It's that time of year when all you want to do is find the perfect comfy chair (or vegetable aisle) to hibernate in, but why not curl up with some steamy Internet Soup instead?

• My Nana always said, "No tushies on the table."
• At least this roadkill-craving mother-to-be isn't in denial about the fact that meat is rotting flesh.
• Toys, art, and science collide in one of the coolest alternatives to the use of animals in dissection that we've ever seen. Next up: a Lego fetal pig?
• It's hard out there for vivisectors, what with public sculptures shaming them and all.
• PETA-approved animal heads? Go wild!

It's spring! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the dueling robins I saw on my way to work this morning are a sign that it's mating season. With animals across the country looking for love, a $150,000 grant awarded by the Vermont Agency of Transportation's Transportation Enhancements Grant Committee (TEGC) couldn't have come at a better time. The Monkton Conservation Commission in Vermont plans to use the grant to install a "salamander crossing" under Monkton's Vergennes Road, which the state's leading reptile and amphibian expert describes as "one of the most important of the known amphibian crossings in the state." This passage will offer amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals a safe way to travel between uplands southeast of the road and an important swamp northwest of the crossing—by helping them avoid the dangers that claim the lives of millions of animals who become roadkill every year in the U.S. For recognizing that all animals deserve consideration and protection, PETA is giving the Vermont Agency of Transportation a Compassionate Action Award.

With "ecopassages" (both under and above roads) popping up all over the country—including Massachusetts' salamander tunnels and California's cougar corridors—animals everywhere are having an easier time traveling, getting food, and mating. Have you spotted any ecopassages in your community?

Written by Logan Scherer

A golfer is grabbing headlines, but it's not who you might think.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithallison/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Michelle Wie—one of the Time 100, a list of "people who shape our world"—recently said that when she's not on the course, she likes to bake vegan cookies and muffins from her own recipes.

Is this golfer-turned-baker busy perfecting the cruelty-free donut hole-in-one? (It's OK to groan. That was bad.)

Via Vegetarian Star

Written by Logan Scherer

Here's another classic from the PETA vaults, which I came across a little while back and filed away for summer barbeque season. The website, which you can find here, starts off like this:

And on it goes. As usual with this sort of pro-vegetarianism campaign—see, for instance, Eat the Whales and Say No to Pot (roast)—the underlying point is the same as ever: "Eating animals is weird and gross, and it sucks for the animals involved." But the sad fact of the matter is that a lot of diehard meat-eaters just zone out when you say stuff like that to them. Telling people that you're thinking of firing up a roadkill barbeque, however, tends to wipe that long-suffering "preached at" look right off their faces. And the message is ultimately the same: “Dude. Go vegetarian.”

Anyway, that's my two cents, but please do check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.