The Smallest Unit of Life

Wow...we have finished Unit One in Anatomy and Physiology.  The photo to the left is from Wikipedia, and is taken of red blood cells.  Drs. Noguchi, Rodgers, and Schechter of NIDDK were the photographers.  Do you know what the largest cell in the world is?  An ostrich egg.  That's wild!  Do you know how to identify whether or not something is alive?

Do you realize?  And do you recognize
that there are six characteristics to life! 
Yes, six characteristics to life.
If it can respond and reproduce
                                        Grow, metabolize
                                        Move and Differentiate
                                        It matters not the size,
                                        It is alive
                                        if it has the six characteristics of life.

This little ditty is supposed to be spoken a bit like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. 

My brain is a bit saturated with this stuff, so I took a nice long walk at one of the waterfalls in the area.  How this place feeds my soul!  Up to overflowing and then some.   All of these billions of cells that make up my being, sloshed along (you see we're 60-75% made up of water!  So I think that's why we human beings love the water so much.  I walked by the water, soaking up the sunshine despite the cold air.  It's enough to want to shout like some Baptist Preacher from the south:  "GaLOOOOW-RY!!  Gorgeous and glorious filling me up with pure happiness.