Filed under: Animals,Weird by Orangemaster @ 5:44 pm
It could be the abrupt end of summer here or something in the air, but the ‘rules are rules’ motto can sometimes goes too far and be called ‘anti-social’. Of course, you could also say it’s bad timing.
A blind and wheelchair-bound woman from Groningen was fined for throwing out her old bed in the trash too early, probably before 8 pm. She had asked a girlfriend to do it for her who obviously didn’t observe the rules. The handicapped woman plans to contest the fine.
Ironically, just today right over the border in Germany (in Dutch) a similar case was lost. Some man braked to avoid running over a poodle, and apparently the law applies only to braking for kids and not animals, effectively implying the man should have ran over the poodle to avoid the accident he caused.
Filed under: Animals,Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:01 am
Yesterday Wiel Kuypers set the new world endurance record for recreational fishing at 160 hours.
Kuypers had started the Sunday before at fishing pond De Bus of his home town Mill in Noord-Brabant with his daughter Marjolein and his son-in-law Rick who both quit their attempts during the week. According to Omroep Brabant, an inflammation in Kuyper’s foot nearly threatened a happy end to the record attempt on Friday night.
After his successful attempt Kuypers went home to catch some sleep. He and his buddies had made plans to get up bright and early today, to go fishing. “By now I am pretty sure I know how to.”
Ouwehands Dierenpark, a zoo in Rhenen near Wageningen, has successfully managed to lure reporters to its new orangutan enclosure with a story about behavioural conditioning.
The reporters’ banana took the shape of gymnast Epke Zonderland (silver medalist at the 2009 World Championships), who performed a couple of exercises on the parallel bars. The zoo had told the press it hoped Zonderland’s example would spur the orangutans on to use the climbing ropes in their new compound.
Reporters of amongst other BBC (video), Reuters and RTL Nieuws showed up last Friday to record footage of a lacklustre ape taking its first tentative steps on a tightrope. Seven trees in the enclosure contain a food lift that will carry fruit and other snacks upstairs as an incentive for the orangutans to walk their tightropes. In doing so the apes will alleviate both themselves and their human visitors of boredom, the zoo hopes.
An eensie-weensie spider startled a 43-year-old woman from Oostvoorne so much last Monday that she drove her car onto the shoulder of the road, upon which the vehicle made a double somersault and landed on the other side of the road.
The woman and her children of seven and nine got out the car unharmed, Trouw reports. This took place on the Schrijversdijk (‘writer’s dike’) in Brielle, and the time was 9.45 a.m.
Silly season (lack of newsworthy news, due to summer vacation, aka ‘komkommertijd’ (‘cucumber season’) is upon us.
And whether we like it or not (we do, of course), nothing counts more right now than the Dutch winning the World Cup football.
After Paul the Octopus from Oberhausen predicted all the German matches correctly, including their loss to Spain, Mani the psychic parakeet in Singapore has chosen the Netherlands as a winner over Spain to win the World Cup football.
“Muniyappan, Mani’s owner, has helped him predict the future for five years at a table in front of a restaurant in the Little India neighbourhood, but this year’s World Cup is the first time the parakeet has attempted to forecast the outcome of sports competitions.”
We are all dying to find out what Paul thinks, too. The rumours so far are that he has predicted Spain, but considering the lack of links and typos in those links, I’m not sure Paul has spoken at this time.
The Netherlands currently has the biggest bout of ‘oranjekoorts’ (‘orange fever’) in over 32 years. Everything everywhere from the baker to the cafe on the corner is decorated orange, worse than on Queen’s Day. Win or lose, we’ll surely be taking pictures.
UPDATE: Dutch telly has shown footage of Paul the Octopus choosing Spain.
Dutch pornostar Bobbi Eden twittered that she and her girlfriends will give out free blowjobs to her followers if Oranje (Dutch football team) wins the cup.
The link below said she had 5,000 followers, now 20,000, but I just checked and she’s up to 60,532. I say, recruit some more girlfriends.
If that’s not weird enough, we’re all waiting for Paul the psychic octopus to make his predictions for the final, Netherlands vs. Spain. Paul, in an aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, predicted Spain would win the semi-final against Germany and they did. “He correctly predicted all five of the team’s previous World Cup games – including a shock defeat by Serbia in the group stages.”
I was North of Amsterdam in the countryside a while back and at night I could hear frogs that sounded a bit like bullfrogs. ‘Wow, do you have bullfrogs here too? Then I started telling of my Canadian summer camp evenings as a kid with the sound of bullfrogs lulling us to sleep.
Apparently in the Netherlands and now in Belgium, the American bullfrog is a nuisance imported from North America and they are being trapped and killed. Home garden shops started selling bullfrogs a few years back and they ended up in the wild after skipping their pre-fab ponds. Now, there’s an import ban on bullfrogs, as they eat tons of food a day, including the regular, smaller frogs (in Dutch, called ‘kikker’) they wouldn’t normally be eating.
The Belgians don’t have an import ban of bullfrogs yet and the problem just started, while the Dutch do have a ban and the problem is going away. Seems like the Belgians should make a move soon before those frogs cross more borders.
A solo show inspired by the toys and cuddly sculptures of children, where the change of scale completely changes their function and feeling.
Hofman also took his exhibition on the (rail)road, where it works better in my opinion. A gallery is a canvas, a neutral background in front of which anything automatically becomes art. The railway station of Delfzijl (Hofman’s former home town) doesn’t have that stigma, and his plush animals look as out of place there as he intended.
Our current governement is on its way out, and there are elections in early June. This means no major decisions can be taken, and it’s more about tying up loose ends and cleaning out desks. But hey, let’s stir things up and give one million euro for research into eating bugs. Nom!
For the next three years, the Wageningen University & Research Centre gets to research which insects are worth eating. And then, the clichés: scientists say they’re just as good for you as meat, it’s good for the environment, and also my favourites, people in Asia and Africa eat them, they’re good with chocolate (bye bye health argument) and so on.
Why not just ask the Asians and Africans for recipes and/or their research instead of throwing all that money out the window? No, wait, why not start a marketing campaign to eat bugs? Wait, we don’t eat bugs, and unless we totally run out of food, we’re not going to consider eating bugs any time soon.
I grew up near one of the only, if not the only place where you can gawk at insects and then eat some: the Montréal Insectarium. If only they did that at the farm with burgers. Or maybe fast food chains should sell bug burgers. Nom!
A white rhinoceros (also called ‘squared lipped rhinorecos’) was born in the the Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem. It’s a male rhino and he is called Dozer. The zoo is very happy since they rarely breed in captivity. According to them, some three rhinos are born every year in Europe in captivity.
Is it just me or does every zoo say that animals don’t breed easily in captivity? I wouldn’t expect anything less, really.
Yesterday Wiel Kuypers set the new world endurance record for recreational fishing at 160 hours. 
Ouwehands Dierenpark, a zoo in Rhenen near Wageningen, has successfully managed to lure reporters to its new orangutan enclosure with a story about behavioural conditioning. 
An eensie-weensie spider startled a 43-year-old woman from Oostvoorne so much last Monday that she drove her car onto the shoulder of the road, upon which the vehicle made a double somersault and landed on the other side of the road. 
Hofman also took his 
