Festive season emergencies
POLICE in Greater Manchester, England, got a call on their 999 emergency
number from a man who had discovered a hedgehog in his garden.
The hedgehog posed no danger, the operator told him, this was no emergency.
Besides, hedgehogs were good for gardens as they ate slugs.
But he didn't want his slugs eaten, the man protested, at which the operator cut
him off.
This was just one of the ridiculous 999 calls received over the festive season so
far.
Another caller, this time from a hospital, reported that a vending machine had
taken his money but not doled out the sweeties. This was a case for the flying
squad, he said.
Another was unhappy that a sports shop would not give him a refund on his
trainers, and yet another waxed indignant over the late delivery of a pizza.
It's not clear what the correlation might be between calls of this nature and the
yuletide wassail.
More wassail?
STILL in England, was this more yuletide wassail? The police at St Helen's,
Merseyside, got a call from a woman saying she had been taking her dog for a
morning walk when they came across a seal in an inland field, at least 10km from
any waterway.
But, sure enough, she spoke the sober truth. The large seal was lying in a
shallow rain puddle, very distressed. How it got there is anybody's guess.
Conservation people coaxed him into a trailer, tempting him along with mackerel,
and he's been taken to the River Mersey, where it is hoped he will join the seal
colony already there.
PM's treat
CHIPS and mayonnaise is a popular delicacy in Belgium. The country's prime
minister, Charles Michel, was treated to a plateful the other night while speaking
at a business function in the southern city of Namur.
Four masked ladies got to their feet, chanting: "Michel, out! Austerity, out!" Then
they rushed him. One gave him a plateful of chips in the kisser, another squirted
him with mayonnaise.
The gals then beat it. Michel continued his speech, apologising for the aroma of
mayonnaise.
It's astonishing that, 100 years after World War I broke out, hostilities should still
be so intense in the very locality of the Western Front.
And, ominously, to what extent are the EFF likely to follow this example down at
parliament?
Mystery crayfish
SCIENTISTS studying change in the glaciers of Antarctica are comparing modern
satellite imagery with aerial photographs from the 1940s and 1950s.
The particular interest of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), working with Newcastle
University and the University of Gloucestershire, is the Antarctic Peninsula, which
reaches northward to South America.
But here's a curious thing. When you look at one of the old aerial photographs, the
tracery of ice, snow and rocks just north of the shoreline of Antarctica seems to
depict a giant lobster or crayfish perched on top of the continent.
The scientists would no doubt find this fanciful, but it is there nevertheless. Does it
have a significance so far hidden from us?
Sweet change
ZIMBABWE is minting its own coins again. No, it hasn't abandoned the US dollar,
adopted as the currency when hyperinflation meant the printing of Z$50 billion notes.
What's happened is that "bond" coins in one cent, five cent, 10 cent and 25 cent
denominations, linked to the US dollar, are being issued so that people can be given
change again.
Traders had either been rounding up prices or giving sweets or pens as small
change. So far bond coins to the value of $10m have been issued.
That's a lot of boiled sweets.
Down but not out
IAN Gibson, poet laureate of Hillcrest, gives some thought to the career demise of Ellen
Tshabalala, the former SABC chairwoman whose varsity certificates got burgled then erased
by the computer at Unisa. But he feels her career has merely altered course, not crashed.
I'm not sad for the lady called Ellen,
Whose antics hardly bear tellin';
Career suspended
And a future upended;
How about ambassador to Berlin?
Tailpiece
PADDY walks into a pub with a pig under his arm.
Barman: "Hey, where did you get that thing?"
Pig: "I won him in a raffle,"
Last word
Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something
more insulting than if you spoke right out at once.
Evan Esar
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