Walruses, Lewis Carroll, and When To Eat Oysters

I learned that a walrus's diet primarily consists of bi-valves, including a lot of oysters, which I did not previously know. They weigh between 1,760 and 4,000 pounds (!!) so they eat a LOT of oysters and clams. Which makes sense of the poem "The Walrus & the Carpenter" which appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (aka: Alice in Wonderland). The Walrus and the Carpenter seduce a bed of oysters to follow them on land, where they are gobbled up by the greedy walrus (leaving the carpenter with none to eat). In the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, the elder oyster warns the younglings against leaving the oyster bed, pointing to the calendar, which reads March and the R is highlighted -- this is because of the recommendation that people should only eat oysters in months that have an R in them - this is an especially dangerous time to leave the oyster bed, according to the elder. Oysters are eaten in months with R in them due to cooler weather seasons (Fall, Winter, and Spring) during which the oysters thrive and are in their prime for eating.

I also learned that walruses use their tusks to pull themselves on to the ice. They serve as a pair of ice picks to propel them out of the water. They also use them for digging holes in the ice, as well as fighting.

From Wikipedia:

The most prominent physical feature of the walrus is its long tusks, actually longated canines, which are present in both sexes and can reach a length of 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) and weigh up to 5.4 kilograms (12 lb).[22] These are slightly longer and thicker among males, who use them for fighting, dominance and display; the strongest males with the largest tusks typically dominate social groups. Tusks are also used to form and maintain holes in the ice and haul out onto ice.[23] It was previously assumed that tusks were used to dig out prey items from the seabed, but analyses of abrasion patterns on the tusks indicate that they are dragged through the sediment while the upper edge of the snout is used for digging.[24] The walrus has relatively few teeth other than the great canine tusks, and typically has a dental formula of:
Dentition
1.1.3.0
0.1.3.0

What?

I'm setting a goal for myself in 2010 to learn something new every day. It could be big, it could be small, it could be trivial, it could be monumental. The point is to take on some new piece of information in some fashion -- and then to share it here, as a warehouse for my own reference, and possibly yours! My goal is to turn this into an information sharing project which largely benefits me (hey-o, selfish!). I'd like the people of the world to tell me something new and exciting, something I didn't know.

Questions:

Why did you call this blog 'Learn A Thing' when that's so grammatically incorrect?

Because that was one of the things that I learned as a kid: grammar. Since I'm embracing this as a somewhat childish expedition, I am reverting back to my less-than-perfect grammatical phase as well.

Aren't there a million other 'fact of the day' websites out there?

Probably, yes. But those don't help me to archive stuff where I can find it easily and reference it later.

Where are you going to find all this information?

From you! Or your friends! Or family! Or whoever! I'd like to be introduced to new and wonderous things - things that I probably wouldn't have otherwise come across! Ideas and stories and people and places and skills and art and music and books and on and on and on. You don't know what you don't know. Or, at least I don't.

Don't you have anything better to do with your time?

Yes and no. Yes, I have a full-time job, a full-time hobby, a full-time blog, a husband, a cat, friends, etc. BUT I also have a mind that's open to the world... how else am I going to experience life, but to live it and learn it? So in that sense, it's the best way that I could possibly spend my time.