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She’s big, she’s blond, she’s heavy-duty plastic. What’s not to love?
A swan who fell in love with a swan-shaped paddle boat has been moved to a zoo with his plastic lover.
Biologists in Muenster, north-western Germany, say the rare Black Australian Swan has been showing all the typical signs of love for its species, circling its plastic lover, staring endlessly at it and making crooning noises.
The swan now refuses to fly south for winter without his mate.
Park keepers say that ‘Black Peter’ as the lovesick swan is known, refused to leave the boat on the Aasee Lake – which also should be taken off during the cold weather.
Boat-owner Peter Overschmidt has agreed not to lock his boat away for the winter.
He said: “When you see how Peter circles the swan boat you know there could be no other option, it’s the centre of his life.”
Hearing about Peter’s plight Allwetter Zoo then agreed that both Peter and the boat could spend the winter on their pond near the elephant enclosure, which is more protected from the elements than the lake.
More than 1,000 Euro banknotes of denominations varying from 5 to 100 have been disintegrating in Germany since this June. Deutsche Bank has ruled out printing errors on those affected notes. But it suspects that the robbers might have used special cleaning agents to remove the snatched notes’ colored theft-prevention identification codes. However, the residual sulfuric acid contamination that caused the banknotes to immediately destroy themselves.
If you got those defective paper money, don’t panic! The German central bank promises to exchange them.
Link (to the Chinese news report in sina.com)
Update 11/5/06 by Alex: fixed up the language a little bit. BBC story: Link
A political cartoon by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
A political cartoon by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle.
This is what John Kerry said:
"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."
And the troop (Minnesota National Guard soldiers in Iraq) responded:
By the way, both cartoonists will be featured regularly on Neatorama – I’m interested in knowing what you think about the Kerry "botched joke" incident.
Links: MSNBC Article (photo above)
This 17-year day old calf in Lianyungang, China, growed grew a fifth leg on its back!
Simply the most AWESOME chopper you’ll see today! Link – via Presurfer.
Fantastic sets of panoramic night time photos of various cities in western Japan: Link – via Look At This …
SciFi Tech has this top 10 list of the weirdest gadgets found in the back of magazines.
This one is the smoke ring gun a new zero blaster. Awesome!
From the website:
There is no description of the suspect or the getaway car, and no motive, unless it’s generosity.
All that is known is this: Sometime overnight Monday, after Larry Taylor had walked his dogs about 10 p.m., an entity local residents are calling the Great Magic Pumpkin Fairy descended on Boone.
The result was breathtaking Tuesday. There were pumpkins everywhere.
Rumor is, a painting by Jackson "Jack the Dripper" Pollock called "No. 5, 1948" is now the most expensive painting in the world: sold to a whopping $140 million.
Just don’t let Steve Wynn come anywhere close to it!
