This is Not My Horse! And, Careful with those Candles

We couldn’t let April Fool’s Day go by without celebrating some of the more eccentric news stories that have been doing the rounds. Our particular favourite comes all the way from Hawaii. At the Wilcox Memorial Hospital, visitors are sometimes allowed to bring in pets—such as cats and dogs– to cheer up sick relatives. One well wisher went the extra mile though, and tried to bring in a patient’s pet horse. The visitor, along with horse, managed to get past reception and up three floors in an elevator before being stopped by hospital staff. Security managed to get the horse out of the hospital with minimal damage: “Just a few scuff marks’’, apparently. Hospital staff did allow the patient to see his treasured pet for a few minutes — just long enough to establish that the horse in question was ’the wrong horse’. Which reminds us of the old gag in one of the Pink Panther movies: “Does your dog bite?” “No” (dog bites hand of questioner) “I thought you said your dog didn’t bite.” “This is not my dog.”

In the UK, people sometimes complain about the over-protective ‘Nanny State’ and the Government’s obsession with Health and Safety regulations. The following story would seem to illustrate the point. Some additional drama was added to the traditional Anglican Easter celebrations in Norwich Cathedral this year when candles set off fire alarms. According to Reverend Jan McFarlane, new Christians were being baptized and the church was filled with light from the candles and incense. “Sadly it was all too much for the fire detection system, and halfway through the Eucharistic prayer we were interrupted by the fire alarm and an automated voice telling us to evacuate the cathedral. Clearly fire detection systems can’t cope with the Resurrection of Jesus!” The Reverend explained. Funnily enough, I don’t see this happening during the Orthodox Easter celebrations here on Crete.

Sharks as Weather Forecasters!

Here at the Bugle, having adopted the Headington Shark as our mascot, the news that sharks may be able to forecast the weather comes as no great surprise—we always knew that sharks were clever beasts. Anyway, recent research carried out by a British marine biology student has apparently established that sharks could be used to detect hurricanes. Lauren Smith, who is about to complete her PhD at Aberdeen University, has been researching the impact of climatic pressure changes on sharks’ behaviour. Sharks are able to detect pressure using hair cells in their balance system, and have been observed heading for deeper waters ahead of severe weather fronts. Obviously, any work that contributes to our understanding of marine life is clearly valuable, so we wouldn’t want to pour cold water on this ground-breaking research. And it is of course the case that TV weather forecasters are not always accurate (Michael Fish, hurricanes, 1987). Still, we’re not sure that consulting a shark is the safest way to find out whether we are likely to need to take an umbrella with us when we go to watch Wimbledon.

Bear in Court for Stealing Honey

In Bitola, FYROM, a bear has been taken to court by a local beekeeper for stealing his honey. Zoran Kiseloski told the court that he had tried to distract the bear from his hives with lights and music because he had heard that ‘bears were afraid of that’. So, he bought a generator, surrounded the area with bright lights and played loud music by the Serbian ‘Turbo-Folk’ star Ceca. This kept the bear away for a while—until the generator ran out of power. But then the bear returned and attacked the beehives again. The court found the bear guilty. However, as bears are protected species and this particular bear had no owner, the State was ordered to pay damages of around £1,700. And where is the bear? Nobody knows….