Scorpion tries hunting in supermarket’s fruit section

Innocent shopper Trevor Campbell got more than he bargained for when he visited the local supermarket to pick some supplies up. While searching through the bananas for a suitable bunch, he came across a scorpion lurking in the fruit section.

Trevor: “I picked up one bunch of bananas and then another and suddenly I saw something move and it was a big scorpion.”

Luckily he had the presence of mind to call a security guard. Together they got it into a plastic box, whereupon Trevor was charged with taking it to the police station. Trevor is used to encountering scorpions in Jamaica, where he is from.

- Nishant

Prince of Wales unable to supply vegetables up to standards

According to Sainsbury’s Supermarkets, Prince Charles has been unable to supply the supermarket with vegetables of the proper quality. That’s why he’s been dropped as a carrot supplier to Sainsbury’s.

Mr Holden, director of the organic food and farming charity, said that the Prince had fallen ‘victim’ to the supermarket’s ‘industrial processes’. According to him, the food started off well but were damaged due to long-distance transport, processing, and other procedures. Well, if the system is that bad, then how come Sainsbury can deal successfully with other small-scale suppliers?

- Nishant

Python appears at the side of a road in Wales

This is a picture of a 15 foot long python that has been found at the side of a road in Wales.

There are appeals for the owner of this python to step forward and claim it. Kind of stupid if you ask me; if someone abandons a giant python at the side of a road, they probably wont be rushing back to get it in a hurry.

Well, anyways, I’ll do my bit. If you’re the former owner of this python, (or if for some odd reason you have a childhood dream of owning a 15 foot python) then step forward and claim it.

Here’s the RSPCA’s contact details: Telephone: 0870 33 35 999 (or +44 870 33 35 999 for calls from outside the UK). The enquiries service is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, when your call may be monitored or recorded for training purposes.

Don’t worry, it isn’t poisonous. Just highly irritable, pretty aggressive, and strong enough to seriously injure. But not poisonous.

- Nishant

According to Time Out, thousands of people live in a ‘flaccid penis’

I’m afraid this post is going to be less interesting than the titles implies. The weekly Time Out magazine interestingly described the London borough of Kingston, (shown in Greater London above) as a ‘flaccid penis’. Right.

After forgetting to include Kingston upon Thames in a couple of its London guide books, Time Out hastily compiled a 10-point guide to the borough, and made the following unflattering comment in the introduction regarding the omission; “Time Out did a Bobbitt and cut the flaccid penis that is the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames off the map of the capital.”

Here’s the picture again.

Well, if you turn your head a bit to the right and forget about the bit at the top, then Time Out might actually have a point…

- Nishant

Smelly fish causes fire alarm

A couple in London mistook the stench of a kipper left on the kitchen counter for an electrical fire. Taking it even further, they apparently panicked and called the fire station. The firemen arrived and scanned the kitchen with a thermal imaging camera, before tracing the smell to the fish.

Myself, I’m still confused as to how a fish can smell like a fire. They’re both four-letter words beginning with ‘fi’, but the similarity ends there.

Oh well, at least some good came of it; the couple had their house outfitted with smoke detectors.

- Nishant

Lake in Chile goes ‘missing’

According to Reuters news, a lake in Chile that was as big as about 10 soccer pitches has mysteriously ‘gone missing’. The lake was apparently located in the Magallanes region, and was supplied with water from melting glaciers. Some people speculate that an earth tremor opened a crack in the ground, which ’swallowed’ the lake, (supporting this is evidence of thousands of minor tremors this year in Chile). Or, like a comment on this blog entry suggests, someone could have appeared below the lake and ‘pulled the plug’.

Either way, a missing lake should definitely be cause for concern about today’s environment.

- Nishant

Hares disrupt activity at Italian airport

These furry animals have been playing havoc with the radar systems at an Italian airport, as well as disrupting takeoffs and landings. Reports say that about 200 volunteers assisted in rounding up around 57 hares at Linate airport, (and four wild rabbits) in Milan. The humanitarian effort refrained from physically harming the cute creatures, and instead blew whistles and waved arms frantically, causing the hares to run into waiting nets – a video of the roundup is available here. Although I have to commend the volunteers on their respect for wildlife, I also have to wonder how much time this took – Megan says that there were only delays of three hours, and I have to share her surprise. After the hares were caught, they were safely transferred to a wildlife preserve.

Nicoletta Angioni, spokeswoman for the company that runs Milan’s airports, said “There are always hares at the airport, the problem is that lately there were too many” – apparently the hares have been mating like, well, rabbits.

The problem of animals on airports doesn’t seem to be exclusively Italian – Val gives numerous other examples of this in other airports throughout the world. Maybe the animals are attempting to control air traffic in a bid to reduce global warming?

- Nishant