SIDELINES...

FETCH! OOPS…

After his four-year-old boxer dog, Lula, suffered a bullet wound in her jaw, Jonathan George, 31, from Ohio, claimed he had trained the dog to fetch his gun and it had gone off in her mouth. Police did not believe George’s story and arrested him, after which he admitted he had accidentally shot the dog when trying to unload his gun while drunk. Although she lost an eye in the shooting, Lula survived and is recovering at an animal shelter. complex. com, 2 Sept 2021.

COW MYSTERY

A reward of $40,000 has been offered for information about the death of 58 pregnant cows in a field near Jamestown, North Dakota. A further 15 cows survived but aborted their calves. Having ruled out lightning, anthrax, blue-green algæ, clostridial disease, lead poisoning, lack of water and naturally occurring nitrate toxicity, the sheriff’s office is baffled, concluding that the deaths were non-natural, but from an as yet undetermined cause. kvrr.com, 1 Sept 2021.

NESS DOESN’T IMPRESS

While 2021 seems to have been a good year for Loch Ness Monster sightings, one tourist visiting the Loch was not impressed. Leaving a one-star review on TripAdvisor, “Ron” said: “What a disappointment, we travelled 400 miles from Grimsby to see the Loch Ness Monster and it didn’t show up… wife and kids waited for hours, and the weather was terrible.” D.Mirror, 14 Aug 2021.

MEMORABLE

US pet rehoming website Petfinder has started giving animals unusual names as a way of attracting new owners. Animal names include “Internet Explorer”, “Pizza the Hut”, “The Void”, “Chaos”, “Pog Slammer” and “Business Frog” (a cat). boingboing.net, 2 Sept 2021.