In the News

Unlikely best pals
A pet puppy has become best friends with a caged monkey at a Chinese zoo.

The dog is owned by a keeper at Nanhai Zoo, at Zhumadian city, who takes her pet to work with her.
She told the Dahe Daily newspaper that she noticed a bond developing between the pair about a month ago.
"When the dog walked toward the cage, the monkey inside started to shriek," said the woman.
And, as the six-month-old dog visited the monkey more often, they developed a close friendship.
The monkey would feed the dog bananas and grooms its hair, while the dog would let the monkey ride on its back.
A spokesman for the zoo said it was happy for the dog to spend its days in the monkey's cage as the unlikely double act was proving a hit with visitors.

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Blind pilot guided to land by RAF pilot
A pilot who suddenly went blind while flying his plane at 5,500ft (1,676m) was guided in to land by an RAF plane.
A plane was scrambled from the RAF base at Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire to help stricken pilot Jim O'Neill, 65.
He was flying a two-seater Cessna aircraft from Glasgow Prestwick Airport to Colchester, Essex, when he suffered a stroke and lost his sight.
The RAF plane flew alongside Mr O'Neill and the pilot shepherded him to the base with instructions over the radio.
Mr O'Neill, who has 18 years' flying experience, was overhead at RAF Leeming in Northallerton when he encountered difficulty and sent a mayday alert last Friday.
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Zoo hires redcoats for animals
A Swiss zoo has taken on a team of Butlins' style redcoats - to keep the animals entertained.
The plan is to have one of the professional motivators on hand at all times to stop the animals getting bored.
The new zoo animal entertainment squad will start in January and are currently designing games and puzzles for animals.
Animal psychologist Jennifer Ringleb said: "In nature, animals spend their whole day looking for food. In zoos they have nothing to do, they get bored.
"In extreme cases they will get sick or aggressive. Animals that have something to do are happier and more balanced."
The redcoats will have footballs, plastic bags, cardboard boxes or blocks of wood to make toys and challenges for the animals.

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Vegetable ‘bouquet’ at gardener’s funeral

The family of a green-thumb Herefordshire man arranged a bouquet of vegetables rather than flowers at his funeral last week.
Ernest Shelley, who was known as Robin, died at Ross Community Hospital last month, aged 92.
During his retirement, Mr Shelley had kept a large garden from which he supplied relatives with fresh vegetables. He had no time for growing flowers and his family decided it would be more fitting to provide a vegetable tribute at his funeral at Cinderford Crematorium last Wednesday.
Mr Shelley was born in Hockley, Essex, in 1915 and his father was a thatcher – a trade which the family worked in from 1807. He started as a thatcher and moved into farming. He became a leading farm hand and farm manager in Canvey Island, Essex.
He married Elsie, now aged 92, in 1938 and the couple had two daughters, Judy and Gillian. The couple retired to Bromsash, near Ross-on-Wye, in 1974 and their two daughters both live nearby.
Mr Shelley had been active until spring this year. He was admitted to Ross Community Hospital in October where he died with his family by his side.
He is survived by Elsie, two daughters, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In the News

Bacon Wins and Fries Lost in Colorado Election
There was a tasty race for Colorado senate when voters got to choose between Bacon and Fries.
In the end, Bacon won.
Democrat incumbent Bob Bacon defeated Republican challenger Matt Fries on Tuesday 63 percent to 37 percent to represent the district that encompasses most of Larimer County in northern Colorado.
"I am so pleased that the voters appreciate the work that I have done," Bacon said
Bacon originally was elected to the seat in 2004 after serving three terms in the state House of Representatives. Fries is a long-time education advocate.
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"Little House on Prairie"
Finland has rated the DVD release of the much-loved children's television series "Little House on the Prairie" suitable for adult viewing only.
To save money, Universal Pictures decided not to submit the series to state inspection, the company's Finland marketing manager Meri Suomela told Reuters on Wednesday.
Finnish authorities charge 2 euros ($2.57) per minute for assessing the correct age limit on films and television series. Distributors who forego this can only sell their shows with a sticker saying "Banned for under-18s."
"Long series can get quite expensive to check, and some use this exemption in the law to their advantage," said Matti Paloheimo, Director at the Finnish Board of Film Classification.
"Such unchecked material should not be shown to children publicly," he added.
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9-year-old attempts to drive to grandma's
A 9-year-old boy is in police custody after he took his family's car on a drive to visit his grandmother.
Police received a call at around 7:30 a.m. on Monday from a passerby saying there was a car driving along a prefectural road without anyone at the wheel. An officer subsequently found the boy sitting in the driver's seat of an automatic small car in a nearby convenience store parking lot.
"It's my first time driving, but I learned from watching dad and playing at the video arcade," he told police.
The boy told police that he'd taken the car from the family home at around 6 a.m. He was planning to visit his grandmother in nearby Sekigahara, but had got lost.
The boy is around 135 cm in height, and managed to control the car by sitting at the front of the seat and clinging to wheel, allowing him to reach the pedals.
Police warned the boy's parents to look after their car more carefully in the future.
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Johnny Carson and the Myna Bird

From a 1972 Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

You will have to see it to believe it

“Little Frog Keeper”

Where would you store your frogs?

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She’s never going to hear the end of this.

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I toad her not to do this.

They’ll drag this video out til she croaks!

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This video has been on AFV

Footsie

The chase is on....

RC CAR VS KITTENS

In the News

The things people keep in their car trunks
A 13ft trampoline, hundreds of bags of mints and a stag's skull complete with antlers are just some of the items people keep in cars, a government survey reveals.
Many motorists use their cars as mobile wardrobes, with men almost as likely as women to store shoes or clothes in their car trunks. One woman from north- west England built up clutter in her car over two years, with items including a kettle, a sandwich-maker and two vacuum cleaners. Another car owner, a 25-year-old marketing executive, had unopened Christmas presents from two years earlier in her vehicle.
The Department for Transport survey showed that 10% of those polled could not remember the last time they cleared the clutter from their car. Main reasons for women having a clear-out were to give their vehicle a spring clean, while men were motivated by saving money by reducing their fuel consumption through lighter loads.
If all motorists adopted smarter driving techniques it would save 5.5 million tonnes of CO2 every year.
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Man Catches a Thief and.....
Police: we are too busy to help a shopkeeper who rang 999 four times
When a customer was spotted apparently stealing from his shop, Mark Ward knew the drill - apprehend the suspect, call the police and wait for help to arrive.
But after a two-hour wait in which he made a total of four 999 calls, the locksmith had no option but to bundle the man into his van and hand him over personally at the local police station.
During the increasingly desperate calls, Mr Ward was told that officers were too busy to respond and was furious to be advised at one stage: "You can let him go if you like."
Locksmith Mark Ward was forced to drive a suspected shoplifter to a police station himself when officers failed to respond to four 999 calls.

In the News

Police Take Aggressive Rooster Into Custody
A rooster played chicken in the wrong town. That's the word from the downstate community of Benton, Illinois, where police took a rooster into custody after it allegedly confronted a woman and her child.
Police Chief Mike O'Neill said the rooster has been bothering people lately, trying to keep them from getting where they want to go. O'Neill said officers had enough on Monday and took the rooster into custody after what he described as a brief scuffle.
Nobody was injured and the rooster was thrown in an enclosed area near the police department. There, it lived on chicken feed and water until police located the owner. Chickens aren't allowed to live in Benton and the rooster was turned over to the owner only after he promised to find it a new home in the country.
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Who wants to be the office tea monitor?
A 'tea task force' could be employed to spy on employees filling the kettle at work, a Government body has said.
Envirowise is calling on businesses to appoint tea monitors to make sure people do not waste water.
It is advising companies to use teapots instead of making individual cups of tea, and hopes to re-introduce tea urns to the workplace.
They say that the moves will cut greenhouse gas emissions and, in turn, help businesses to save money.
Envirowise, which is funded by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, estimates that more than 30 billion cups of water are unnecessarily boiled each year.
In a statement it tells businesses: "Appoint a tea task force or tea monitor to make sure all your office hot drink-making facilities are as efficient as they could be. Only boil the water you use - this will avoid water and energy being wasted."
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Have I overlooked anything?
A US man who built a Lamborghini sportscar in his cellar had to dig into the foundations of his house to get it out.
Ken Imhoff began building the sportscar after falling in love with it during the movie Cannonball Run.
But it took him 17 years to build his own version of the car in the basement of his home in Wisconsin.
However, when he finished assembling it, he was confronted with the problem of how to get the car out.
He had to hire an excavator to gouge out a slope in his garden and then dig down into the foundations of his house. The car was then hooked up to the excavator and pulled out.
Despite the amount of effort involved, Mr Imhoff said that it was all worth it.
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Patient was told to buy own tweezers
A hospital told a patient to buy his own tweezers to remove his ingrown eyelashes when he arrived at A & E. Medical staff at Maidstone Hospital told Dai Williams, 45, they couldn't find a suitable instrument to conduct the procedure. They then suggested that he 'pop out' and buy his own.
So Mr Williams drove three miles to the nearest supermarket and bought a pair before returning to the hospital to have the painful eyelashes removed.We all know the NHS is having problems but this was just too much to take - having to buy my own equipment. I was lucky I didn't have heart problems.
Mr Williams, from Staplehurst, paid £3.45 for a pair of tweezers. He said he let the hospital keep them, because it must be feeling the "credit crunch".
A hospital spokesman said: "We are sorry there were no tweezers small enough in the department and thank Mr Williams for offering to help solve the problem."