odds ’n’ ends

WELLINGTON, New Zealand:

The captain of a sailboat that rescued a British family of four from a remote reef in the South Pacific Ocean said Monday that the family was resting and recovering from their overnight ordeal.

Martin Vogel said the family’s catamaran was a wreck after it ran aground in heavy seas at about 2:30 am on Beveridge Reef, an uninhabited and semi-submerged atoll that has plagued mariners in the past.

Vogel said he was able to communicate by radio with the family overnight and rescue the boy and girl, aged about 13 and 11, and the adults using a life raft when daylight broke a few hours later.

“They were pretty distressed but they’re all sleeping now,” Vogel said from a satellite phone aboard the Dona Catharina. “Honestly, they’re coping remarkably well.”

Geoff Lunt, a senior search and rescue officer from New Zealand’s Rescue Coordination Center, said it was very lucky the Dona Catharina happened to be anchored inside the reef’s lagoon at the time.

He said the boat was taking shelter as it sailed from New Zealand to the remote island of Niue, about 240 kms (150 miles) to the northwest, to help with a study of humpback whales.

Lunt said the family aboard the 15-meter (50-foot) catamaran Avanti activated their distress beacon at just after 2:30 am and that New Zealand officials then sent out an alert to ships. By 2:50 am they had received a call from the Dona Catharina, Lunt said. (AP)

HAVANA: Over the last year Ada and Anuma II have broken Marta Llanes’ television and computer key board, chewed her telephone to pieces and ruined much of her furniture.

She has forgiven them every transgression. It’s hard to stay angry at a baby chimpanzee when it clambers up your leg and into your arms and plants a kiss on your cheek in a plea for forgiveness.

While zoos in other countries may have specialized facilities for raising baby animals, in Cuba the job falls to Llanes, a 62-year-old zoologist who has cared for 10 baby chimps in her central Havana apartment since she started working at the city zoo in 1983. It’s hard work that requires watching the apes nearly 17 hours a day until they are returned to the zoo after their first birthday.

“I try to be the mother chimpanzee,” Llanes said. “If they say ‘hu,’ I say ‘hu.’ If they want me to drop to the floor, I drop to the floor. The only thing I can’t do is swing. I used to do it, but I can’t anymore, but they have to be taught to swing. They have to be taught everything.” (AP)