On the Eastern Shore, locals around Crisfield itching for a jolt of development cheered a provision tucked into the gigantic new federal Highway Bill that allocates $800,000 for planning a new ferry terminal that would link the Shore with Reedville, Va. …

In New York, the Big Apple has a big ugly invader that we Marylanders know intimately. We expected the tabloids to scream Eeek: Snakeheads on the Loose! But the reaction was a tad more muted when authorities acknowledged last week catching five and seeing that many more at Meadow Lake in Queens. One plan is to flood the lake with sea water, hoping that the salt-averse snakeheads succumb …

In Virginia, the Army Corps of Engineers has approved a 1,500-acre reservoir for Newport News over complaints by Mattaponi Indians that it violates an Indian treaty, upsets subsistence hunting and fishing for the tribe and disrupts a sacred site. The Corps once acknowledged adverse effects on the tribe but now says the King County residents need the water …

Our Creature Feature comes from Chicago, where there’s something fishy about the city’s newest hotel. That’s because it’s a hotel for fish, built on and in the Chicago River beneath the Michigan Avenue bridge leading to the city’s famed Magnificent Mile shopping area.

The hotel consists of dense vegetation designed to appeal to bass, sunfish and perhaps even Lake Michigan salmon willing to swim in the urban landscape that Carl Sandburg called “the city with big shoulders.” Underwater cameras will record the check-in of aquatic creatures for Chicagoans, some of whom pitched in with the city to pay for the fishy new digs.