August 03, 2016 at 04:15AM

Today I Learned: 1) Sometimes, getting post from a USPS station requires a lot of patience and the willingness to escalate the problem to higher levels of management when lower-ranking servicepeople fail. 2) Firefly larvae are mean little creatures -- they're carnivorous. Some species eat dead meat. Other species hunt down snails and earthworms and similarly soft prey. Some of *those* species inject whatever food they find with a paralyzing venom so they can munch it up in peace. Don't mess with firefly larva. 3) I've spent a fair amount of time wondering why someone decided it would be a good idea to build a city in the LA area. Today I learned that LA was originally* settled largely by Spanish missionaries. Hence the name. And of *course* they thought it was a good place for a city -- the climate in LA isn't too dissimilar to what they were used to back at home in Spain. * in the European sense. I don't know if anyone lived here before the Spanish.