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Alo-Ha! Friday Charles Memminger |
Curious creatures cloned,
Dolly gets stuffedIn this special "all animal" edition of "AloHa Friday!" we will explore hedgehog huntin', cloned calves and an embarrassing end to a famous sheep.
I wanted to have a nice item on mongooses, which complain they don't get enough positive press coverage, but the only mongoose making news recently is NABF lightweight boxing champ Steve "Mongoose" Quinonez, who will be facing Michael "Nobody Special" Clark in a Sunday night yawner.
It's a little-known fact that some great boxers were named after rodents, including George "Gerbil" Foreman, Leon "City Mouse" Spinks and Joe "Smokin' Squirrel" Frazier. But that hardly serves our purposes here.
So, now the critter news:
Argument gets pointed
LONDON (Reuters) >> A cull of 5,000 hedgehogs began in Scotland's remote Western isles after a bitter row that pitted conservationists against animal welfare groups. Conservationists claim the spiky animals eat the eggs of rare wading birds.(Animal rights groups wanted the hedgehogs moved to the Scottish mainland instead of being hunted down like, well, hedgehogs.)
Zoo clones Franken-calf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) >> A pair of banteng calves has been born, cloned from an animal that died more than 20 years ago, researchers say.Bantengs are a rare species of wild cattle from Asia. The two calves were cloned from the San Diego Zoo's "frozen zoo" project launched before anyone knew if cloning would work. Researchers previously cloned an oxlike animal called a gaur, which died after a few days.
(Researchers say they clone unknown animals because "the world has enough sheep. When was the last time you saw a pasture full of gaur?")
Hello (again) Dolly!
LONDON (Reuters) >> The sheep Dolly, the first cloned mammal, who was put to sleep after becoming sick, has been stuffed by taxidermists and put on public display.(Soon the countryside will be dotted with dead stuffed cloned sheep, bantengs and gaurs.)
'Honolulu Lite' on Sunday:
We'll continue our safari into animal affairs with an update this Sunday on my ironically named lovebird Sweetie, who, besides being mean as a snake, has managed to lure her THIRD lovebird into our house. Either there are hundreds of escaped lovebirds flying around the island or Sweetie has a diabolical knack for coaxing a few pitiful creatures at large into her lair.
Quote me on this:
"I was a child prodigy myself. That is, at the age of 5 I already required pants of a 12-year-old." -- Heywood Broun
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com