This Doesn't Fly

At Least It Wasn't Red Meat

Take out the fortune BEFORE you eat the cookie.

- from "Things It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"
Ann Landers' column

Source: The Web

I hope no ethnic group is offended by this. I thought it was funny because, as a vegetarian, I'd feel put off if the fortune said it was chicken.

Speaking of fortune cookies: in the "Letters to the Times" section of the 8 November Los Angeles Times I read the following five fortunes sent in by readers as favourite fortunes they had received in cookies:

	You will get a new inspiration soon, but unfortunately it won't be any better that the others you have had.
	You will be fortunate in everything you put your hands on.
	This person is serious and true and deserves to be respected.
	Happiness is an attitude.
	You would be a good lawyer.

The last fortune was received by someone (Russell Clampitt of Long Beach, California) who, in fact, was an attorney. He said it was oddly reassuring to have his choice of a profession validated by a cookie.

186,000 miles per second : It isn't just a good idea, it's the law !!

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind, and won't change the subject.

A friend asks only for your time, not your money.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

A king's castle is his home.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Character is built upon the rubble of dreams.

Def: Recursive, adj.; see Recursive

Electricity travels a foot in a nanosecond.

Entropy isn't what it used to be.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. - Oscar Wilde

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

He who hesitates is last.

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

If it screams, it's not food.

If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the precipitate.

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.

Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.

No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Testing can show the presence of bugs, but not their absence.

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

There's no future in time travel.

Things were more like they used to be than they are now.

This sentence no verb.

Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.

Truth is more likely to emerge from error than from confusion.

Without fools there would be no wisdom.

Chicken Broth

In just one year, hens in America lay enough eggs to encircle the globe 100 times.

Chick Destruction Brings Complaints

Complaints about the slaughter of 5,000 day-old chicks in a shredding machine in Taranaki are being investigated by the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry. But Tegel Poultry said the birds, bred to lay eggs, were killed by "instant maceration fragmentation", an internationally accepted method of destruction of unwanted males.

The SPCA received calls from distressed people reporting the killing of the birds in an "illegal machine". Tegel spokesman Bill Williams said the destruction of the day-old chicks had obviously upset the staff. It was the first time it had been done in Taranaki.

"To the uninitiated you can totally appreciate why people might be concerned about that. It's understandable because this is a machine that rapidly disintegrates the chicken, so you couldn't describe it as pleasant. But the scientists and the welfarists have thought about the problem as to how you dispose of significant numbers of chickens quickly and humanely."

Source: The Dominion Wednesday 4 April 2001

On an average day, the US egg industry discards 550,000 live male chicks. One wonders what is done with them and hopes the protein is put to good use...

When I was a child growing up in Dallas, Texas, I remember at the State Fair each year you could throw coins into glass dishes to win baby chicks and ducklings. Heartbreak: my parents would never let me participate. The first year I went to the Fair without them, I spent all my money trying (and succeeding!) to win a baby bird. I would've preferred a duckling (I thought it could live in our bathtub between baths) but my coin landed in a white glass dish, not a green one, so I won a baby chick instead. The chick soon grew into a rooster who sometimes pecked my parents' visitors on their ankles and thus he ended up in the stewpot.

I wished fervently at the time that I had been lucky enough to get a female chick so it would've been nicer and could've laid eggs for our family's breakfast. But none of the chicks to be won were female - I see that only now. I guess this was the 1950s answer to an "instant maceration fragmentation machine."

Hairless Joe Chicken

An Israeli geneticist, Avigdor Cahaner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, created a bare-skinned "prototype" red-skinned chicken by selectively crossing a breed with a naturally bare neck with a regular broiler chicken. Broiler chickens have been bred to gain weight rapidly but in the process generate a lot of heat. Farmed chickens are kept at about 20°C - the optimum temperature for weight gain. In warm countries, expensive air conditioning is necessary to keep to this temperature - this cannot be afforded by poorer farmers, Cahaner says. Benefits of not having feathers: nutrients wouldn't go into producing feathers and no feathers to get rid of at the end. "Feathers are a waste. Chickens use feed to produce something that has to be dumped and farmers waste electricity to overcome the fact," Canaher said. Plucking also requires large amounts of water.

Source: newscientist.com 2 May 2002

For more pages of photos of unusual chickens, please see the three pages following this one: Something to Crow About, Beauty Parlour Chicks and You Elegant Fowl.

For more on animals, including reptiles, crustaceans, arachnids, insects, fish, birds, pets, livestock, rodents, bears, primates, whales and Wellington's waterfront, click "Up" below to take you to the Table of Contents for this Animals section.