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Down East Dispatches

map of maine

Opinions, advisories, and musings from the length and breadth of Maine

1. Chebeague Island

Lobsterman Alex Todd pulled up a mostly transparent bluish-white lobster. Because it was an egg-bearing female, he was required to throw it back, but he said he’d have done so anyway, because it was “really cool.”

2. Falmouth

Birders from outside Maine flocked to catch a glimpse of a rarely seen (in these parts) South American fork-tailed flycatcher. Though late-summer hurricane activity disrupted some birds’ migrations, Audubon naturalists suspected this one was simply lost.

3. Bangor

A retired Canadian Mountie was sentenced to five years and two months in prison for his involvement in a narwhal tusk smuggling operation. Gregory Robert Logan admitted to smuggling some 300 tusks into Maine, valued at $1.5 to $3 million.

4. Burnham

Ten-year-old Dillon Whitney raised almost $400 at a lemonade stand for the victims of hurricanes Harvey and Irma. He gave the funds to the American Red Cross in Bangor.

5. Bar Harbor

Jackson Laboratory is suing a Chinese university for selling two strains of its genetically modified mice at bargain prices. The lab is the world’s largest breeder of mice for medical research.

6. Derry

A interdimensional creature of unspeakable evil reached the 27th year of its slumber cycle, awoke, and began terrorizing the town. A ragtag group of former childhood friends reunited to face down the monster — and their own demons. (Also, the new film adaptation of Stephen King’s It became the highest-grossing horror film of all time.)

7. Portland

The first issue of Batman: White Knight went on sale, featuring illustrations of buildings and streets around Batman’s home city of Gotham based on Portland’s Old Port, drawn by local resident Sean Murphy.

I hadn’t seen another artist do Gotham with Victorian or Edwardian architecture, with cobblestone streets and iron gates.

— DC Comics artist and writer Sean Murphy, quoted in the Portland Press Herald