Smoked crab at Umhlali
THE GOVERNMENT might have bitten off more than it can chew with plans to prohibit smoking on beaches. What are they going to do about crabs?
Crabs smoking? Yes, it's been known to happen.
I was at Umhlali beach once when somebody flicked away a stompie. Barely had it landed on the sand when a crab scuttled out of his hole and grabbed the still-burning stompie in one of his pincers, standing there holding it in the perfect pose of the furtive smoker, eyes on stalks going this way and that.
Then he scuttled back down his hole, clearly embarrassed to be smoking out in the open. (He seemed a young crab and possibly he didn't want his mother to see him).
For quite a while after that, cigarette smoke continued to curl from the crab hole. He was obviously enjoying his fag. I trust he didn't become hooked on the habit. In those days there wasn't a protective government around to discourage him.
More snakes
THIS week's piece on a snake that stowed away in the cockpit of an Australian aircraft reminds reader Ken Fuller, of Scottburgh – himself a former captain with East African Airways – of an incident on take-off from Dar-es-Salaam in 1952. It involved a Captain Tug Wilson and a radio officer named Handford, flying in a Lodestar.
"On take-off a three-foot, very poisonous green mamba curled around the control column. Wilson shouted to the radio officer to get out and keep the communication door shut in case the passengers saw the snake and panicked.
"A quick fighter approach followed as the captain returned to land, the mamba staring at him eyeball to eyeball.
"Stay there you little devil and we all have a chance of survival', he thought. The altitude was 50 feet on final approach when the Mamba suddenly decided to disappear down the instrument panel to his ankles.
"After landing and closing the throttles it seemed like a lifetime of three seconds before the mamba slid away. After making a quick exit Wilson told the ground staff, who found and killed the snake."
Hash man
PHONE - answering machine message : "If you want to buy marijuana, press the hash key."
Prehistoric eggs
A CONSTRUCTION crew in Chechnya, Russia, have discovered a cache of what appear to be huge, fossilised dinosaur eggs. They were blasting through a hillside in a remote area of the Caucasus mountains, to build a road near the border with Georgia.
Geologists on site believe the smooth, oval, rock-like forms – ranging in size from 25cm to 1m in diameter – are dinosaur eggs. About 40 have been found. Further expertise is being called in.
They mustn't allow a broody hen anywhere near those eggs. Chechnya's got enough troubles without Tyrannosaurus rex running about the place again.
Boom times
POLICE in the West Midlands region of England were inundated with phones calls as a mysterious "boom!" resonated across the countryside.
Apart from calls to the police, it caused an absolute twitterophony on Twitter.
It turns out the culprit was an RAF Typhoon fighter going through the sound barrier.
Whoops! That way you get all kinds of claims for smashed greenhouses. There was a time when the SAAF used to pay out big bucks for claims of this sort, all the time insisting with a straight face that sonic booms don't break glass.
It doesn't seem to happen any more. Budgetary constraint, I guess. Close the throttle, boys!
Superman
UP, UP AND away! The original cheque used to buy the Superman comic character from its original creators has been sold in an online auction in the United States for $160 000.
The cheque itself was for $130. That is what Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster, of Cleveland, were paid for all the rights to Superman by Detective Comics, later known as DC Comics.
Although $130 then is around $2 300 in today's money, It's a tiny fraction of what the character has earned since then.
Siegel and Shuster tried unsuccessfully to win back the rights to Superman in court, and their heirs are still trying to reclaim them.
Tailpiece
RIGHT now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.
Last word
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
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