Rivera spent the first three days of the week covering the phone call between Mark, Cherry, and her sisters, as Mark finally learned why Peach and Olive flew up to Lost Forest. It wasn’t until the Thursday strip that Mark met up with the people involved in transporting Max the Manatee back to the ocean.

As is usual, the two transporters (Rita and Skeeter) are not your everyday business-as-usual movers, but operate an NPO involved in teaching weather and climate science in underprivileged schools. That’s all to the good, of course. They showed Mark threatening emails from members of “The Whether Men” conspiracy group. We also now learned how Mark got involved in this project:  Rita and Skeeter specifically asked for him, not because of his reporting skills, but because he showed up in an Internet search as a Manatee Fighter. In my basic understanding of English grammar that phrase means Mark fights manatees, but in the world of Mark Trail, it apparently means somebody who fights on behalf of manatees. I would have opted for Manatee Defender, but I’m too Old School, I reckon.

In other news: I have written now and then about how certain comic strip characters (here and in other strips) wear the same clothes all the time as a form of visual identity; but some don’t: Mark and Rusty conform to this standard, whereas Cherry does not. Anyway, I was catching up on Greg Evan’s Luann and saw its own take on clothing identity. Brad DeGroot finally reveals the secret. And it’s just as I thought!

So, what do you think of the Sunday Nature Chat?

The title panel reminds me of a children’s storybook cover. That’s not a putdown.

I think Rivera presents a good topic today: she gives a nod to superstition, but ultimately anchors the topic in an informative explanation of how genetic mutation creates different versions of “white deer.”

What Mark didn’t state is that this whiteness can make deer especially vulnerable to predation, and not just from humans. Also important to keep in mind is that their whiteness is not an example of a different or an endangered species of deer.