ANIMAL ANTICS
Feline environment minister, axewielding dog and starling saboteurs
THE STARLING DANCE
The mystery of an unexplained series of power outages across a small Scottish town has been solved after video footage revealed the cause to be starlings dancing on power lines. At dusk, the combined mass of starlings in a murmuration was found to be responsible for bouncing overhead electricity lines, which caused circuits to trip, thus bringing about an interruption to the electricity supply.
The starlings’ antics were first discovered by Neil McDonald, a Scottish Power engineer, who had been investigating the mysterious power cuts by regularly examining the overhead lines. He cracked the case while on an evening walk to check the lines, using a cameraphone to capture the spectacle: “In all my 14 years working for SP energy networks I have never seen anything like it,” he said. “For all the birds looked small, the sheer number of them caused the wires to bounce up and down as they danced on and off.”
Thousands of birds weighed down the lines each time they landed en masse. The murmuration would set off together, causing the lines to clash and trigger an outage. “There’re actually three wires between those poles and when they clash together the power will go off for around 10 seconds or so at a time. That’s what’s been happening quite frequently,” Mr McDonald explained. About 50 local homes had repeatedly been left without electricity for minutes at a time.
Scottish Power now intends to work with RSPB conservationists to investigate ways in which they may safely discourage the starlings from using power lines for their massed evening dance-offs. “It’s completely breathtaking to watch, although not something we’ve ever experienced before,” said Mr McDonald. Guardian, 17 Dec 2020.
EIGHT LIVES LEFT
A worker at a Russian waste plant rescued a cat moments before it was crushed in a garbage separating machine. The fortunate feline was snatched from the jaws of death at the Gorkomkhoz factory in Ulyanovsk when an eagle-eyed operative snatched a bag away from the factory’s conveyor belt. CCTV footage showed workers sorting through rubbish and opening up plastic bags. The belt was halted and the worker gestured to the cat; while a colleague radioed for help, the first man held the lucky moggy in his arms.
The animal was “chubby, clean and well-groomed, without a scratch”, according to company director Igor Perfilyev, who was sure the cat had been someone’s pet. “The cruelty of people is surprising,” he said, adding: “A little more and the sack with the cat would have gone into the separator. Fortunately, the animal was not hurt. But he is very scared.” Unfortunately, Mr Perfilyev explained, cases of pets being thrown into the rubbish are becoming more frequent. This is the third time in two months that Gorkomkhoz employees have found animals while sorting waste. Two redeared turtles and an African hedgehog had previously been rescued.
Since being pulled from the conveyor belt at the factory 700 miles (1,125km) southeast of Moscow, the cat has gone on to
become a local celebrity and has since been adopted by the Ulyanovsk region’s environment ministry and given the honorary position of Deputy Environment Minister. D.Mail, 23 Dec; BBC News, 25 2020.
YOU WAIT FOR ONE SEAL...
A seal pup was found at a bus stop in Porthleven, Cornwall, by a group of schoolchildren waiting to go to school. Lisa Cadman saw the baby seal as she was dropping her daughter off at the stop, adjacent to the harbour. She called her husband Simon, who, fortuitously, works for Cornwall’s Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority. Simon arrived at the scene and tried persuading the seal to jump back into the water, without success: “It seemed quite happy and just sat there. It was trying to catch a bus to Godrevy, I think”.
However, along with a man from a nearby industrial estate and a member of British Divers Marine Life Rescue, he was able to gently guide the pup into a bag. Staff from the Cornish Seal Sanctuary soon turned up to give the animal a quick health check before releasing it back into the sea. It is thought the seal was one of a pair recently spotted in the harbour during heavy storms. The pup had most likely taken refuge from the waves, leaving the water and crossing the road to the bus stop. falmouthpacket.co.uk, 16 Dec; Metro, 18 Dec 2020.
SEAL OF DISAPPROVAL
A rare black seal was found in Noordwijk on the Dutch coast, 26 miles (42km) south west of Amsterdam. The young animal was found to be weak, with a small wound on her back and was displaying shortness of breath, so she was taken to the imaginatively named A Seal centre in Stellendam. A spokesperson for the seal rescue centre said it was the first time they had taken in a completely black seal. “It’s a grey seal with melanism,” they explained. “Due to a genetic deviation the animal makes too much of the dark-coloured pigment melanin, resulting in a dark pelt,” hence the seal having been given the name ‘Melanie’. A vet who checked her said she was responding well to being fed by tube, and would be kept at the seal centre for three months until she had put on weight and was able to eat fish on her own, at which time she will be returned to the sea.
Melanism also occurs in other animals; a flamingo with melanism was spotted in Cyprus in 2015, and a black penguin was filmed in Antarctica in 2019. Three days before Melanie was found, the entire Dutch government had resigned over a child benefits scandal, so her appearance has been read by some Dutch people as a sign – a seal of disapproval, perhaps. Guardian, 15 Jan; nos.nl, aseal.nl, 18 Jan 2021.
MAD AXEDOG
Tim Smith, a USPS postman doing his rounds in rural Williamsburg, Kentucky, had an unusual canine encounter in late 2020, when he came face to face with a pair of intimidatinglooking dogs – one of which was wielding a large axe.
“There’s a lot of reasons why your mailman might not deliver your packages’, he explained on social media, “and this is one of them. I can handle a dog, but not a dog with an axe.” He says the dog is actually very friendly and he often sees him carrying around sticks. wkyt.com, 18 Dec 2020.