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ANIMALS IN THE NEWS
    • It’s a Smell World: In an average month, trains operated by the West Japan Railway Company strike and kill 10 deer that wander onto railroad tracks. In 2003 the railroad decided to test a new kind of deer repellent on the rails—lion poop. Lions and deer are natural enemies, the thinking went, so the smell of the predator would keep the deer away. In August 2003, the railroad scrapped the experiment, not because it didn’t work, but because it worked too well—the poop kept the deer away, but it smelled so bad that it kept everything else away too, including local residents. “The track really did stink,” says railroad spokesperson Toshihiko Iwata. “We’re experimenting with more environmentally friendly methods now.”
    • Revenge: A wildlife officer in Saskatchewan was attempting to shoot a moose—when he shot a fellow officer instead. The officer was trying to “mercy kill” the wounded animal when the shot from his shotgun missed, hit a tree, and ricocheted into the other officer’s leg. The officer was treated at a local hospital.
    • Whale of a Vacation: In the summer of 2003 the Johnson family of Coventry, England, took a 10-day sailing vacation in Australia. But their trip came to a sudden end when a 10-ton humpback whale leapt out of the water and onto their 40-foot sailboat, damaging the rigging and pulling down the mast. “It’s amazing no one was hurt or killed,” 61-year-old Trevor Johnson told reporters. Total cost of chartering the boat: $238,000. (No word on whether the Johnsons got a refund.)
    Elaine Davidson of Edinburgh, Scotland, has a world-record 720 body piercings.

UH-OH, WHAT’S THAT
IN THE FREEZER?
    Think about this next time you’re wondering how much of a tip to leave.
    T HIS GUINEA PIGGY WENT WHERE?
    In December 2005, a health inspector was examining the contents of a freezer in the La Sabrosa restaurant in DeKalb County, Georgia. He found a dead guinea pig in it. The restaurant’s owner said it was his, and insisted that the rodent wasn’t intended to be a menu item…he was going to eat it himself. Even stranger, the restaurant received a score of 87 out of 100 for the inspection, up from the 79 it got the previous year (when it didn’t have any guinea pigs in the freezer).
WHAT, NO PANDAS?
    In 2003 mall security workers in Edmonton, Alberta, called health inspectors when they found some suspicious items in the freezer of a Panda Garden restaurant. “They took me back to the walk-in freezer and when you open the door there were four carcasses,” said inspector Richard Reive. “Two were inside black garbage bags and the other two were exposed on the floor of the freezer.” They were coyotes. They’d been skinned and gutted, and were definitely intended for human consumption. Amazingly, the owners were never charged with any crime, since serving dog meat is technically legal in Canada. (But the restaurant did have to close due to the bad press.)
WE PASS THE SAVINGS ON TO YOU!
    In June 2002, a power outage knocked out the walk-in freezer at Ricardo’s Pizza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and all the food in it had to be thrown out. A few hours later employees were surprised to see that many of the boxes of food—containers of pepperoni, jalapeño peppers, cheese sticks, and other snack items—they had thrown in the dumpster were gone. The owner called the health department because he knew the food was bad and he didn’t wantanybody eating it. A few days later, inspectors were doing a routine check of Eleanor’s restaurant, down the street from Ricardo’s… and they found the dumpster food, which was clearly marked “Ricardo’s” and still had the expired “freshness” dates on them. Eleanor’s owner, Gerard Symes, denied taking the dumpster food at first, then blamed it on his employees. Then he was fined (a whopping $197).
    Your voice tires more quickly from whispering than speaking in a normal tone.
KIDS MENU
    A manager of