Look both ways

You'd think that by now Mother Nature would have determined what works best and weeded out the rest.

I think Mother Nature is never satisfied,  always fiddling with life forms; some things work and others don't.  Climate and geography are always changing so life forms are tweaked accordingly; things evolve.

Australia is a good example of this.  There are a lot of wacky critters that are unique to the land down under.  It's isolation meant that many animals evolved in different ways than the rest of the world, facing different predators.  I recall reading something about kangaroos being present in prehistoric Arctic areas, but I won't stake my life on it.  There must be some reason why there are no penguins at the north pole and no polar bears at the south pole but I don't know what it is.

Marsupials are indeed strange animals but you can't beat the monotremes for weirdness, in my opinion.  Egg laying mammals, feeding their young with milk?   "Sure, why not," says Mother Nature.  Not a terribly successful branch of evolution but it worked in the isolated environment of Australia and New Guinea.  There are only two types of monotremes left in the wild, the echidna (spiny anteater) and the familiar duck-billed platypus.  If alternate universes exist there may be a timeline where humans evolved as monotremes and not placental mammals. I wonder how large the eggs would be but now I'm just being silly.

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Ever since I've been a part of the Institute I've wondered exactly where Beaglesonia was.  Sure, it's in Cheboygan but that covers a lot of territory and I think I've found it.  It's not up there with Heinrich Schliemann finding the ruins of Troy but I think I did a good job, piecing together bits of information with no small amount of help from Google.  I was going to include a screengrab of a Google Earth image with the Beaglesonian boundary shown in red but thought better of it since there is no need for anyone to possess this information.  I look at it as a matter of Beaglesonian Security and do not wish to compromise the integrity of the freehold.  Without being too specific I think I can safely state that Beaglelsonia is east of Butler Road and Mr. Beagles can decide whether or not to tell me if I got it right.  There is no compelling reason for me to know the location but it's an itch I keep scratching.  Maps and land use are great fodder for my imagination and I can see from satellite photos that the deer in his back yard could have traveled a hundred miles or more because of the forest coverage in that part of the state.  That's assuming that they look both ways before crossing any roads.