Rugby - Frik’s analysis and prediction
LAST weekend’s Test against Australia continues to haunt … an account comes this way of an interview with Frik du Preez, former Springbok lock and rugby hero. He was asked how the Bok team from his playing days would shape against the current Boks if a match were possible.
He replied: “We’d win by at least 10 points.”
“Only 10 points?”
“Ja, but you must remember – we’re all in our eighties now.”
Wally’s wanderings
WALLY the wandering Arctic walrus has now turned up in Iceland, having been spotted previously in Ireland, France, Spain and Britain, according to the BBC. The 800kg bruiser is thought to have swum more than 4 000km in his wanderings.
He appears now to have veered northward. Speculation had been strong that he was in the Mediterranean, aiming to swim down the Suez Canal to reach the chilly waters and ice floes off Durban, that have become very much to the liking of any walrus.
Gym regular
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: “I can’t believe I forgot to go to gym today. That’s 17 years in a row now.”
Ratty city
NEW York has found a new ratcatcher. A great blue heron is being hailed as a hero after footage appeared on Twitter of him killing a rat, posted by the Manhattan Bird Alert.
It took the Great Blue Heron only a few seconds to kill the rat, lift it out of the water and swallow it at Central
Park Pond, according to Huffington Post.,
Herons are known for their appetite. One was caught on camera last year eating a baby alligator. Another was seen snagging a good-sized catfish. Yet another bit off more than it could swallow when an eel it had eaten literally burst from its stomach mid-flight.
“They can take down big fish and also apparently, big rats!” David Barrett, founder of Manhattan Bird Alert, says: “They eat whatever they can catch.”
Right now, there’s plenty for these winged crusaders to catch. New York is ranked third on the list of “rattiest cities”.
Wild music
AMERICAN country singer Brett Eldredge keeps having encounters with wildlife. He once posted on social media a video of a snake rising out of a toilet where he was staying in the Bahamas.
Now he’s posted one of a confrontation with a bear in North Carolina, according to Associated Press.
The bear entered a garage just as Eldredge was setting off for a hike.
“Opened the garage door to go on a hike and had a new friend waiting to say hello,” Eldredge wrote on Instagram.
The video shows the bear pulling the bin away from a garage wall, turning it over and trying to pry it open. Meanwhile, Eldredge and others were yelling to scare it off.
The bear eventually gave up, backing out of the garage without getting a meal.
Will this feature in Eldredge’s next country number?
Tailpiece
THERE was a suggestion we could get round Covid-19 by playing rugby Tests in outer space. But there would be no atmosphere.
Last word
Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.