“Watchdogs Want More Oversight of Artificial Knees and Hips.”     So read the February 21 headline from Maryland News Connection, a startup statewide news service, leading us to wonder what kind of watchdogs they were talking about.     We should have taken the story seriously, but we couldn’t get beyond the headline.     In truth, this is serious business. Americans undergo nearly a million knee and hip replacements each year,...

A handsome array of dogs — plus a cat or two, running as Monday Mouser — have joined our weekly Facebook posting. As for other creatures, “we’re always hopeful,” says Bay Weekly’s Facebook mod Diana Beechener. “But we haven’t gotten any yet.”     Monday Mutts have ranged from Nipper the Jack Russell through Martini the Great Dane; Olive the golden retriever; and Lola the Lab-Spinone mix.     So far, all of our...

Elk could once again roam the forests of western Maryland — unless citizens say no way in a survey beginning next month.     Elk are big. Females reach 500 pounds; males, which grow the towering antlers, get up to 700 pounds. They’re herbivores, but it takes a large range to feed the appetites of creatures so big. Thus farmers worry about their crops.     The giant deer cousins were here before us. But no more. Eastern elk are now extinct. They were...

Duck stamps have been preserving marsh and wetlands for waterfowl since the Great Depression, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the federal Duck Stamp program to support the purchase of land for national wildlife refuges.     Maryland adopted that good idea in 1974. In 38 years, our state Migratory Game Bird Stamp Design program has earned around $5 million from the sale of the stamps to hunters and collectors. This year’s $9 fee buys hunters the right to...