If you’ve ever wondered what Santa does when one of his reindeer gets a flat, meet the mini-spare, the rarely mentioned ninth reindeer “Cranky”.
So, does anyone else sing “Fleas on the Dog” to the tune of “Feliz Navidad” (the José Feliciano version, of course)?
’cause if not, you might be interested in getting one!
From an older article (Hero Rate has actually bee going in several African countries for a while now):
“A new weapon is being developed in the battle
against the millions of unexploded landmines that
kill innocent children and adults around the world –
the African pouched rat. Cheap, intelligent and,
crucially, lightweight, rats are being trained in Tanzania to sniff out landmines and explosives.
…. When working the rats are harnessed and hitched to a sliding rail mounted on a metal grid.
Two human handlers roll the grid over a suspected
minefield. When a rat scratches and sniffs to indicate a mine, the handler activates a clicker and pulls the rat over to the side by his lead to reward him with a bit of banana. When fully trained, the rats sniff out a mine, then sit and scratch at the spot until they are rewarded with food. A human explosives expert then destroys the mine.
The crucial thing to note here is that the rats are too light to set off a landmine – as the hero rat site says: “we are herorates, not kamikazerats!”
Keres and I have a adopted a rat for my mum and my best friend for Xmas.
Rat, not rate.
We’ve adopted “Sargon, a “fully trained HeroRat.” We’ll post updates on his activities in future blogs.
Neat way to enlarge your menagerie. Looking forward to the pics.
Albert with your eyes shut tight,
Someone’s made your head a joke tonight.
Never heard that fleas song, but I don’t get out much anymore. I was getting worried about Luna.
Luna is blessedly free of fleas. It gets cold enough here in the winter to keep us from having an active population.
We’re actually having a “cold snap” in Tasmania right now. Snow fell on Mt. Wellington (above Hobart) a few days ago. Mainland Australia is having it’s usual summer heat wave, with Perth getting up to about 110F.
Did I say cold snap – pffffttt! It’s blazing hot and windy this afternoon. When Tasmanians say, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute”, we’re not actually joking.
I had to come in from working on the fences due to wind- and sun-burn (not to mention lots of little cuts from clipped wires).
that’s one cute bunny.
And doesn’t he just know it. That dang little cutie gets away with just about anything.
Aw. It looks like me and the kids after eating too much birthday flan.
Nice to see the pack doing the hard work of keeping the floor from flying-up and smacking everyone in the face.
Dogs – the other source of gravity.
Um, I do now…and I’m sure I’ll be able to drive all of my dogs insane with it now.
As always, Albert is just waaaaay too cute.
I think I learned too many parody songs from reading Mad Magazine as a child, and now I just make up my own.
Sorry to give you an earworm.
It’s been a very strange week for us where critters are concerned.
We got a totally unexpected xmas gift when we took Imogen’s mum for a walk into the bush next to our property. About a kilometer away from the house, Luna pulled up to look at something. Im’s mum, said “look it’s a duck”. Turned out to be our duck Minnie. She hadn’t shown up for breakfast that morning, but we assumed she’d started sitting a nest she had hidden and that we’d find her (and a dozen or so eggs) as soon as she broke from cover to get a drink (this happens with at least one of our ducks a month).
What we think happened was this: one of the neighbors’ grandkids came up to our place to play on the computer the day before and a little while latter her two dogs showed up at the front door. We assume that Minnie panicked and flew off down the hill, eventually ending up where we found her. Imogen and I managed to catch her and we traded off carrying her back to the house. I put my cap over her head to keep her calm, but I think she was probably relieved to see familiar faces.
The other most-out-of-the-ordinary thing has been the rabbit cull. We’ve shot eight so far. I’m the type of person who catches bugs and puts them outside rather than kill them. So it’s been a real shift to actually kill animals, especially cute ones, deliberately. At least half have been clean kills, and the others have been finished off swiftly. I’m glad that we’ve yet to wing one and have it scurry off to suffer and die. If I choose to kill animals, I believe I’m obliged to make sure that they don’t suffer. Here’s hoping that our aim remains true.
I’m glad Minnie’s Big Adventure turned out okay. BTW, my grandmother’s name was Minnie and if there’s anything to a name, you’re damned lucky she didn’t bite your ear off just for the sheer indignity.
About your bubby Minnie, was there a lot of swearing in Yiddish (in addition to the biting 😉 )? Yiddish is the best language for swearing – it’s practically an art form.
Oh definitely — I learned loads of great insults, put-downs, and pithy remarks from her. She spoke in a mix of yiddish and english (probably 40/60) because some things just never come across right in English.
because some things just never come across right in English
Ain’t that the truth. Australia doesn’t have a sizable Jewish population (unlike in the US, where lots of Yiddish words have become commonplace), so if I say mensch, tchotchke, kibitz, kvetch, etc. here, hardly anyone knows what I’m talking about.
I mean, knickknack is just not the same as tchotchke, which is a far superior definition for all the fussy stuff a certain class of women thought was necessary adornment for every horizontal surface.
I know what you mean — I went to school and lived in southern Indiana for several years and can still remember going to see Blazing Saddles and being the only person in the theater who laughed when Lili Von Schtupp was introduced or when yiddish speaking Indians showed up.
I have to admit an inordinate fondness for Blazing Saddles (and Madeline Kahn). I remember catching the sly references to BS in Shrek (a nice homage). An especially nice touch was naming the giant gingerbread cookie “Mongo”.
Evening Keres.
That’s one pissed off looking Rainrabbit. 🙂
Pissed-off is his usual expression, but in this particular case, he had cause.
Well what self respecting rabbit wouldn’t be with that get up on his head. 🙂