An owl for a Nightingale
QUESTION Did Florence Nightingale have a pet owl? Before her heroic efforts in nursing during the Crimean War, florence Nightingale, who came from a rich, upperclass, well-connected family, travelled extensively throughout europe.
on June 5, 1850, she was walking along the walls of the Parthenon in Athens, when she saw a group of boys tormenting a little ball of fluff — an owlet which had fallen from its nest. She rescued the bird for the price of a few coins.
florence called the bird Athena. The name was symbolic, for the bird was a Little owl, Athene noctua — the sacred bird of Athena, the Greek goddess of war and wisdom, and the patron of the city of Athens. Ancient Greek artists frequently depicted the goddess with a Little owl on her hands or shoulders.
When florence left Athens, she took with her Athena, a cicada — or jumping bug — called Plato and two tortoises, Mr and Mrs Hill, on her journey to Trieste via Corfu and finally home.
Athena ate Plato, but the owl and the tortoises survived the journey, and the owl became florence’s constant companion. She would carry Athena around in her pocket or in a small bag and feed it morsels of meat.
At the Nightingales’ family home in Derbyshire, Athena selected a favourite perch between statuettes of Theseus and Mercury on top of a bookcase.
In 1853, florence took up a nursing post in London’s Harley Street and, in 1854 when a cholera epidemic broke out, she would take the owl on house calls to distract her patients.
When florence herself contracted the highly contagious disease, her sister, Parthenope, recalled how the owl took up the role of nursemaid: ‘When she could bear no one else of larger size, Athena was welcome; she [Athena] sat on the bed and “talked” to her and ran races all round the room after imaginary mice.
‘every meal she considered to have been brought for her especial use, and she accordingly appropriated the bread and butter or pounced on the chicken . . .’
When florence recovered, she read of the awful conditions of soldiers in the Crimea and offered her nursing services. Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War, asked her to lead a group of nurses to Scutari barracks.
While she was packing for the trip, Athena was accidentally locked in the attic and died the day florence was due to leave. Grief-stricken, she postponed her journey for a few days and arranged to have Athena prepared by a taxidermist.
Athena was displayed in the home of Parthenope, who wrote an illustrated book The Life And Death of Athena, An owlet, which she sent to florence to keep her spirits up during the war. Athena is now on display in the florence Nightingale Museum in South London.
Ellen McDonald, Nottingham. QUESTION Lake Erie was once the most polluted lake in America. One of its tributaries, the Cuyahoga River, was so contaminated, it caught fire. What is the state of the lake and river today? IN THe fifties and Sixties, Lake erie, one of North America’s five Great Lakes, was polluted by the heavy industry that lined its shores.
factories freely discharged pollutants directly into the lake and its tributaries. Waste from sewers made its way into the lake, too, as did fertilisers and pesticides.
extreme quantities of phosphorus and nitrogen led to eutrophication, an excessive richness of nutrients, which encouraged the development of toxic algal blooms. Dead fish would wash up on the shore, leading to the newspaper claim: ‘Lake erie is dead.’
Matters came to a head in 1969 when the Cuyahoga river, winding 100 miles through north-east ohio and discharging into Lake erie just west of the city of Cleveland, was set on fire by a spark from the wheels of a train near the republic Steel mill. But though this fire caught the public’s imagination, it was a minor event compared with a fire in 1952.
Indeed, a picture of the Cuyahoga river on fire published in Time Magazine in 1969 — an arresting image showing flames leaping up from the water, engulfing a ship — was, in fact, from the 1952 fire.
Until this nationwide publicity, river pollution had not troubled Cleveland’s residents, who regarded it as a necessary consequence of the industry that had brought prosperity to the city.
But the fire kick-started the U.S. environmental movement, and in 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which tightened regulations on industrial dumping.
That year, the U.S. and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to tackle pollution.
According to the 2017 State of The Great Lakes report, Lake erie is still suffering from harmful algae blooms. This has led to beach closures and the degradation of wildlife habitat.
There are, however, some positives, such as an increase in the number of walleye fish and the success of the sport fishing industry.
Though the Cuyahoga river is much cleaner than it was 40 years ago, there have been a number of e. coli outbreaks after heavy rain where sewerage systems have not operated properly. George Summers, Lowestoft, Suffolk. QUESTION Which actors were considered for the role of 007 before Sean Connery? JAMeS BoND author Ian fleming suggested George Baker as the first film 007. He was known for his role as David Maltby in the film The Dam Busters and, later, as Chief Inspector reg Wexford in TV’s The ruth rendell Mysteries.
However, he could not take the part of James Bond as he was under contract to a rival studio.
Baker did, though, have roles in three later Bond films: he played an uncredited Nasa engineer in You only Live Twice, Captain Benson in The Spy Who Loved Me and Sir Hilary Bray in on Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
David Nash, Coleford, Glos. fUrTHer to the earlier answer, Patrick McGoohan’s character in Danger Man was called John Drake not John Blake.
Danger Man was one of the highlights of my TV viewing in the Sixties. Had he accepted the role, McGoohan would have made an excellent Bond.
Frank Skorrow, Barnsley, S. Yorks.