Check My Sanity

The livestock should have been logged into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ tracking system but something went wrong, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

“Laptops, data and now cows, is there anything this government cannot misplace?” asked Peter Ainsworth, the Shadow Environment secretary. “Defra’s performance would do credit to Little Bo Peep.”

The cattle tracing system was set up to protect the public and animals after the mad cow and foot and mouth epidemics.

Last week Britain’s Ministry of Defense revealed a computer hard drive with the private details of 100,000 members of the Armed Forces was missing.

In August, a memory stick containing data on all prisoners in England and Wales was lost by a Home Office contractor.

Farmer Graham Vallis said by conducting a meditative mooing session with his cows for five minutes before each milking session, he has been able to increase the amount of milk he gets from them, The Sun reported Saturday.

Vallis said he accidentally happened upon the technique during a routine tea break.

“I often take my tea break with my cows, but on one occasion suddenly I became deeply relaxed,” he said.

“I realized it was the mooing. I started mooing in time and they crowded round like the Pied Piper,” he added, referring to the mythical character who could lead rats with music.

The Sun said Vallis’s advice has been heeded by the Federation of Organic Milk Groups, which has passed along the recommendation to its 450 members.

Janet Nease said she had nearly given up hope of ever seeing her cat, Sylvester, again when she received a call from a Montreal resident that had discovered the cat whimpering in a suburban parking lot, The Gazette (Montreal) reported Friday.

“He was a wanderer and had gone missing in the past, but usually for only a couple of days,” Nease said.

The cat was discovered by Marie Chevarie, who immediately phoned Nease after seeing her phone number on the cat’s collar.

She said she does not know how the cat made the 1,000-mile journey to Canada, but noted that one of Sylvester’s favorite spots to visit is a campground near her home. She said he may have hitched a ride on someone’s camper that was headed to or through the Montreal suburb.

The penguin has long been the mascot of the King’s Guards of Norway, and in that role has risen through their ranks, starting out as a lowly lance corporal and eventually making it to colonel-in-chief, The Daily Telegraph reported.

But Friday, Nils Olav became Sir Nils Olav as 130 King’s guardsmen gathered at the Edinburgh Zoo to knight the penguin in a formal ceremony. The bird reportedly came out to inspect the troops and celebrated his peerage with some tasty dead fish.

The Telegraph said an earlier Nils Olav king penguin was first adopted by the Norwegian soldiers in 1962 and each successor has proudly worn the mantle of the regiment’s mascot.

“May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa,” Mayor John Molony told The Australian.

Some young men in the town seemed dubious. Paul Woodlands, a 25-year-old construction worker, said the problem is that traditional women’s jobs in the town, like hairdressing, do not pay as well as the men’s jobs — or as well as they do in the big cities.

“I know a few women who have come out here to do hairdressing, but they left to go back to the coast because the pay was bad and there’s not much to do,” Woodlands said.