Pig spleen widening means early winter;
narrowing means early spring;
if the spleen is fairly uniform it means weather as usual.
“I’m 90 percent accurate,” the farmer claims, “which is a damn sight better than your TV ‘meteorologists’.”
Snake Does Golf
A python was saved by surgery after mistaking golf balls for chicken eggs.
A farming couple had placed four golf balls in their chicken coup to encourage their hen to nest. The eggs disappeared and so did the balls.
Nearby, the couple found a lumpy-looking diamond python.
They transported the 32-inch non-venomous snake to the nearby wildlife sanctuary, where a senior veterinarian operated to remove the balls from the snake’s intestine.
Those golf balls weren’t moving any further, the vet said.
They were stuck.
The python would have died for sure.
Now he’s out of danger.
Biofuel
Stockholm culls thousands of rabbits annually to protect the capital’s parks and green sectors.
The rabbits are mainly the offspring of pets released by owners.
Since they have no natural predators the city administration of Stockholm employs hunters to kill them.
The killed rabbits are frozen and a contractor removes them to a processing plant.
There the raw animal matter is crushed, ground, pumped to a boiler where it is burned together with wood chips, peat or waste to produce renewable heat.
So far the only negative reaction to the rabbits-for-biofuel cull has come from the PETA folks.
Tyger
A medical student got some unexpected practical experience at the zoo when she gave the kiss of life to a Bengal tiger cub gagging on a chunk of meat.
She was passing the enclosure when she noticed the 4-month-old creature choking and offered to assist the helpless keeper.
“The tiger tried to eat a chunk of meat that was too big and started choking and trembling and then fell over,” the student told Live-at-6 TV News.
“I got the meat out but he wasn’t breathing so I did mouth-to-mouth. After about 5 minutes he came to, thank God.”
Wombat
The furry marsupial lives in the Australian wilds.
With its characteristic waddle and playful disposition it’s an endearing creature.
In this steep recession an industry has experimented with “paper” made from wombat poop.
Prospects seem favorable.
Wombats’ plant fiber diet makes their feces ideal for paper, which is of course obsolescent.
Hippo
Diana Tilden-Blair, Ms South Africa in 2012 and a runner-up in the 2013 Ms Globe contest, was mauled by a hippopotamus while canoing in the Okavango swamp in Botswana, the local constabulary announced.
The blonde beauty winner, bitten on her face and thighs, was airlifted to Johannesburg hospital, where she was reported to be in critical condition.
Earlier this month, another South African beauty contest winner, Annette Smuts, was murdered by a hippopotamus while she and her family were on holiday in the Okavango swamp.
Botswana, formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, is north by northwest of South Africa.
Bald Eagles
are dying in Utah and nobody knows why.
Hundreds of the majestic birds — many with wing spans of 7 feet — migrate each winter to the Great Salt Lake, feeding on carp and other fish.
Earlier this month, farmers in northern Utah began finding the raptors on the ground suffering from seizures, paralysis in the legs, feet and wings.
The eagles were taken to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
Within 48 hours most were dead.
“It’s just hard to have your national bird in your arms when you can see it’s in pain but don’t know what’s happening to it.”
Marius
Copenhagen Zoo murdered Marius the giraffe with a bolt pistol as horrified schoolchildren crowded around to watch the cadaver be butchered then fed to lions.
Copenhagen Zoo received more than 20,000 petitions to spare the healthy giraffe.
Copenhagen Zoo was informed by the European Association of Zoos (EAZA) that Marius was genetically similar to the zoo’s other giraffes, hence expendable.
Copenhagen Zoo received offers from zoos to adopt Marius and from individuals to purchase then donate the giraffe to animal parks.
Copenhagen Zoo insisted that animals could not be transferred to Institutions not strictly adhering to rules on breeding programs.
Nuclear Waste
Health officials are instructing residents to chill after a video uploaded on YouTube displayed exceptionally high levels of radiation at a Pacific Coast beach. The 7-minute video has caused concern that nuclear waste from the 2011 Fukushima disaster is arriving on the US side of the Pacific Ocean.
The video shows a man using a Geiger counter radiation detector while walking through Pacifica State Beach outside San Francisco. His monitor reads 150 counts-per-minute, 5 times more radiation than typical in that environment.
Health officials‘ conclusion: “Routinely higher levels of background radiation, no health risk.”
Holy Semen
An Israeli male has been imprisoned for tricking females into sexual acts by claiming his semen was holy.
He presented himself as a rabbi with healing powers, then exploited the naiveté of women and teenage girls with appalling sexual acts.
He had at his disposal various explanations: a jasmine scent emanates from his semen; his sacred semen is transferable by contact; Moses (with whom he is in direct contact) was, like himself, ithyphallic.
“His sexual appetite was insatiable,” the judge pronounced. “There were no means he would not use in order to exploit females young and old.”
Lug Nut
A Texarkana male trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12-gauge, wounding himself in both legs.
He’d been repairing his 1960 El Camino for two weeks and gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the left rear wheel.
Bound and determined to get that lug nut off, the man fired the shotgun from about arm’s length at the wheel and was boomer-anged in his legs with buckshot and debris, with some wounds as high as his nose.
According to the sheriff’s report: “He’d been drinking beer, but that ain’t news.”