Many Happies, Barb!

Image via Wikipedia

Apologies if you received a gobbledygook email from me today; I’m a technept, and things can get out of control if I take my eyes off the keyboard long enough to finish my Christmas Maltesers.

It was the earliest draft of a birthday post for Barb19, who is Passionate About Pets.  Early, but late; because Barb lives in Australia and I always get my time zones confused, so it was going out late in my day because that was early in her day when I was working back to front but then I remembered Sydney celebrates New Year before London and now it kind of is early in her day because she’s probably asleep because her day starts and finishes before my day so, even if she reads it now, she’ll be reading it tomorrow because my present is her future which is cheaper for me, because I usually give gift vouchers.

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Belated Birthday Wishes For Barb

Barb loves pets and plants, she says;
She writes about their funny ways:
Poppy the dog isn’t stroppy –
In fact, she’s incredibly happy
Living out her many dog days
In the great Australian haze.

Barb feels the same and there’s no shame
(With a good man at your side) in being a birthday bride.

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Happy Birthday and Happy 46th Anniversary, Barb!

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If you would like a nonsense birthday post, leave the date and a few details in the comments below.

 

When Did Stockport Go Tropical?

First it was the loose cobra, then the kidnapped alligator and anaconda…now, Stockport has a wild cat on the roam.  Not a missing tabby or a feral kitten – ‘a large ‘mountain lion’ type animal’, seen in a local resident’s garden.  Read it here.

Experts dismiss it as a ‘melanistic savannah’.  No, I don’t know what that is, either, so I looked it up (hooray for free speech on the internet!).  Wikipedia tells me it:

 is a medium-sized African wild cat. DNA studies have shown that the serval is closely related to the African golden cat and the caracal.

I’m no wiser.  I guess free speech is overrated.

Here’s a picture of a serval from junglecats.com (quoting the source – better practice than just linking the picture to the original website: dull reading, but I hope it will keep me out of a yankee jail):

Doesn’t look meaner than any other cat, does it? 

I am reminded of my favourite cat quote.  I’ve shared it before, but cats have nine lives, and so do their quotes:

Cats were once worshipped as gods.  Cats have never forgotten this.

Wild cats on the loose in Stockport…I guess I should have stayed in South Africa; it’s probably safer there.  We emigrated from England to South Africa in 1982: first my Dad and younger brother; Mum and I followed six months later.  Mum was on the phone to Younger Brother just after he arrived:

Mum: So what’s it like?

YB: [Joking] Great!  I’m just watching the lions stroll down the street.

Mum: [Screams] [Incoherent babble about getting out of there now!] [Faints]

I could have that conversation with her today, from Widnes to Stockport, and it would be the same in its essentials.

Or maybe it would be me with the [Screams] [Incoherent babble] [Faints]: Mum’s been dead four years.

Related articles

• A snappy return: Crocodile stolen from Stockport pet store is returned to owners (menmedia.co.uk)

Joke 301

What is the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers?

Mechanical engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.

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Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.

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