Across Difficult Country

Who was it who said the definition of serendipity is shooting an armadillo and having the bullet ricochet and hit your mother-in-law? Because that happened in Georgia . It’s been almost a year and the grills are still missing . #BringBackOurGrills. A half-human, half-chimp humanzee was created in a Nigerian laboratory, reports Humphrey Nakonde . The creature talks and, sadly, has already contracted AIDS. There are so many wonderful things being invented in Siberia right now , from the practical (a car that runs on pine cones, moose turds and old socks) to the visionary (a kindergarten shaped like a giant cheese that will inspire children to be cheesemakers when they grow up (there may be something to this - I went to a kindergarten shaped like a giant blog)).

Chinese horse cavalry invaded and occupied India for two days . A tribe of Rastafarian pygmies were observed in Indonesia : “A number of rangers claim the pygmies grow their dreadlocks down to their waist. The first sighting by the rangers was on March 17 at 6:40 p.m. local time,” said TNWK [The Way Kambas National Park] spokesman Sukatmoko. He added that several rangers patrolling the park claimed the pygmies were seen moving to the PT Nusantara Tropical Fruit (NTF) plantation. They were seen running from the TNWK forest to the plantation. “Apparently, many fruit trees, such as banana, guava and dragon fruit, are grown in the NTF plantation area. If the pygmies like fruit, they might have entered the plantation for food,” said Sukatmoko. And if they don't like fruit, what then? The Old Town Show vegetables results .

I lack the progressive fervor for buggery, so if I were President I would never call and congratulate someone for being a homosexualist. I would, however, call and congratulate someone for  squandering his life savings on a carnival game in exchange for a giant-stuffed-Rastafarian banana with dreadlocks. Partly for reminding us there is little at all done among men that is not full of folly, as Erasmus put it, and partly because just look at that banana.

Pterygotid sea scorpion, tickling a bird. Pterygotid sea scorpions, 8 foot long arthropods that lived hundreds of millions of years ago were not fearsome predators, a new study says .  Their oversized, lethal looking claws were actually weak and clumsy, making them the buffoons of the Paleozoic ocean. Scientists exposing and embarrassing them now, after all this time, strikes me as mean-spirited. Another new study says “ giant pandas need old-growth forests as much as bamboo forests .” Am I the only one who finds Pandas’ demands excessive? I've never seen them do anything to warrant the adulation heaped on them, either. After observing a group of Ugandan chimpanzees for 14 years, a pair of easily entertained scientists concluded “ young females in one group of African chimpanzees use sticks as dolls more than their male peers do .” I forwarded the report to the Women’s Studies department of a local university, with the suggestion th...

Scientists say God put taste buds in our lungs because He wants us to smoke tobacco . To save money, the Telegraph newspaper no longer uses proofreaders . The Burmese jungle teems with sneezing monkeys that look like Michael Jackson in his later stages . Gruesome thought: could they be Jacko-Bubbles hybrids ? Recall the rumors of a secret laboratory in the caverns beneath the Neverland ranch. I will report back once the results of DNA tests are in. Ghoulish Russian bears are digging up and eating corpses in graveyards : "In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners." When I observed “ bears are capable of crimes more heinous than stealing picnic baskets ,” I had no idea just how horrible they were. Russian “yetis” declare war on bears , and who can blame them? Some people think the Russian yetis (also known as Almasti) are actually Neanderthals .

Scientists studying sea lampreys have unlocked the mystery of human stress hormones. Eons ago, when Man was still an Aquatic Ape , disgusting lampreys would cling all over him, drain his blood, then drag him neath the waves. Researchers now believe these attacks caused a lot of stress, so stress hormones were evolved as a countermeasure. While Man eventually gave up being aquatic, fears of being covered in lampreys and dragged neath the waves can still induce anxiety in some beachgoers. Fortunately, Modern Man is able to augment his stress hormones with relaxing cigarettes, though the bureaucrats hate to admit it.

In the spring a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove, and in Ochopee, Florida a young Bigfoot’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Dave Shealy, Bigfootologist and RV park owner, explains : There are seven to nine Skunk Apes [Bigfoot’s “smaller, smellier cousin”] currently living in the Everglades and right now is the best time to spot one because it’s their mating season. Lately, he’s heard lots of campers report strange sounds coming from the swamps…it’s the Skunk Ape’s mating call, which sounds like a low-pitched dove cooing. Though Skunk Apes are generally shy, Shealy says women on their periods should be careful when hiking the area because the cryptoids are attracted to the scent of menstruation. They’re also aroused by used lingerie, so female campers shouldn’t hang their panties out to dry because, in his words, “That’s like raising a flag and inviting them in.”

Sell monkeys door-to-door .

In Malaysia, lesbian Orangutans are tearing off women’s pants (probably because they know they can’t be sued for sexual harassment). Cambodian police have placed bounties on the heads of a group of macaque “ gangster monkeys ”. The macaques’ crime spree includes acts of theft, burglaries, assaults, and sabotage of internet lines. According to deputy district governor Pich Socheata, “Authorities tried several times to get the unruly monkeys to eat eggs laced with sleeping pills, but had always been outsmarted.” Are monkeys getting smarter? These types of incidents suggest that’s the case, leading me to conclude the Flynn effect has been occurring not only in humans, but in monkeys and apes as well. Humans, as I’m reminded by my family every year at Thanksgiving, are primates too, little different from the hairier primates. In human crime news, Things Move Around has been doing some looting. Or has he?

A Tide 1 correspondent visits a monkey a preserve , and discovers monkeys are a lot like people: “To a first time visitor, one of the noticeable traits of these animals is that they are truly African species, highly social and live in groups of 15-30, much like the typical African extended family life system, each animal of the same family look out for others.” Even better than people, in some ways: “A female monkey takes her sexual reproductive health and rights very seriously. Sexual reproductive health and rights is one of the actions that Africans must seek to fulfil to achieve the target of the Millennium Development Goals, 2015. There is also no question of perverse sexuality or violent sex.” The Tide correspondent also notices: “Interestingly, every animal in the group does the bidding of the dominant male.” That is interesting... Also from The Tide: Small Talks’ articles , all in one place. 1 Motto: “A commitment to truth”.

Greenland is slowly running out of ice , yet my freezer, like the freezer of most Americans, is practically overflowing with the stuff. We take our great abundance for granted. I’m doing my part by using one less cube per highball, which works out to 7 or 8, possibly 12 cubes conserved per day. Meanwhile closer to home, our old friend Dr. Sue Savage Rumbagh is in the news again. As you may remember, she’s the scientist who provided a group of apes with a large (13,000-square-foot) and luxurious (indoor waterfall, gourmet kitchen) home in the hopes the beasts would learn language, music and art. 1 That hasn’t happened 2 , but one of the apes, Panbanisha, has learned how to pull the fire alarm . Some are describing this as a breakthrough (“Brian O'Keefe said Monday it was the first known case of an animal setting off a fire alarm in Des Moines”), but given this projects grandiose aims (music?) and expense (the home by itself cost $10 million), even if the monkey’s 3 were to progre...

We have entered a new era of insecurity. I’m referring, of course, to the menace posed by brick throwing monkeys: “ New Delhi, October 8 A 30-year-old woman who had come to AIIMS to see her nephew a dengue patient in the hospital, died after a monkey threw a brick at her inside the hospital complex ” The North Korean nuclear test is unsettling as well, but imagine a future (or don’t imagine, if you’re the nervous type) where brick throwing monkeys have managed to spread out from India to infest hospital complexes throughout the globe. Not all today’s news is bad, as there have been no new reports of the Sandsend blob bothering people.

Our friend the club-wielding chimp has not been captured, or even seen again. Some people now think the chimp may have been carrying an ordinary stick, not a club. (Some people think it wasn’t a chimp at all, but a Bigfoot . It’s best to avoid these people.) As this mystery may never be solved, let us turn our gaze from the antics of chimpanzees, and instead ponder the antics of a baboon. His name was Jack, and in the late 1800’s he was employed as a signalman for the Cape Government Railways : A locomotive driver were given secret instructions and all present waited to see if Jack will past this strenuous test. Each time that the driver blasted a different signal Jack would change the correct signal and points without fail. Jack even looked around in the direction of the oncoming train to make sure that the correct lever and signal were changed. Jack has passed his test with flying colours and were duly employed by the authorities and from that day became known as Jack the Signa...

"Poker is a game of people. It's not the hand I hold, it's the people that I play with." - Amarillo Slim A chimpanzee, named Mikey, considered by some to be the worlds best non-human poker player that isn't a machine, will play in the 2006 World Series of Poker main event . Mikey's trainers claim he recognizes the shapes and colors of suits, and favors an agressive playing style, frequently going 'all-in'. Extra security is being provided to Mikey in the event he wins any money, in case the roaming chimp with the club shows up and tries to beat and rob him.

A chimpanzee has been spotted roaming the backyards of Thousand Oaks, California. Attempts to capture the animal have been unsuccessful, but the authorities are reassuring residents they have nothing to fear, even though an eyewitness reports the chimp has armed itself with a club .

While attempting (with zero success, alas) to locate a copy of one of the magazines that published the stories of Six-Gun Gorilla 1 I stumbled across this invaluable compendium that I’m sure many of my readers will also find useful. UPDATE: Poster available . 1 “His name was O’Neil and he was a real gorilla, trapped in Africa as a baby, brought to the States and sold to a prospector named Johnson. O’Neil’s adventures appeared in the magazine Adventure and Wizard, probably in 1926. Johnson was a kindly gent who taught his prot/g/ [sic] to dig for gold, haul wood and water and, in an act that would forever change the concept of the Wild West, how to shoot a pistol. When Johnson is killed for failing to reveal the location of a huge vein of gold, O’Neil goes after the villains. Strapping on a brace of six-shooters, the ape tracks the killers across the wilds of Colorado, bumping them off one by one — and highjacking a stagecoach now and again for transportation, and one assumes...

Consul Peter smoking from The Bain Collection (ca. 1900-1931): "Photos produced and gathered by George Grantham Bain for his news photo service, including portraits and worldwide news events, but with special emphasis on life in New York City".

Scientists have discovered a monkey's voice is as good as a human's for newborn babies : Straight out of the womb, infants may be just as aroused by a rhesus monkey call as by human speech. Infants are acute listeners. Previous studies have found newborns perk up more to folk music than white noise. And four-month-olds like listening to people talk more than they like white noise. But when it comes to sounds made by all things biological, newborn babies might not discriminate. The preliminary finding was presented here Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Athena Vouloumanos, a psychologist at McGill University. Think what this breakthrough means: no more expensive nannies or daycare, just drop the tots off at the local zoo’s monkey house 1 and let our simian cousins do the rest. Monkey babysitters 2 will change the lives of busy moms everywhere. Or so one might think. Unfortunately Dr. Athena Vouloumanos 3 and her accompl...

The Angraecum sesquipedale Thouars orchid, native to Madagascar, is notable for having a " nectar tube of 10-12 inches in length with only the distal end filled with nectar ". After studying this orchid, Charles Darwin realized there must also exist an insect equipped to fertilize it, and in 1862 Darwin wrote : "It is, however, surprising that any insect should be able to reach the nectar : our English sphinxes have probosces as long as their bodies ; but in Madagascar there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches !" ( On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects ) The moth predicted by Darwin was finally discovered 41 years later . Named Xanthopan morgani praedicta , it has a proboscis which unfurls to a length of around 10 inches. In a similar manner, after I read about a newly discovered giant ape Gigantopithecus blackii , who was 10 feet tall and weighed up to...

Keith Chen, a Yale economist, has taught capuchin monkeys how to spend money. But can he teach the monkeys to save adequately for retirement? I doubt it. Chen describes working with the monkeys: "You can feed them marshmallows all day, they'll throw up and then come back for more." Chen fails to give the reason why he is feeding the funny little monkeys marshmallows all day until they become sick, I suspect it’s because he can (‘scientists’ tormenting animals for no good reason has sadly become all too common ). Meanwhile in the UK: A mysterious creature described as a cross between a kangaroo, a leopard, a monkey and a cat is stalking Salisbury. In a state of nature you would never find that range of creatures mating to produce an offspring. The only logical explanation is that disgusting inter-species orgies are taking place in British zoos. Someone should pay a capuchin monkey to go ‘under cover’ and investigate.