susceptible to becoming entangled in shrimp-catching nets. But the oil spill has introduced many more threats that the turtles do not know exist and will have an even harder time avoiding.

Right now, the adult turtles are coming ashore to lay their eggs. The beaches on which they lay their eggs are now covered in oil, which is not good for the hatchlings. If the eggshells, which are soft and about the size of ping-pong balls, make contact with the oil, they weaken and there is less of a chance that the turtles will hatch. Even if they do, the hatchlings may be deformed. Those that live will have to cross the polluted beaches to get to the sea and then swim through the oil in the gulf waters. The Kemp's Ridley hatchlings are leaving their nesting grounds in Mexico to swim into the most contaminated part of the gulf, where their instinct to hide and eat amongst clumps of floating vegetation is leading them to clots of oil and polluted seaweed. Their instincts, which come from living in the ocean for over 100 million years, have taught them how to avoid predators like sharks but have not taught them how to cope with exploding oil wells.

No matter how old they are (many sea turtles live for 30 years), if a turtle is exposed to the oil for 4 days, their skin will peel off in sheets, a condition which lasts even after they have been cleaned and treated. The toxic chemicals cause diseases and damage to their livers, kidneys, and brains that might lead to the deaths of many of these animals. The oil also damages their chemoreceptors, which control their senses, making them unable to find prey, to know where their habitat is, or to understand movement. Because they moved farther inshore in their attempts to avoid the oil, they were eating fishing bait and consuming hooks. In June, 583 sea turtles were found in the contaminated area. 447 of these were already dead or died soon after they were discovered, and only 136 were taken to rescue centers. Worst of all, when BP tried setting some of the oil on fire, hundreds or possibly thousands of sea turtles were burnt and killed.

At least some efforts are being made to save the sea turtles. A qualified biologist will be aboard every boat involved in burning the oil to remove the turtles from the area. And 70,000 eggs from the different species of sea turtles are being carefully dug up from their burrows in the sand, because it is difficult to move or disturb the eggs without harming the embryos, and taken to a climate-controlled hangar at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After they hatch -- if the oil doesn't flow around Florida to ruin the plan -- the turtles will be released in the clean waters of the Atlantic.

For thirty years before the spill, scientists, environmentalists, and volunteers have been trying to save sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. Their programs were working. For my sixth birthday, we drove to a Kemp's Ridley sea turtle hatchery in Galveston, Texas, the only one in the United States. Inside a rather small shack, we saw hatchlings, one-year-olds, two-year-olds, and huge three-year-olds in tubs being fed. It was not very impressive, but they were saving the turtles. We learned about the dangers faced by Kemp's Ridley and Leatherback sea turtles back then and today. People dumping garbage into the oceans is not a new issue, as is the fact that turtles choke on plastic squids used by fishermen to attract animals. If these turtles were in such danger before, now conservation is even more vital in these animals' survival.

Hopefully the conservation efforts will work and the turtles will continue to live healthily in clean water, but all of the other animals that live in the gulf face similar problems. This still leaking spill, which is even worse than the Exxon spill, is just another reminder that we need to work on green energy. We cannot continue to drill for oil and risk losing millions of animals as well as our own safety and the state of our world. The stories of these turtles and of all of the other, less well-known animals that are in danger need to prompt immediate action that will save our planet before it is too late.

The passenger pigeon was the most common bird in North America. Mile-long flocks numbered into the billions, making farmers view the birds as pests. Explorers were amazed by the multitudes, writing that the flocks took hours to pass overhead and that they were countless. No one expected them to go extinct.

No one expected the Rocky Mountain locust, another pest, to go extinct, either. While the passenger pigeons were the second-most common animal in the whole world, these arthropods were the most common. In 1875, a swarm was spotted estimated to be 198,000 square miles -- larger than the entire state of California! That alone would have contained 12 and a half trillion insects, and weighed more than 27 tons!

Yet, less than thirty years after this sighting, the species was extinct. How? These locusts swarmed about for periods, then returned to sandy riverbeds, their natural breeding grounds. When they were in the riverbeds, burrowing under to lay their eggs, they were endangered by farmers plowing the ground above them to plant crops. Records state that farmers brought up thousands of egg cases while tilling their fields. Their egg cases discovered and their breeding grounds destroyed, these insects eventually went extinct. The last locust in the wild was found in Canada in 1902. North America is the only settled continent without a major species of locust.

Like the locusts, the passenger pigeons also vanished. In 1914, the last passenger pigeon, Martha (named after Martha Washington), died, and, unlike the ivory billed woodpecker, which is critically endangered today when it had been believed extinct for years, no other passenger pigeon has ever been found.

There are many causes for this entirely preventable extinction. For sport, hunters went out and slaughtered thousands of them. Shockingly, people killed passenger pigeons in many cruel ways. Some hunters caught a bird, sewed its eyes shut using a needle and thread, and tied it to a stool. As the bird attempted to land, it would flutter its wings, thus attracting the attention of other birds flying overhead. When the flocks landed near the blind bird, the other birds were trapped in nets and the hunters would crush them. Secondly, trees where pigeons made their nests were set on fire, and the smoke drove the birds from their nests. Another means of capturing these birds was to feed them grain soaked in alcohol, which made them easier to catch.

Loss of habitat and introduced diseases were also factors in their disappearance, as was the fact that they were eaten extensively in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1805, in New York City, a pair of pigeons could be bought for two cents. As a result, some slaves and servants never tasted any meat but pigeon. Even when there was only one large flock (of 250,000 birds) left, the hunters, who knew what was happening, did not spare it.

After people realized -- and cared -- that the birds were going extinct in the wild, there was no way to reintroduce them. Flocks of passenger pigeons could only mate if gathered in large numbers; there were not enough pigeons left to make even one of the enormous flocks. For the same reason, captive breeding centers also failed. Mourning doves are the closest relatives of the passenger pigeons. Scientists may someday use them to clone the passenger pigeon. This is similar to how scientists are trying to bring the quagga, which was similar to the zebra, back from extinction.

The quagga's face and neck looked like a zebra's, but the stripes faded along the back to a plain brown. Because of these unusual markings, it was hunted for its skin. It was also valued for its meat and, like the locusts and the pigeons, farmers thought of it as a nuisance. Now, people regret that they killed off this harmless horse, and are trying to breed horses that look more and more like the quagga once was.

It is important to remember the past so that we do not repeat it. Yet any kind of reintroduction, for any species, will not change the fact that their dying out was a disaster that could have been easily avoided... and wasn't.

Besides the obvious issues that global warming introduces, like the melting of the polar icecaps or the rising ocean levels, issues affecting smaller areas are still disastrous. They are determining the future of our everyday lives and the land set aside permanently as national parks. According to a recent National Geographic news article, redwood trees, the world's tallest living things, may go extinct. We might have seen them just in time.

When we were staying in CA, sometimes we would be driving in at night. We lived about 45 minutes away from the beach, so the fog would drift in over the road and make it nearly impossible to see. We would cross over Golden Gate Bridge and look down at the gently rolling mists. While they made it harder to drive, they were also essential to the survival of these botanical giants.

The clouds kept the conifers moist, at exactly the climate they required. A hundred years ago, there was no threat from global warming. A university study said that there has been a 33 percent reduction in the amount of coastal fog produced today when compared to the data from a century ago.

The redwoods only live in the humid areas near the coast, where the fog keeps them watered. Because they have adapted to this ecosystem, they cannot live long in a drought by shutting down their systems to conserve water, as other desert plants do. This means that if there is nothing that can be done, the redwoods may dry out and wither. Some other species of tree, however, can adjust to living with less fog by not growing as quickly as they do in years when water is plentiful.

We went to Humboldt State Park on a mostly overcast, cold day. Logging had thinned many of the forests; the largest existing piece of hewn redwood, made into one person's RV, is on display at the park's visitor center. Early environmentalists had preserved large groves, which have been turned into state parks. To this day, the groves bear names like "Founders Grove," or "Rockefeller's Grove," after these early conservationists.

The tallest tree blew over in a storm a few years before and became a "nurse log." Nurse logs are decaying trees that provide the necessary nutrients for other plants to grow. Saplings, fungi, ferns, and lichen are common plants that sprout from the reddish-brown bark. Insects, like beetles and ants, live in the log's crevices. In places humid enough, these are also home to banana slugs and snails.

As well as being an impressive species themselves, these trees are essential to many other kinds of life. The terrible fact that they are in danger means that if they do not live, their ecosystem will be seriously disrupted. This issue is another reminder that the choices we make in our everyday lives do have consequences and therefore we need to decide to do everything in a manner that will not harm the planet. The fate of these giants is uncertain, the fate even of our planet is uncertain, and it's our actions that will determine it.

     In honor of the year of the tiger, 13 nations have agreed to reintroduce the tiger and double its numbers by the next year of the tiger, 2022.
   
    Tigers are endangered due mainly to habitat loss and hunting. Tigers have been hunted over the years for traditional medicines. Even though hunting tigers has been made illegal, that doesn't stop poachers; their condition is so critical that they were put on the endangered species list.
     

     Habitat loss is mostly attributed to logging and palm oil production. Palm oil is environmentally destructive because people drain the rainforest marshes to plant the palm groves.  

This image from World Wildlife Fund shows why the tiger is threatened with extinction:

    We must make an effort to save these magnificent creatures according to the Tx2 Program which WWF launched. They are hoping to double the number of wild tigers to help this species make a comeback.
    
    If there are roughly 6,000 wild tigers, then the goal is to breed 500 cubs per year. After 2022, this program will not continue, but there will be 12,000 wild tigers. If we are going to double the number of wild tigers, the original tigers had better not go missing. Watch this on National Geographic Kids.

Tiger Facts Q&A:

Q: Does a cross between a lion and a tiger exist?
A: Yes. A so-called "liger" is a cross between a Panthera tigris and a Panthera leo. A tigon is a cross between a tiger and a lioness, whereas a liger is a tigress and a lion. 

Q: Can there be a tiger without stripes?
A:  The Golden Tabby variation of tiger has unnoticeable orange stripes. If you breed it with a white tiger, you get a white tiger without stripes.

Q: Are white tigers albino?
A: No. Their coloration is due to a recessive gene. Very rare, it only occurs in 10,000 births in the wild. They are bred more commonly in captivity. 

Becoming a vegetarian not only benefits the animals, it also helps the planet. By easily altering your diet, you can save many resources, including land, food, water and energy.

Energy One third of all fossil fuels produced in the US are used to raise livestock to be eaten. Eighty percent of all agricultural land is used by the meat or dairy industries. All of the little stages needed to convey meat to your home add up into one huge problem. Turning off lights or unplugging appliances when they are not needed are very minor contributions when compared to the immense environmental profit created by a transition to vegetarianism. Consider the steps needed to produce a packaged hot dog or hamburger or chicken nuggets:

1. Remember the 80 percent of all farming land used by the meat companies? They use a lot of the land to grow corn, soybeans and grain to be used as feed. These crops must be watered, sprayed with pesticides and nurtured just as food for human consumption would be. This uses a lot of energy in itself. While this process is not eliminated by vegetarianism, many of the other steps could be.

2. When you see 18-wheelers driving down the highway, don't they strike you as being very bad for the environment? They're giving off clouds of pollution, and they get very bad mileage or they use more gas per mile than an energy-efficient car would use. Those trucks carry the grain to the feed mill. The feed mill isn't environmentally-friendly, either. It uses a lot of electricity to power it. Although being a vegetarian isn't perfect, at this point the food would be ready to go to the grocery store. But there's still a long process before the final product arrives at the supermarket.

3. The feed is loaded back into the 18-wheelers and driven to the factory farms, where animals are mass-produced. The animals have to be raised on the factory farms, which wastes a lot of energy. Think about it - they have to be fed, watered, and given injections of hormones and antibiotics to prevent the diseases which spread quickly in such unsanitary conditions, and many other things that most people don't realize are necessary.

4. Once the animals are grown, they are loaded onto specially-equipped 18-wheelers and trucked to the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse, which is yet another inefficient industrial building, takes huge amounts of energy to run.

5. After they have been killed, the animals are often again transported and delivered to packaging factories, which must be powered to pack the bags of processed food that you buy in a grocery store.

6. The packaged food is driven to a grocery store, where it must be refrigerated to prevent its spoiling. You buy it and take it home, where it must again be kept cool.

Greenhouse Gases If every American substituted vegetarian food for a meal of chicken once a week, the carbon dioxide reduction would be equal to taking over half a million cars off the road, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization trying to preserve natural resources. Eating one pound of meat is the carbon dioxide equivalent of driving an SUV 40 miles in the amount of energy expended to produce the final product.

Wasted Food Eating meat wastes more grain than dining on vegetarian foods, which do not have to be harvested to feed animals before they finally become human food. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal meat, according to John Robbins' Diet for a New America. That's a ratio of 16 to 1. If every pasture used to graze livestock or grow cattle feed was planted with soybeans for human consumption, no one in the world would be starving.

Pollutants The runoff from factory farms producing meat pollutes public water more than all other industrial sources combined. In towns around Bellingham, in Washington state, the fields are sprayed with contaminated, brown water from chicken plants. We went to a town, Lynden, which had a Dutch heritage and featured windmills and half-timbered buildings. It would have been quaint, except that it smelled horribly like the dirty water being used to irrigate the nearby fields. Because the corn fields were also being watered with the polluted water, that Halloween we could not go to any corn mazes.

Scenic Drives The French and Swiss Alps have been turned into huge cow pastures. The smell in some towns was so bad that we could not walk around in them. We tried to hike up to a glacier located in open space in France, but had to jump fences and avoid the fields with grazing cows in them. In England, it is sheep and not cows which roam everywhere. Although the sheep are not as bad as cattle, they still make traveling less enjoyable. When driving through the Midwestern US, we often pass stockyards where cows are packed into small, muddy enclosures.

Benefits of Vegetarianism Although being a vegetarian sounds strange and difficult, it is one of the very best things you could do for the environment. People turn off the air conditioning or the TV when they leave a room and use canvas grocery bags instead of paper or plastic ones, but, although this helps the environment some, eating meat wastes a lot more energy.