Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

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Rampaging beavers and legless lizards

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of weirdness ... the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat (cue Slovenian skier flying sideways off giant ski jump) and the narcolepsy of indifference, this is the Lite Tuesday Notebook, the only place in any newspaper where you will see news items like this one:

Huge Beaver Rampages Through Russian Store for Vodka: Newspapers just don't run enough rampaging-beaver stories anymore. According to the Russian news agency Novosti, in the remote city of Chelyabinsk (252 points in Scrabble) an enormous beaver smashed through a store window and careened though the store, breaking several bottles of vodka. A saleswoman, giving the beaver the benefit of the doubt, said the creature was not likely after the vodka, but fleeing from a nearby forest fire. Yeah, right. Then how come when he was being dragged away from the vodka bottles, he was singing that famous drinking song "Korobeiniki" ("Come on now my sweetie pie, the one with the fetching shoulders!")?

Legless Lizard Discovered in Brazil: Researchers combing though the giant Cerrado grasslands claim they have discovered a number of new species of animals, including a "legless lizard." This seems a bit suspicious. We have tons of legless lizards in the United States. We call them "snakes." We also have wingless bats that we call "rats." And "spineless hominid bipeds" that we call "politicians."

Coconut Tree for Sale for $1 Million: Now here's a sweet little scam that Hawaii should get in on. Scientists in Ivory Coast have a coconut tree with three heads that they are trying to sell for $1 million. The "head" of a coconut tree is that floppy thing on top with all the fronds. Your typical Hollywood type-casting coconut tree -- the kind scattered all over Honolulu -- has but one head. The Ivory Coast scientists claim they have one with three heads growing out of a single trunk.

"We have 150,000 palm trees in this research plantation, and there's only one which has three heads," said Dr. Roland Bourdeix. Authorities claim the anomaly is genetic, not due to trauma or insects. There are no signs of damage or, more important, duct tape to explain the three-headed coconut tree. Bourdeix said they need to sell the tree to bring in research funds.

If there is that kind of money to be made in growing weird, multiheaded coconut trees, Hawaii should be leading the world in this business. Everyone go check your front yard and see if you have a coconut tree with more than one head on it. If you do, call me. Pronto.

And while we're at it, we should see if there is a market for legless lizards. If there is, we should be selling those, too. Hawaii is crawling with lizards. How hard can it be to humanely remove the legs and market the lizards on eBay? They won't be able to cling to the walls and ceiling, but it might be amusing watching them try.