Subject: Daily Dose - 040216 - pest-control, Hey Martha, how to wrap a newborn, DDL, Rotten News

My husband is a service technician for an exterminating company. And of of the rules is that he must confirm his appointments by phone the night before a service call.

One evening, he called a customer and said to the man who answered, "Hi. This is Garry from the pest-control company. Your wife phoned us."

There was silence for a moment, and then my husband heard the man say, "Honey, someone wants to speak to you about your relatives."

________________________

Hey Martha...  (true)

Sat, November 15, 2003

Posties find live alligator in mail

MILWAUKEE (AP) - A metre-long alligator chewed its way out of a shipping carton before a U.S. postal worker tossed it into a hamper and called animal-control officers.

Employees were sorting mail Friday when they noticed the alligator chewing its way out of an Express Mail box, said JoAnne Blackburn, a Postal Service spokeswoman.

Workers tried to tape the box closed but the alligator bit it open.

"The nose...was sticking out with its teeth hanging out," said postal employee Jennifer Hejdak.

She said a co-worker picked it up by its tail and threw it in a hamper.

The alligator will remain at a shelter for a week before being shipped to a northern Illinois sanctuary, said Len Selkurt, executive director of the Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control. The sanctuary owner will then take it to Florida, he said.

Alligators longer than 50 centimetres are not allowed to be sent through the mail and officials said the shipment from Milwaukee to Colorado is under review.

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Mon, November 3, 2003

Woman beats up crocodile

DARWIN, Australia (AP) - A woman punched and kicked a three-metre saltwater crocodile on the nose to free her teenage nephew from its jaws during an attack in Australia's outback, the young man said Monday from his hospital bed.

Manual Gandigorrtij, 19, was loading wild geese into his small tin boat at the water's edge when a crocodile lunged at his leg and pulled him into the creek, 400 kilometres east of Darwin on Saturday. Without hesitation, his aunt and uncle raced to his rescue.

"He dragged me into the water and then my uncle and my aunty went and jumped it," Gandigorrtij told the Australian Associated Press from the hospital.

His aunt, Margaret Rinybuma, 53, let her fists and feet fly.

"She punched it, the croc, and she kicked it," Gandigorrtij said.

"I hit him with my fist on the nose and I yelled out 'Help! In the name of Jesus!' and it let him go," Rinybuma told the Northern Territory News in a story printed Monday.

After the crocodile let go, his aunt and uncle dragged the teen from the water.

Gandigorrtij was recovering in Royal Darwin Hospital following surgery for three deep cuts in his left leg.

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Mon, October 27, 2003

See ya later alligator: reptile gets loose in U.S. plane's baggage hold

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - An alligator was captured inside the baggage hold of an American airliner on Monday after escaping from its crate.

The young alligator, which was less than 1 1/2 metres long, remained inside a burlap bag with its mouth bound shut, American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner said. Officers captured it with a looped device and put it back in its crate with three other alligators shipped from Miami, officials said.

Authorities were looking into how the reptile got out.

The alligator was found outside its box when the cargo hold of the Boeing 767 was opened, Wagner said.

Officials said they did not know why the alligators were being shipped. Their paperwork was in order, Wagner said.

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Mon, November 10, 2003

French transport minister caught speeding amid road safety campaign

PARIS (AP) - Amid a countrywide crackdown on reckless driving, two French ministers were caught speeding as their cars raced outside Paris - to an unveiling ceremony for new radar speed traps, a French auto magazine said Monday.

An article to appear in the latest issue of Auto Plus says its reporters used hand-held radars that recorded Transport Minister Gilles de Robien cruising out of the capital at 98 kilometres per hour on a road with a maximum speed limit of 70 km/h. The car chauffeuring law-and-order chief Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, was clocked at 103 km/h, said the article, which was released ahead of publication Tuesday.

Both cars were driving out to a Paris suburb last month for a ceremony to unveil the country's first automatic roadside radars that film speeding drivers, who incur fines.

De Robien's office said the minister "did not contest the facts that seem to have been revealed."

"The fact that he was running late on this particular day and being escorted by a security convoy is no excuse," his office said. "Nobody is above the laws of the road - and certainly not the transport Minister."

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Part of my job as a public-health nurse is teaching new parents how to care for their infants.  As I was demonstrating how to wrap a newborn, a young Latino couple turned to me and said, "You mean we should wrap the baby like an egg roll?"

"Yes," I replied, "that's a good analogy."

"I don't know how to make egg rolls," another mother said anxiously. "Can I wrap my baby like a burrito?"

_______________________

DDL

A beat schizophrenic said, "Me?
I am not I, I am a tree."
But another, more sane,
Shouted, "I'm a great dane."
And covered his pants leg with pee.

________________________

"I had general anesthesia for my surgery. It's so weird. You go to sleep in one room and then wake up four hours later in a totally different room. Just like in college."
--Ross Shafer

***

"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."
--Thomas Jefferson

***

"For every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies."
--Laurence Sterne (British Novelist)

__________________________

Rotten News...  (true)

Teen Forced to Pay Cop for Calling Him 'Fat'

LONDON (Reuters) - Judges ordered a British teenager to pay $160 to a policeman for "mental anguish" after calling him "fat," the Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

The newspaper said policeman Jack Montague was on foot patrol with a colleague in Ulverston in northwest England when a drunken 17-year-old insulted him. Magistrates found the youth guilty of abusive behavior.

"Coppers have feelings too, and I'm glad that the magistrates have taken the unusual step of recognizing that," the paper quoted the police officer as saying.

The 5-foot, 8-inch officer weighs 196 pounds, the paper said.

"Sure, I enjoy the odd curry and a pint or two, but I am not fat at all. That's unfair," he said. "I play cricket for my local club and coach junior football, so if anything, I think I am quite sporty."

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Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will produce a mess.

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

A group of faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then, they waited.

At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in — not quite literature.

Phillips said the project — funded by England's Arts Council rather than by scientific bodies — was intended more as performance art than scientific experiment.

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New Yorkers Charged to Check Smokes at Cloakroom

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Getting frisked for handguns has been commonplace at New York nightclubs for years, but these days some doormen have started patting down patrons for a new menace -- a pack of cigarettes.

Smokers here have been feeling more oppressed lately after Mayor Michael Bloomberg, having already jacked up the average price of a pack to about $7, upped his battle against the weed by banning smoking in all bars and restaurants on March 30.

Now at least one nightclub -- wary of the hefty fines proprietors must pay if patrons are found smoking -- has begun frisking patrons for cigarettes, the New York Post reported on Thursday.

And, adding insult to injury, the tabloid said Manhattan's Cheetah nightclub is demanding patrons check their cigarette packs at the cloakroom at a cost of $1.

'They don't trust smokers,' one observer told the newspaper. 'The management figures that once (customers) get inside and they have a drink or two, they'll light up. So now every time you want to go outside for a smoke, you have to pay a dollar.'

Since 1995 smoking has been banned in city restaurants with more than 35 seats. But smaller eateries, pubs with separate bar areas and stand-alone bars were exempt -- until the new law took effect.

The law, initiated by former smoker Bloomberg, is similar to California's anti-smoking statute and is one of the stiffest in America. It subjects owners to fines of between $200 and $400 for a first offense and $500 to $1,000 for a second offense. The licenses of repeat offenders can be revoked.