Light-fingered squirrels, baboons
SHOPLIFTING squirrels have become a nuisance in Toronto, Canada. Paul Kim, owner of Luke's Grocery, says the squirrels loiter in the doorway, checking out what's stacked in the chocolate bar counters.
Then they dash in, grab what they want and dash out again, Kim told the Toronto Star.
"They come in and take Crunchies, Crispy Crunch and Wonderbar."
Very bad for their teeth.
I once saw a group of baboons do much the same at a rural trading store here in KwaZulu-Natal. They cased the joint then went in the front door.
It was pretty spectacular as it was a Saturday and the place was packed. Next thing there were shrieks and customers jumping from the windows.
Then the baboons came out clutching packets of sweets, popcorn and all the stuff your mother tells you not to eat. They looked like a bunch of naughty schoolboys and were very careless about throwing away the sweet wrappers.
Toronto's probably better off with the squirrels.
Dratted typos
LAST Friday we discussed the ship's captain who manouevred his ship across both the equator and the international date line at midnight at the turn of the 19th century, so that parts of it were still in the 19th and parts in the 20th century; parts in the northern and parts in the southern hemisphere; and parts in winter and parts in summer.
Reader Andrew Dale now says he would have been most distressed to be a passenger on that ship.
"Imagine being anchored there from your date of July 31, 1899 until the end of the nineteenth century on December 31."
Grrrr, yes! It should have been "December 31, 1899".
Drat these typesetters, compositors and night readers!
Er, hold on. That printing technology disappeared about 20 years ago.
Drat these computer gremlins!
Sir Hiss coils up
HORRORS! Here was this hideous thing coiled up in a toilet bowl in Arlington, Virginia, in the US. It was a 2m yellow anaconda, apparently cooling off in the water.
Animal control officers removed it into the care of a reptile specialist who has named it Sir Hiss.
Yellow anacondas are apparently regular visitors in Arlington, Virginia, according to the Huffington Post. They make their way through any wall aperture and head for the bog to cool down.
The snake was adopted by a reptile specialist and given the name Sir Hiss.
Whoops!
RO-RO is how the shipping people describe today's roll-on, roll-off container vessels.
Ro-ro it was on a barge off the eastern coast of Australia the other day. A group of tourists had driven on their hired SUV heading for a safari on one of the offshore islands.
Then, once they were at sea, to their horror their SUV simply rolled off over the side and sank.
Nobody was in it, according to Australia's ABC News, but quite a few cellphones, debit cards, passports and valuables were.
They call it Davy Jones's locker.
Mascot
A CAR-OWNER in the Australian island state of Tasmania has attracted an unusual mascot. A fur seal – a large animal more like a walrus in size – has taken to sleeping on the bonnet of his car where it has been parked at night.
It also clambers over the roof, causing damage.
When it's not sleeping on the car, the fur seal wanders about the streets of Newstead, Tasmania, otherwise behaving itself according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
This seal obviously has a hankering to become one of those car ornaments you get in the rear window of cars – nodding dogs and the like. But size is a problem.
Tall feller
A GREAT Dane named Freddy has come from being runt of the litter to the world's tallest dog
Freddy, of Leigh-on-sea, England, has been recognised by Guinness World Records. He's 1m tall and a whopping 1.5m standing on his hind legs.
His owner, Claire Stoneman says he was half the size of his fellow-pups when she bought him four years ago. It surely says much for Claire's proficiency with dogs' din-dins.
Freddy is a lot bigger than an Australian fur seal. He has no chance whatever of becoming a rear window nodding dog.
Tailpiece
THERE'S a small snack bar next to the atomic accelerator at CERN, in Switzerland.
It's called The Fission Chips Café.
Last word
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
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