Tombstone for a Trout

Mrs. Keyte of Blockley, Gloucestershire had a pet trout that would eat worms from her hand. When it died in 1855, she erected a tombstone in its honor. That tombstone remains one of the most popular tourist attractions in Blockley. And it's perhaps the only tombstone for a trout in the world. [National Geographic, 1917]

Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 07, 2013 - Comments (3)
Category: Death, Obituaries, Pets, Fish, Monuments, Sightseeing, Nineteenth Century

William Hamilton Bones, Washington Goat

Here is a picture of a goat who came to live among high-powered Washington, DC, politicians in the year 1929.



You can read the full story of the goat's dazzling ascent to power here.

But like many Washington insiders, he had an unwholesome addiction that led to his downfall. Find out what it was here.

I think we need a goat today in DC to add a proper sense of absurdity to proceedings.

Posted By: Paul - Mon May 28, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Animals, Pets, Politics, 1920s

Tattoos for Dogs

The newest fad in canine fashion -- tattooing your dog. Note that these aren't permanent tattoos. They're airbrushed on using a special pet-friendly dye. Still, it's a great way to make your dog look ridiculous. Link: theweek.com

Posted By: Alex - Sat May 12, 2012 - Comments (19)
Category: Animals, Fashion, Pets, Dogs

Dogs and Their Dog-Fur-Sweater-Wearing Owners

Photographer Erwan Fichou took a series of photographs of people wearing dog-fur sweaters and coats, made from the fur of their own dogs. One image is below, but check out his site for the full series. (I can't link directly to the series, because he's got his site configured with flash, but click on "Dogwool" once you arrive at his site.)

Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 21, 2012 - Comments (12)
Category: Animals, Crafts, Fashion, Pets, Dogs

Bad News for British Anchormen?

That staple of the “and finally” news item is under threat in the UK today, after a local council handed down an £80 ($130) fine to the owner of a skateboarding dog.

Jonathan Fell of Brighton, England says that his Lakeland Terrier, called Bodhi, likes nothing more than riding his board round the town’s streets, but in doing so he is violating local by-laws that insist all dogs must be kept on a leash. Previously, the council has threatened Fell with an ASBO (a civil restraining order) for failing to control his pet, now he has 14 days to pay the fine or face a court appearance and a potentially much larger fine (Newslite).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Wed May 11, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category: Bicycles and Other Human-powered Vehicles, Government, Pets, Dogs

Weird Animals - Och Aye The Roo!

The week saw the publication of the 2010 Eden Wildlife Report, which tracks the numbers of foreign species introduced to the UK over the past century. Compiled by Dr. Toni Bunnell and a team from the University of Hull, the report mentions wallabies thriving in Scotland, scorpions setting up home in Kent and aardvarks that have somehow emigrated from Brazil to Cumbria (Telegraph).

Of course, this won’t be news to one member of Britain’s thriving rod-fishing community, who this week caught a piranha in his local pond (Guardian).

Another place you might not expect to see exotic creatures is on your lunch menu, but that didn’t stop one restaurant owner in Mesa, AZ from putting “lion burgers” on the menu to celebrate soccer’s World Cup. Cameron Selogie of the Il Vinaio makes his “mane course” with genuine lion meat imported from South Africa, earning him the ire of local animal rights groups and several death threats, but not a reprimand from health officials. According to an FDA spokesman serving lion meat is perfectly legal, as long as it’s not roar (Scotsman).

Slightly luckier than the lions, one cat who has fallen on his feet is Oscar, a housecat from the Isle of Jersey in the UK, widely billed as the “bionic cat” after successfully receiving two artificial hind legs to replace the ones he lost in an altercation with a combine harvester (BBC News).

You might think pitting a rodent like mammal against a 12 tonne Triceratops makes for an equally one-sided match up, but evidence emerged recently that our primitive ancestors occasionally feasted upon dinosaurs. Seventy-five million year old “gnaw marks” of a kind characteristic of early mammals, and belonging to a creature not much bigger than a squirrel, have been found on the fossil bones both of Tricerotops and the crocodile-like predator Champsosaurus (LiveScience).

Sadly today the nearest we get to dinosaur flesh is turkey or chicken, but not all birds were prized solely for their meat. The huia bird of New Zealand for example, was once used to make the feathered head-dresses of Maori chiefs, until predation from accidentally introduced species drove it to extinction around 1907. But if the bird has gone its feathers have not, and one recently became the most expensive feather ever when it sold at auction for NZ$8000, i.e. $4000 American (Telegraph).



More in extended >>

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Mon Jun 28, 2010 - Comments (4)
Category: Aliens, Animals, Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Creatures, Cryptozoology, Food, Overpriced Merchandise, Pets, Cats, Rants, Warnings, Jeremiads, Prophecies and Cassandra-like Figures, Science, Violence, 1980s

These Things Don’t Only Happen in Florida

Some people have a dog, or a cat. Others have more exotic pets. But you don't often come across anyone that keeps chickens (unless they plan to eat the suckers at some point). Lauren Steltzer, of Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, not only keeps chickens as pets, but when two of the chickens went missing recently, she put up posters around the neighborhood and updated her Facebook page. Unfortunately, the police in Lower Merion didn't get the message and when a police officer responded to a call for a chicken at large, he did what anyone else would do when confronted with such a ferocious beast... he got a friend to shoot it (with a bow and arrow!). At least the police department admits that they could have shown better judgement. Read the original article here.

Posted By: Nethie - Wed Apr 07, 2010 - Comments (10)
Category: Animals, Cops, Pets, Goofs and Screw-ups

Psst Kid, Wanna Buy a Goldfish?

Every so often you come across an article in the news that leaves you shaking your head and wondering what the world is coming to. This is one of those stories. Joan Higgens, aged 66, a pet shop owner in northern England has been fined, given a curfew and electronically tagged, because she sold a goldfish to a fourteen year old. Apparently it is illegal to sell pets to anyone under the age of sixteen, as minors are deemed incapable of taking care of the animals.

Posted By: Nethie - Wed Mar 31, 2010 - Comments (9)
Category: Animals, Crime, Government, Law, Pets, Stupidity

Just Some Weird Crap!

A New York jeweller briefly owned the world’s most valuable pet earlier this year when his golden retriever swallowed a $20,000 diamond by mistake. Sollie, the dog, had accompanied his owner George Kaufman to the latter’s jewellery shop where Mr. Kaufman and his partner were intending to inspect some gemstones. Unfortunately a diamond weighing 3 carats fell to the floor where it was immediately snatched up by Sollie and swallowed. After a vet recommended that nature be allowed to take its course, Kaufman spent the next three days carefully collecting and dissecting everything Sollie produced before finally retrieving the gem (Telegraph).

Perhaps he should have contacted Ireland’s first official dog-waste removal company, Mr. Scoopy-Poo. The brainchild of Irish entrepreneur William O’Brian, Mr. Scoopy-Poo (motto, “Business stinks – but it’s picking up!”) will clean up after your dirty dogs into biodegradable bags and hygienically dispose of them, for a price of course. After all, where there’s muck there’s brass, and occasionally diamonds (Irish Examiner).

But O’Brian may be missing a trick here, why dispose of faeces when you could be selling it as the latest must have fashion item? What sounds like insanity may be an idea whose time has come. How else can you explain not one but two manure-based products in the same week?

First up is London based artist and designer INSA, who has produced a pair of 10” stilettos incorporating elephant dung. And this isn’t just dung from any old elephant either, this is dung from the very same elephant family that produced the infamous extra ingredient for a series of paintings made by artist Chris Ofili in the 90s. Yup, in these shoes you are literally standing on celebrity elephant dung (Huffington Post).

And hot on the precipitous heels of INSA is Geneva based watchmaker Yvan Arpa, who has crafted his latest $11,000 wrist-candy from toad skin and dinosaur doo. The watches, to be made and sold by Swiss watchmakers Artya, feature a face cut from a 100 million year-old “coprolite”, or fossil faeces, left behind by an ancient plant-eater in what is now the United States. And the quality American materials don’t just amount to a pretty face as the strap is lovingly crafted from the hide of an American cane toad. The mechanism though is pure Swiss craftsmanship (Star Tribune).

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Tue Mar 16, 2010 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Design and Designers, Fashion, Shoes, Pets, Dogs, Excrement

Tattoos, Telephones and Tabby-cats.

When Heroes actress Hayden Panettiere decided to have the Latin for "live without regrets" tattooed on her back, she was probably not expecting it to be a test of whether she actually would. Unfortunately her tattoo, which reads "vivere senza rimipianti" is misspelled, the correct phrase is "vivere senza rimpianti". Hayden is, to her credit, taking it all in her stride and told a reported from the UK's Daily Mirror "It is misspelled, whatever, vivere senza rimipiantic means live without regret in Italian. I just put my own spin to it." (Digital Spy).

Someone else who's - so far - taking misfortune in their stride are the family from Oldham in the UK who receive upwards of 60 phone calls a day from people hoping to reach the chart-topping rap artist Soulja Boy. This is down to the fact that SB's latest single, "Kiss Me Through The Phone", includes their 12 digit phone number as part of the chorus, causing many fans to try ringing out of curiosity. Given the near ubiquity of tie-in media in modern films and television programs (think of all the websites spun off from "Dr. Who" or "Lost"), this is perhaps understandable, if a little inconvenient for Gerry Matley and partner Catriona Smith. "It's easy to understand that, isn't it? When you look at me, I've got the perfect profile for a rapper," joked Matley, 54 (Guardian).

And surely if a 54 year-old Oldham man can make it as a rapper, a 1 year-old cat can be a political pundit? A woman whose cat had gone missing a few hours earlier was astonished find out that it had made an impromptu appearance on a weekly live UK political debate program. That week "Question Time" was being recorded at a community college in Newquay, close to where owner Jackie Ellery lives. She was wondering where Tango the cat had got to when he walked unnoticed into shot behind the host and his panel of MPs. "My friend phoned me to say, 'Have you seen your cat on the telly?' And there he was," said Ellery (Digital Spy).

Finally, it is with regret that I relay news of the death of the queen of the "pussy joke", Molly Sugden. Her most famous role was in the light-entertainment sitcom "Are You Being Served?" as the pompous, and frequently inept, shop assistant Mrs. Slocombe, who could not make an entrence without commenting on how the weather/busman strike/energy shortages were 'effecting' her pussy (BBC News).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Thu Jul 02, 2009 - Comments (5)
Category: Music, Pets, Cats, Tattoos, Goofs and Screw-ups