But I Digress
Don't be getting momma mad
By Mike Suchan
Blog calendar: April 28 | April 21 | April 14 | April 9 | March 31
Don't be getting momma mad
Out in the wild, it's well-known that one does not get between a mother and her offspring. A school teacher learned that the hard way in Ann Arbor, Mich.
She got between momma and her babies and was attacked. She tried to run away, but the 52-year-old teacher in the Detroit Public Schools fell on her way back to the bus.
She was chased down and mauled ... by a squirrel.
That's right, an enraged mother squirrel didn't like her pups being messed with and lit out after the woman, who was on a tour of the University of Michigan campus with a group of students. The woman was actually trying to alert the momma that a crow was taking interest in her babies, but good intentions apparently don't always gain good results.
The story in The Ann Arbor News says she was able to escape — oh, to be pinned down by a squirrel — with only a bite or scratch injury to her leg, yet it required a trip to the hospital.
"Oh, how'd you get injured?"
"Squirrel attack."
"No. Really?"
"Umm, wolverine."
"That's more like it."
Seriously, squirrel attacks are not high on the list of the 4.7 animal attacks on humans each year in the United States. Of those, 800,000 require some sort of medication, more than 333,000 require a trip to an emergency room and 6,000 of those require a hospital stay. Twelve die.
Dogs are responsible for about 4.5 million of those attacks.
There's only been a nut load of squirrel attacks, mostly on small children or someone dumb enough to think the bushy-tailed tree rats with ever-growing teeth are cuddly.
For a truly heinous squirrel act, we must travel to the far east Russian village of Lazo on the Chinese border. In 2005, it was reported that a pack of the roughian rodents, hungry due to a "pine cone shortage," descended from trees en masse and killed a large stray dog.
"They literally gutted the dog," local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, adding that three men witnessed the attack. "When (the squirrels) saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them."
It sounds like one of those farcical stories — remote site and unnamed witnesses — but the BBC News did report this account. Could it really have happened? Dunno.
Primarily, squirrels' diets are plant food — yes, including nuts — but studies have found vertebrates like smaller rodents, birds, snakes and lizards in their stomachs.
Yet no dog, and no human. Well, not much of any human.
But that's not really the squirrels' mission in the animals vs. humans battle royal, says comedian Tim Bedore, who appears on the nationwide Bob and Tom radio show. Among Bedore's comedy albums is "The Animal Conspiracy."
He is rather convincing. In his "TheOtherAnimalsAreAginUs," piece, which can be read and/or listened to here, he says squirrels have infiltrated human environs to act as scouts. In the grand scheme, they are the animal alliance's surveillance tools, reporting back to the bigger ones who can eat humans.
Yet it's a few overzealous ones that can't help but act out against the man, ergo attacks like that in Ann Arbor. Yes, Tim, vague but true.
Lake's name more than a mouthful
Now that it's spelled right, get somebody to say it.
The name of a lake in Webster, Mass. — pop. 16, 425, sal-ute! — will be corrected on road signs, no small task since the 45-letter name is Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. (Seriously, get somebody to say that three times fast, and it probably won't matter if they have a mouthful of marbles).
Yes, the name is among the world's longest for anything, and, as you can imagine, it's been misspelled a variety of ways.
"Let me take than down. C ... h ... a ... "
The local chamber of commerce, after some historical research, recently found that some signs were wrong, so the 20th letter will be changed from an 'o' to a 'u,' and an 'n' will replace the 'h' at No. 38. (We've tested the fix extensively and we couldn't hear the difference. Sorry.)
The locals even get around it, simply calling the 3-mile wide, 1-mile long body of water Lake Webster.
The Nipmuck Indians who named it probably don't appreciate that, especially since the myth of the name's meaning is "you fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle."
But if anybody catches a fish from Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg and submits it to our reader galleries, please spell it correctly for us.
Read more on the history of this story, and a photo of a sign, in this Telegram & Gazette story.
Making Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor proud
"Arrgh. Arrgh. Arrgh. More power!!!"
Workers in the Spokane, Wash., parks department had to have mimicked Tim Allen's character on "Home Improvement" after blasting ground squirrels from their burrows at the Finch Arboretum with the Rodenator.
The aboretum had been overrun by the critters, which turned the grounds into "Swiss cheese," according to this article in the Spokesman-Review. The varmints especially liked to eat the roots of new plants on the 65-acre grounds.
It wasn't the first attempt to rid the pests. Coyotes were no match for the squirrels' proclivity to reproduce, poisonus gas stunk and annual trapping wasn't so cagey.
So bring in the Rodenator, which comes in the Pro and R2 models. Check out Ed Meyer as he explains how his Rodenator pumps propane and oxygen into tunnels to deliver a concussive blast that eliminates any burrowing pest and collapses tunnels.
"You're blowing them up ... the gases go off and it produces a good loud noise and throws dirt around," Meyer says on the video which shows some blasts. "A lot of guys say, ya know, I don't even care if I kill them, it just feels good to do it."
Arrgh. Arrgh. Arrgh. And who doesn't like a product that ends in "ator?"
But alas, the Spokane Parks' latest tactic to protect its investment brought the ire of the local humane society. They say just limit the food source. Right, then the arboretum, which showcases PLANTS, could be out of business. Sound thinking there.
The holes have also caused safety concern after an elderly couple fell, and neighbors complain of the squirrels spreading disease. Rush Limbaugh got into the mix, hailing the effort but baiting greenies by asking them to "try this one on for size."
One more big name needs to be included. Carl the groundskeeper, played by Bill Murray in "Caddyshack," has to be feeling rather vindicated. His idea of blowing up all the golfers, er gophers, on the golf course was certainly ahead of his time.
posted April 14
Brazilian Olympic trials for spear-catching team well under way
It's unsubstantiated, but it appears two Brazilians have qualified for the country's Olympic spear-catching team.
For the second time in as many weeks, a spear fisherman has ended up with a spear in his head. Ouch!
This time, it was a 9-year-old boy who was mistaken for a fish. Shortly after the boy dove in the water, his 11-year-old cousin drove two 8-inch prongs into Ronilson Ataide Mesquita's face, one tip impaling his right eyebrow and the other embedding in the ocular bone under his eye, which wasn't injured.
Mesquita underwent surgery to remove the spear and is recovering after the incident in the Pacajia River in the Amazon jungle state of Para.
Two weeks earlier, a fisherman near Rio de Janeiro had a spear richocet off rocks and embed into his brain above his eye. He required a longer surgery but could become captain of the Olympic team because the wound was self-inflicted.
Seriously, Brazil, this spear thing just aint working out for y'all. You might want to invest in some nets or fishing line and hooks.Catch ya a couple bugs or a lizard or something for bait.
Eagle really fell hard for mate
Bees do it. Birds do it. Let's do it. Let's fall ... from the sky and land on a car.
That's what happened to one unlucky eagle, reports Minnesota conservation office Mark Mathy. In his weekly report, Mathy said he was driving on Highway 371 near Cass Lake — pop. 860, sal-ute! — when he happened upon some people huddled over something on the side of the road.
It was an eagle. He called it motionless — presume that means dead. He asked if anyone had hit it with their car. One of the car drivers said the "eagle fell on my car."
Skeptical and practiced at such road-kill incidents, Mathy found himself forced into some fancy detective work. On the hood of the driver's car, Mathy found a large dent. Case closed.
He wrote this in his report:
"When eagles mate, they free fall together with one another, unfortunately this one forgot to start flying before she hit the vehicle."
They always say the female falls harder.
Now I'm in for it.
AP/Brian CasseySome of the thousands of cane toads caught by the residents of Cairns, Australia overnight and entered into the "Toad Day Out" program, await euthanasia.
"Toad Day Out" sounds like a children's book.
One might imagine a bowtie-clad amphibian with round glasses bicycling his way through a trying day and ending up learning an important life lesson.
Hardly. In reality, Toad Day Out means something quite a bit more nefarious: It's toad-killing time in Australia.
The first year of what organizers hope to be an annual nationwide festival was designed to help eradicate the infamous cane toad.
On Sunday, thousands of the poisonous cane toads Down Under were put down under. Introduced from South America in the 1930s to eat bugs they never could reach on sugarcane plantations, the toads have long been a nuisance in northern Queensland.
Politician Shane Knuth came up with the idea to organize the event. He's even rallying to put a price on their heads — 28 cents each — and create a nationwide hunt. As an adult female can lay 20,000 eggs, killing just thousands would mean several million wiped out.
What about the greenies? Australia's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is on board as long as the toads are killed humanely.
Can do, mate. The toads have to be brought in alive and then are frozen or killed in bags with carbon dioxide. The remains to be made into fertilizer for the farmers they've plagued for years.
"This is an example of how the war against cane toads can be won," Knuth said for this story from The Associated Press.
