She’s Keeping a Grass Menagerie

--Eve Ryan remains a generous hostess even though some of her recent guests have been wild and woolly. They have included small alligators, armadillos, opossums, tortoises, squirrels, woodpeckers and harmless snakes. Ryan’s backyard in Merritt Island, Fla., is certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat through the National Wildlife Federation, which has a network of mini-wildlife refuges in residential neighborhoods. Appropriately enough, the house is on Eagle Lane. Ryan’s equipment includes feeders, nesting boxes and a year-round supply of food and water. It’s good that Ryan is well-stocked, because her guests can be very demanding. If their feeders are empty, “the squirrels come down on the windowsill to look inside as if to say, ‘Well, where’s the food?’ ”

--British statesman Winston S. Churchill helped lead his country to victory in war, but he was a born loser when it came to the stock market--at least he would have lost had it not been for his friend, financier Bernard M. Baruch. The American financier’s “extraordinary act of shrewdness and generosity” rescued Churchill from financial ruin, historian William Manchester wrote in the February-March issue of American Heritage magazine. Churchill stopped into Baruch’s New York office one day in 1929 and decided to play the stock market, Manchester wrote. “As prices tumbled, he plunged deeper and deeper, trying to outguess the stock exchange. At the end of the day, he confronted Baruch in tears. He was, he said, a ruined man. Chartwell (Churchill’s estate) and everything else he possessed must be sold; he would have to leave the House of Commons and enter business,” Manchester wrote. But Baruch, who called Churchill “a born losing gambler,” had left instructions to buy equivalent stocks every time Churchill sold his, and to sell whenever Churchill bought. “Winston had come out exactly even because, he later learned, Baruch even paid the commissions.”

--The 40 people of Watrous, N.M., are waiting to see what develops in their effort to set a shining example of civic pride. Earlier this month, a satellite photographed New Mexico as part of the state’s 75th birthday celebration, and residents were asked to turn on their house lights or hold up flashlights or candles as it zoomed over. But Watrous didn’t have enough lights to be more than a flicker in the picture. So rancher Robert Moore filled five-gallon canisters with sand and diesel fuel and set them afire. Others poured diesel fuel in a ditch and set it ablaze and torched a pile of tumbleweeds. Then everyone in town turned on their lights, went outside and lit highway flares. Officials say it will be at least a month before they see the picture.