Dr. Mario Capecchi developed the revolutionary technique of gene targeting.
(Courtesy of Eccles Institute of Human Genetics)

QUINN: Capecchi's mother was released from Dachau five years later. She searched for her now nine-year old son for over a year and found him ill with typhoid in an orphanage hospital. A few days later she brought him to the United States and Capecchi began to thrive. He grew up on a Quaker commune then went to Harvard where he eventually came to know the famous biologist James Watson, the man who together with Francis Crick had discovered the structure of DNA.

CAPECCHI: If you work in a field where lots and lots of people are working in that particular area then it does not make a big difference whether you do it or you don't do it. That science will be done. And I'd rather work on something that I feel I can uniquely contribute to.

QUINN: Capecchi began teaching at Harvard Medical School. But in 1973, he moved to the University of Utah. Colleagues thought he was crazy to leave Harvard. But the University of Utah had begun to build a reputation as a goldmine for human geneticists, thanks to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon Church, which keeps detailed genealogical records of its large families. At the University of Utah Capecchi spent a decade developing gene targeting. Scientists already knew how to insert altered DNA into cells. But out of thousands of cells, typically only a few will incorporate that altered DNA. The challenge was to identify which ones.

CAPECCHI: And so, if that could happen then that would allow us essentially the ability to change any gene we wanted in any way conceivable.

QUINN: Bob Horvitz is a Nobel-prize winning MIT biologist who is well acquainted with Capecchi's work.

HORVITZ: With Mario there is now a technology that allows the analysis of any gene in the genome. And it is the difference between night and day. No, it is much more than that. It's truly a revolution. It has led to kinds of experimentation that would have been unthinkable not very many years ago.

[SCRATCHY, SCREECHY SOUND]

QUINN: This is the sound of a tiny mouse embryo, the size of a grain of rice. Once scientists see which mouse cells have taken up the new gene, they place them into an embryo that will continue to grow into a mouse. They are called knockout mice because a gene has been knocked out and replaced. With a bit of luck, when they grow up, some of these knock out mice will transmit the new gene to their offspring.

[METAL SOUNDS]

QUINN: Capecchi's 13-thousand mice are kept in a facility called the mouse house. They're cared for by a crew of biologists, former veterinary techs and pet store workers. Fred Beasley and Adine Marston often witness strange grooming behavior, and they too wondered what the research could reveal about ourselves.

FRED: Some mice like to groom themselves in interesting ways, make neat little patterns on their fur.

JUNE: Uh-huh. I had a cage where 11 other mice had a little rainbow shape above their left eye, every single one of them except for the one that was doing the grooming.

QUINN: Watching mice grooming, it's hard to imagine that a single gene could control such a complex behavior. But Joy Greer, a former graduate student in Capecchi's lab, replaced a normal copy of a gene called HOXB8 with a defective one. She was expecting to study limb deformities. Instead, she noticed the mice started grooming to the extreme. They stayed awake to do it. It looked to her like a form of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder.

GREER: Oh, it was totally unexpected. Basically, I noticed that these mice had these huge bald patches and I had to find out why and while I was analyzing the video tapes it became very clear that what was happening was that the mice were removing their hair while they were grooming themselves.

QUINN: HOXB8 is a member of a large family of genes, collectively called the HOX genes which are mostly known for their role in designing the general body plan from flies to humans. So finding that a HOX gene could be involved in a behavior was a thrilling discovery.

GREER: And this, as far as I'm aware, is the only HOX gene that has been implicated in behavior.

QUINN: It's one thing to make comparisons between mice and humans when studying disease. But studying mouse genes to understand human behavioral disorders is new.

GREER: It's become something that I'm very passionate about. I think that these animals could provide a good animal model of repetitive behaviors. Whether or not it will be directly linked to OCD still remains to be seen.

QUINN: Since mice and humans have nearly identical genes, Greer and Mario Capecchi are now looking at people with the hair-pulling disorder to see if they can find the same gene defect they found in mice. It's unclear how common trichotillomania is, but it's not rare. It seems to cluster in families. Christina Pearson says most hair pullers aren't aware of it in their family history.

PEARSON: The problem with a disorder like this is that if your great grandmother had it you probably wouldn't know it because it's still hard for people to talk about today.

QUINN: In the 1970s, when sufferer's dared to seek help, doctors viewed them as psychotic. But now Christina Pearson is proud to be director of the Trichotillomania Learning Center with 32,000 hair-pulling members.

PEARSON: It is amazing the stories that I've heard. One father told me he was beating his daughter with a belt and she was lying there on the floor, saying, "Daddy, it won't help, it won't help." I've talked to the mothers of young women who have killed themselves, okay, put guns in their mouths because they could get no help.

QUINN: It's now been several years since Pearson has pulled her hair out. She uses medicine, therapy and group support to fight the urge.

Since the late 1980s, gene targeting has spread to thousands of laboratories throughout the world. Scientists use it to investigate the mechanisms that instruct a gene to make a limb or a wing, a hand or a paw, a behavior, even a memory. For Living on Earth, I'm Sheri Quinn in Salt Lake City, Utah.

[MUSIC: "Serenity" John Coltrane: Meditations (Impulse) 1966]

Related link:
Dr. Mario Capecchi's homepage

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City Nature

CURWOOD: Bears in suburban backyards may generate headlines, but there are plenty of other wild species quietly trying to make a living in the various corners of the sprawling megalopolis along the eastern seaboard. Lisa Couturier is out to capture them with her pen. She loves to write about animals sharing real estate with people, from backyard foxes to hi-rise pigeons.

Ms. Couturier grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburbs and spent much of her post-college years in New York City. The creatures have adapted to these populated areas, she says. It's humans who have yet to adapt to the wildlife. Lisa Couturier's collection of essays is called "The Hopes of Snakes, and Other Tales from the Urban Landscape." And she joins me from Washington, D.C. Lisa, hello.

COUTURIER: Hi, Steve.

CURWOOD: You write about many different urban animals; in fact, many that we would consider pests. Which of these do you identify with most?

COUTURIER: (laughs) I'll say crows. I mean, they're very smart, they're playful, I find them incredibly fun to watch. They have a very high brain to body size ratio similar to that of dolphins and somewhat similar to that of humans.

CURWOOD: I'm wondering if you could read to us a portion of your essay about crows.

COUTUREIR: Yeah, sure. In this essay, "Banishment of Crows," this particular part I'm outside with my daughter and we're going to feed some of the crows.

READING: Outside in the mornings, Madeleine and I hear the cawing of crows, at first far away, echoing through the woods along the river. Slowly they close in, spot us throwing corn, bread, and sunflower seeds into the grass, and land in the tall trees around our cottage. Once, a high mound of turned earth two houses away drew hundreds of crows searching for garbage. The birds covered the roofs of several homes and lined the tree branches. Squinting at the crows through sunlight transformed them into blowsy black scarves of silk, a fabric of crow society Madeleine and I wished to enter. We walked toward them along our stone path and suddenly they fell silent as we moved below what now felt like a mountain of scrupulous black eyes. It was one of those moments when suddenly you feel you've crossed over the edge of your civilized world and into quite another. The tables turn, then, and you are not doing the turning. If you surrender to it – to the moment when perhaps the wild and tame are one – there's a light in all that black, an openness there at the edge of the question, as you wait to see what answer the world will serve you.

CURWOOD: So you like the crows, and you go on in your book to talk about the big relative of the crow–the vulture. And I come away feeling that these vultures are cultured. And, of course, that's not my perception of the vulture at all. The popular perception is that, hey, the vulture is bad news. How are people's perceptions of animals like the vulture different from how you perceive them?

COUTURIER: Well, you know, I want to tell one little story, too, about the vulture. I was outside my neighborhood, I live right along the Potomac River, and people often mistake the flying vulture for the flying eagle. And every once in a while someone will ask me. And if they're really high up in the air sometimes it's hard to tell. But this woman said, "Oh, what's that flying over us?" And I looked at it, and said "It's a vulture, most likely." And she said, "Oh, it's not an eagle?" And I said, "No, that's a vulture." And she said, "Oh, well I don't care about that then."

You know, how do you unwrap that answer, "Oh, well I don't care about that then." What does it mean that you don't care about a vulture but you care about an eagle? You know, and I guess from the looks of it, from what they do, if you're just driving along the road and you see a vulture dipping its head into a carcass, what they do does look, on the surface, dirty and ugly, and maybe it is. But they're essentially the trash people or the trash men of the natural world in a sense that they clear the land for us of the rotting carcasses.

CURWOOD: Lisa, one of your essays, you tell a story of encountering a snake at a fairground. Could we hear that now?

COUTURIER: Okay, so I was in an agricultural farm park. It was October, which is the time when snakes start migrating toward their winter dens. And during all the festivities, this huge six-foot black rat snake starts crossing the landscape, coming through all the people and around the tables and food…

CURWOOD: Six feet is a big snake.

COUTURIER: Yeah, well, the black rat snakes are one of the giants of the U.S., and they can get up to six feet, and this was a really long, large snake. People didn't even see that it was there at first, and then slowly word spread that this snake was moving under the tables, and they got really nervous. And somebody went to run for the park naturalist and to say, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do? And the naturalist took her stick and started poking the stick in front of it, which just served to make the snake more and more upset.

CURWOOD: What did the snake do?

COUTURIER: Started to rise up a little bit, and it was biting back at the stick, because she kept poking the stick in front of it. And the children, the little boys especially, started shaping their hands into the shape of a gun and pretending to shoot it. And I didn't even, I partly thought about it and partly didn't think about it. I knew that it was in trouble, in some sense. So I walked up to it and picked it up, slung it over my arm sort of near my waist.

And the greatest thing, and this part isn't in the story, actually, is that suddenly, when I picked it up and started carrying it back to the woods, all the children, their whole demeanor changed. They thought it was wonderful, and they followed me all the way to the woods and they wanted to touch it and be next to it, they wanted to know about it. It's just interesting when an adult moves in one way versus another. Their parents were, "Stay away from it. It's going to hurt you," And they saw another adult pick it up and take it away to safety. I think that their whole experience of a snake changed on that day. So we took it back to the woods and we put it down by the woods, and it slithered into the woods and everybody was happy.

CURWOOD: Lisa Couturier, you call your book "The Hopes of Snakes." What do you mean by this title? What do you mean when you say that your life is nuanced by the hopes of snakes?

COUTURIER: Well, I'm glad that you said that. When I believe that non-humans have hopes or have emotions or feelings, that I, therefore, walk through the world differently, because I sense in them something similar that would be in my life. In other words, if they need to find warmth or food, they, in a sense, have a hope or a movement towards those things in the same way that I do. So, I think it changes our relationship with non-humans when we give them at least some sense of the same sorts of feelings and emotions that we have.

CURWOOD: Of course you get some static about this because it seems that anthropomorphism is a necessity in the literary world, but scientists tend to view it as a crime. What do you suppose accounts for that difference?

COUTURIER: I think that scientists and the scientific world, their education, their background is all some sort of mechanistic world; the world of Descartes. Whereas the literary world, as you said, is a little different. So I think the book somewhat blends those two worlds: the literary or the artistic with the scientific, to sort of give insights into both worlds about the animals. So, basically, taking what is real life – the scientific, rational side and the other side – and blended them, because that's what life is. We have both of those in our lives every day.

CURWOOD: Lisa Couturier is an environmental journalist and author of "The Hopes of Snakes and Other Tales from the Urban Landscape." Thanks so much for taking this time with me today.

COUTURIER: Oh, thanks for having me.

[MUSIC: "Feed the Birds" Julie Andrews]

CURWOOD: Just ahead: the truth about gas mileage. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for NPR comes from NPR stations, and the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, supporting the creation, performance and recording of new music; the Kresge Foundation, building the capacity of nonprofit organizations through challenge grants since 1924. On the web at kresge.org; the Annenberg Fund for excellence in communications and education; and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, from vision to innovative impact, 75 years of philanthropy. This is NPR, National Public Radio.

[MUSIC: "Move" Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Capitol Jazz) 1957]

Related links:
- Lisa Couturier's website
- "The Hopes of Snakes"

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Emerging Science Note/Curious Rats

CURWOOD: It's Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. And just ahead a car that runs on air. First, this Note on Emerging Science from Jennifer Chu.

[SCIENCE NOTE MUSIC]

CHU: Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it could save the rat. That's according to researchers at Penn State, who found that more adventurous female rats survived cancer longer than their more timid counterparts.

Scientists studied 80 female rats from birth to death. Ninety-three percent of these rats developed breast and pituitary tumors over the course of their lives.

Researchers believed that rats with different temperaments might also have different ways of coping with disease. To test the theory, they built a miniature playground filled with foreign objects such as tunnels, bricks and stones. They then let the rats loose to explore, both as infants and later, as adults. Scientists noted which rats were quick to sniff out their surroundings versus those who tended to hang back. They, then, monitored the stress levels of both groups as an equal number of them developed cancers later in life.

The outcome: the curious rats lived for six more months, or 25 percent longer, than the more cautious group. They also exhibited more stress hormones than their more fainthearted sisters. Scientists suggest that hormone levels could be related to accelerated aging, and that certain personality traits could be an asset in fighting disease. That's this week's Note on Emerging Science, I'm Jennifer Chu.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

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Truth in Mileage

CURWOOD: With the price of gasoline heading higher and higher, the miles per gallon sticker affixed to the windows of new cars may be getting a closer look these days from car shoppers. But, let the buyer beware. According to the American Automobile Association, road tests show these estimates are likely to be wildly optimistic compared to real-world driving. Joining me now is John Nielson, director of consumer information and automotive repair for the AAA. Hi, John.

NIELSON: Hello, Steve.

CURWOOD: John, I understand that at this moment you're driving a Chevy Cobalt, on a test run for us – cruising at about 45 down a two-lane highway near Orlando, Florida. So, just what kind of mileage are you getting?

NIELSON: Based on what I've done the last two days, my guess is that I'm about 27 miles to the gallon right now. I would say, 80 percent of my driving has been highway and 20 percent has been stop and go. And if you average all that out, we're probably, I'm going to say 14 to 16 percent below what the window sticker would say.

CURWOOD: Now, what kind of assumptions about people's driving habits and conditions under which most of us drive is the Environmental Protection Agency getting wrong?

NIELSON: Well, the standards for the EPA figures that we see in the window really are based on, on the 1970s when the speed limit was 55 miles an hour and when vehicles were much different than they are today and I daresay that driving conditions were much different than they are today. Most of us travel in rush hour traffic and, other examples, during the EPA test they don't use the air conditioner.

CURWOOD: They don't?

NIELSON: No, absolutely not. In fact, they never accelerate to 60 miles an hour faster than 18 seconds. And, as we're all aware, trying to merge into traffic at that type of pace would actually be dangerous. And then there's a couple of things that people don't think about and that's, in cold weather your fuel economy will always be lower than it is in warm weather.

CURWOOD: What's the worst case you've found? What's the most egregious gap between what the so-called EPA rating is and what the real experience is?

NIELSON: I don't have the numbers in front of me, but we've seen, I believe, on a trailblazer, I believe we saw roughly 14.7 gallons real world and the sticker was, I believe in the 23-24 mile per gallon range. That's pretty substantial.

CURWOOD: Yeah, I guess so. It means you're going to fill up at the pump, what?, 60 percent more often than you thought.

NIELSON: It sure is.

CURWOOD: We'll catch up with John Nielson again in just a minute or two, but I want to check in now with Connecticut Republican Congresswoman Nancy Johnson. She's co-sponsoring a bill that would change the way the Environmental Protection Agency rates automobile mileage. Congresswoman, what's at stake here?

JOHNSON: Well, first of all, this is an everyday pocketbook issue. As gas prices go up, I hear more and more from my constituents about what a struggle it is to afford to commute. It's skyrocketing gas prices are hitting us hard everyday in our pocketbooks. And so, when one of my constituents and I were talking about energy issues and he mentioned this to me. I looked into it. And, frankly, it is inexcusable for the government to be misleading consumers with their own tax dollars as they buy a car as to how many miles per gallon the car is going to get.

CURWOOD: And it's amazing. You walk into the showroom, those numbers are huge. It's the biggest number on the sticker.

JOHNSON: Well, they're getting, they put a lot of play on it. And with gas, two dollars a gallon. People care about it. And then to find out that it's so inaccurate. I mean there's tremendous swing in these numbers. And the AAA testing has demonstrated that.

CURWOOD: Can you tell me about this legislation? What are you hoping to accomplish?

JOHNSON: Well, it's very simple. We're just directing the EPA to use common, everyday driving habits as the environment in which they test for miles per gallon. They're using 30 year-old mileage tests. Just use today's standards of driving. The EPA acknowledges that their figures are wrong. We need our tax dollars to produce honest information to guide people buying a car. Big investment, miles per gallon is important. It's everyday pocketbook stuff.

CURWOOD: Let's say, Congresswoman, that your bill goes through. It becomes law. To what extent would it affect the corporate average fuel economy or CAF´E standards which govern the fuel efficiencies of cars and light trucks in the U.S.?

JOHNSON: Well, that's a sort of a separate and different issue, but I think as we get more honest fuel figures, I think it's going to put pressure on the CAFE debate, but they're very separate. I think if people have honest information about how many miles per gallon they're going to get, they'll choose cars that are more economical from the point of view of fuel usage and, frankly, Detroit will hear that loud and clear.

CURWOOD: In whose interest is it to keep things the same, the way they are right now?

JOHNSON: It may be that Detroit benefits from these very vague and overstated miles per gallon figures that we see on the car. So, it's got to be high on the agenda of families even though it may not be high on the agenda of automakers.

CURWOOD: Why would Detroit benefit from the system?

JOHNSON: Well, because people think they're getting better miles per gallon than they are and the auto companies, therefore, aren't under so much pressure to improve their fuel economy. Detroit could improve the fuel economy lots of ways but they aren't motivated to send their research and development dollars there to really compete on that basis because the tests provide such misleading information.

CURWOOD: How do you handicap the odds of your own bill getting through Congress?

JOHNSON: I think they're pretty high.

CURWOOD: Yeah?

JOHNSON: Yeah, because it's so obvious. I mean, this is the kind of bill, that if we can get it out there on the floor it will pass overwhelmingly.

CURWOOD: Nancy Johnson is the Republican Congresswoman from Connecticut. Thanks for taking this time with me today.

JOHNSON: Nice to be with you. Thanks.

CURWOOD: John Nielson from AAA, are you still there.

NIELSON: I am.

CURWOOD: And where are you now?

NIELSON: I am on I-4, just north of Orlando and there is very little traffic. I'm travelling at 65 miles per hour and having a very smooth ride. I have the cruise control set.

CURWOOD: So, John, while the public waits for Congress to take action on truth in mileage, what kinds of things can we as drivers do to get better mileage out of cars right now? You know, realistic things.

NIELSON: There's a couple of things we can all do quite easily and the first is to check the air pressure in your tires. And you'd want to use the specifications that are located in most of our cars, right inside the drivers' door. Just maintaining your tire pressure can have an impact on your fuel economy by as much as ten percent.

The next thing it to make sure that you're not hauling around unnecessary weight. The golf clubs in the trunk, the books, bricks, the cat litter or sand from the, up in the wintertime to get traction. Get that out, that will make an improvement.

From there, it's really, plan your trips, try to minimize the stop and go driving, plan around rush hour, if you can avoid it, by all means do, and when you do go out, make an entire run at one time. Go by the grocery store and go by the dry cleaners and go home.

CURWOOD: So, if it's ten percent for tire inflation and, maybe, a couple of percentage points for unnecessary weight and putting these trips together, we can improve our mileage by what, 20 percent just by thinking about it?

NIELSON: Absolutely, 20 percent is something we could effect.

CURWOOD: Alright, your favorite car for fuel economy of those you've tested over this time?

NIELSON: You know, I think the Prius was an outstanding vehicle. A car that I really was surprised with was the Mercedes E320 CDI Diesel which is a full-size four-door car that was well over 30 miles to the gallon average. That was a fantastic vehicle and then, in the realm of things that most of us would be in the ballpark to buy, we'd be looking at the Honda Civic, did very well. The Ford Escape hybrid did very well around town, as well.

CURWOOD: John Nielson is director of consumer affairs for the American Automobile Association. He joined us from the road the road there outside of Orlando, Florida. Thanks for taking this time today.

NIELSON: Steve, it was great to be with you.

CURWOOD: And drive safely.

NIELSON: Thank you.

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Running on Air

CURWOOD: And now, another way to save gasoline. Jean-Pierre Maeder, an engineer and CEO of ZEVCAT, a small California company, hopes to soon distribute a new European car that runs not on gas – but on compressed air. Mr. Maeder first heard about this car from his brother who's a Swiss auto mechanic. Now, while the car is still in the development stages, Mr. Maeder believes the MiniCat, as it's called, will one day be tooling up and down the hills of San Francisco and he's here to share his vision.

MAEDER: Welcome, thank you.

CURWOOD: Now, give me the basics here. How does a compressed air car, how does that work?

MAEDER: Well, it's a fascinating technology. The basic concept behind it is actually very simple physics and it works with the expansion of air and the energy that's released when you expand air. I don't know, your listeners, when you actually pump up a tire, and you touch the hose, you realize it's getting hot, so that's why you compress air in a tire…. that compression process creates heat. And the expansion process is, you might have seen when you blow air or hold your hand actually out the window, you feel it's cold, so that when air expands then it loses energy and that energy loss is actually harnessed in an engine and used for work.

CURWOOD: So, tell me about the engine that you would run with compressed air? Is it any different from an ordinary car engine?

MAEDER: The whole concept of a compressed air engine is very comparable with what's out today. But, of course, you know you have to have it a little more sealed than a gasoline engine because now you work with compressed air and higher pressures.

CURWOOD: Now, how much energy is really involved and how much does it cost to fuel it?

MAEDER: When you think about the energy, you kind of can go through a calculation really. How much, how long it would take you to fill your tank which is going to be between four and five hours if you hook it up to a 220 volt which most people have at home on their washer and dryer and it would take about 5.5 kilowatts per hour, so you're looking into something like a dollar fifty, two dollars for a tank fill.

CURWOOD: Now the only published road test that I've seen about your car has it going just four and a half miles on a full tank.

MAEDER: That's correct. That was done on the CitiCat without the right engine, the final engine was a prototype engine and it didn't have the correct tank, as well, which was a much heavier tank than it's going to be in the final version. So, weight was above specification, that's why it got much less range.

CURWOOD: Tell me about the prototypes for these cars? What do they look like?

MAEDER: The basic concept is you have a driver in the front and then you have space in the back where people can sit. It's very configurable so you can have a passenger seat and three people in the back or you can have one person in the front and four people in the back with a rotational driver's seat and then passenger's seat.

CURWOOD: So, you've been for a ride in the air car?

MAEDER: I have been for a ride in the air car and I was totally surprised by it. It's a thing that works.

CURWOOD: How soon do you think we will be seeing these rolling around?

MAEDER: Well, our hope is to see this car on the road as soon as possible which is maybe in a year, 18 months, and that is if funding goes through and we can actually get into finalizing the car, getting it tested, because there are some issues that need to be worked on and then get them into the step and market the car and get it onto the road.

CURWOOD: Jean-Pierre Maeder spoke to me from his office in San Francisco. Jean-Pierre, thanks for taking this time with me to talk today.

MAEDER: You're very welcome Steve. Thank you for having me on your show.

[HONK, HONK]

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In Search of Oil

CURWOOD: With oil prices topping $50 a barrel, the race is on for new sources of oil and gas to keep up with consumer demand. In Congress, efforts to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration are underway once again. And in Texas, oilrigs are drilling deep and wide, not only in the arid plains, but also in a Houston neighborhood, in search of untapped sources of black gold.

The thirst for energy has Princeton, New Jersey writer Rich Pliskin and his Players wondering how long it will be before energy wildcatters wind up in your front yard.

[CLINKING OF SPOON AGAINST CUP]

ROGER: Ahh. Thanks, hon.

CINDY: Light 'n sweet. Just the way you like it.

ROGER: Couldn't live without it.

[HELICOPTOR SOUND]

CINDY: Is that a helicopter?

ROGER: Not in this neighborhood.

[HELICOPTOR CONTINUES. BIRD CHIRPING]

CINDY: Roger, there's a chopper in the front yard!

ROGER: What the –

[DOORBELL RINGS]

FOREMAN: Roger Martin? Of 10 Clampett Court?

ROGER: Yes, that's right. Who are you? And what are all these trucks doing on my front lawn!

FOREMAN: [CALLING OUT TO WORK CREW]

This is it, fellas! Let's start punchin' holes!

[HUGE TRUCK SOUNDS; DRILLING]

ROGER: What's the meaning of this? Who are you?

FOREMAN: We're NERC.

[CALLING OUT]

Pound that baby down, Fred! That's it!

ROGER: NARC? There's no drug dealing here!

FOREMAN: That's "NERC." National Energy Recovery Corp. Part of the governmental-petroleum complex.

ROGER: I don't understand.

[POUNDING SOUND]

FOREMAN: NERC satellite says your yard's got the richest vein of light sweet crude this side of the Board of Ed building.

CINDY: Oil? You're drilling for oil? In my peonies?

FOREMAN: Plenty of it, m'aam. Government's under pressure to top off those tanks, at least through November.

[CALLING OUT} Get that derrick in here, Freddy! That's it!

CINDY: My yard isn't an oil field. It's – it's a yard! Roger?

ROGER: Now see here, NARC, or NERC or –

FOREMAN: Whoaaa..Comin' down!

[CRACK OF TREE FALLING, THEN CRASH OF METAL AND GLASS]

CINDY: My hummer!

FOREMAN: You, uhh, might wanna move the vehicles off the work site, m'aam.

CINDY: It's not a work site! It's a mulch bed!

DRYSDALE: [CALLING OUT] Hey, Rog!

ROGER: [GROANS] AW, not Drysdale.

DRYSDALE: I hear you're sittin' on a goldmine!

ROGER: What?

DRYSDALE: They found coal under Furman's pool. Smithers has tungsten!

ROGER: Oh, my god. That's awful!

DRYSDALE: Awful? They're rich! Do you have any idea what they're paying for the drilling leases?

CINDY: Drilling leases?

[KA-CHING!]

ROGER: Honey?

CINDY: Zip it, Roger.

[TO DRYSDALE]

What are these leases you're talking about?

DRYSDALE: Let's just say their brokers' suddenly taking their calls. Say, what happened to the hummer?

CINDY: Hey! Hey, Mr. Energy man!

ROGER: But, sweetheart! The peonies!

CINDY: Get that wreck outta there, Freddy!

ROGER: Honey?

CINDY: Cut 'er up, drag 'er out and let's the goop outta the ground. Move it, move it, move it! Let's go!

[TRUCK IDLING FADES UNDER]

CURWOOD: A little satire, courtesy of Rich Pliskin and his Players of Princeton, New Jersey.

[TRUCK IDLING CROSSFADES TO BIRD SINGING]

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CURWOOD: We leave you this week with a promise. Here, in the Northeast we still have more snow than we can shake a shovel at. But as those of you in much of the rest of the country already know, Spring is coming. The Red Sox – excuse me – the "World Champion" Boston Red Sox open their season in just about three weeks. And for those of you who can't wait – well, here – courtesy of Lang Elliot and Ted Mack – is another harbinger of spring up north – the robin.

[EARTHEAR: "American Robin" Lang Elliot and Ted Mack: Songbird Portraits (NatureSound Studio) 1999]

CURWOOD: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Chris Ballman, Eileen Bolinsky, Steve Gregory, Susan Shepherd and Jeff Young - with help from Jennie Cecil Moore and Kelley Cronin. Our interns are Katie Oliveri and Katie Zemtseff. Special thanks to Ernie Silver.

Our technical director is Paul Wabrek. Alison Dean composed our themes. You can find us at living on earth dot org. I'm Steve Curwood. Thanks for listening.

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from the National Science Foundation, supporting coverage of emerging science; and Stonyfield Farm, organic yogurt, smoothies and cultured soy. Ten percent of profits are donated to efforts that help protect and restore the earth. Details at stonyfield.com. Support also comes from NPR member stations and the Ford Foundation, for reporting on U.S. environment and development issues; and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

ANNOUNCER2: This is NPR, National Public Radio.