They're even eating the paint off some of the houses.

Nebraska farmer Robert Larsen, on the grasshopper infestation (up to 200 insects per square yard) that has hit parts of the West this summer. The infestation may be the biggest since the 1940s.

I was asking myself this morning: 'Is this what I went to law school for?

Manitou Springs, Colo., city attorney Alan Jensen, on the case of a duck owner whose neighbor complained that the pet quacked so much that it violated the city's noise ordinance. The judge threw out the case and urged the neighbors to resolve their own problems.

"Ten years of wedded bliss. Ten years of wondering if I'm going to die."

Terri Irwin, on being the wife and work partner of Australian zookeeper Steve Irwin, who rescues dangerous predators for the television series The Crocodile Hunter.

"If it is at all possible for mom to stay home longer . . . that may be a good thing."

An almost apologetic Jane Waldfogel, one of the authors of a Columbia University study released last week that revealed mothers of newborns who work outside the home harm their children's intellectual development. The study found that the average child of a mom who did not work outside the home more than 30 hours a week for the child's first nine months scored at the 50th percentile on a school-readiness test at age 3. Children whose mothers did work outside the home 30-plus hours per week scored at the 44th percentile-a "significant difference," said Ms. Waldfogel.