Can You Hear Me Now?

SAO PAULO (AP) — Police say inmates are using carrier pigeons to smuggle cellphones onto a prison farm in southeastern Brazil. The birds apparently were bred and raised inside the prison, smuggled out, outfitted with the cellphone parts and then released to fly back.

Obviously this avoids the expensive "data transfer charge" associated with other carriers.

So is this what they mean when they use the term "jail bird"?

Seems to me that pigeons might be something that shouldn't be allowed as pets for prison inmates.  That would fix the problem pretty quick.  Let the prisoners raise salmon.  Then, when they returned home to spawn, the cell phone components would be all soggy and useless.

Turtle Go Round

Turtle rescuers have demonstrated the first fin suit designed to allow a green sea turtle that lost three of its flippers to finally swim a straight line.

Before this, the turtle could only swim in tight circles with her one good flipper.

Progress! I'm not sure how many one-flippered turtles populate the ocean as of this writing, but at last there is hope!  This suit enables these hapless turtles to stop going in circles and get back to the task they were intended to do...swim in a straight line.

Sure, critics might argue that there are better things to spend money on than a high-tech turtle wetsuit, but none of these critics will be one-flippered turtles! It's a safe bet that the critics will be mostly humans, some of whom probably unable to swim at all.

Research should continue and other suits should be developed.  Look at the picture, the swimsuit isn't very flattering.  The next prototype should be a two-piece.  Something with vertical stripes because those are slimming. Am I right?  The poor turtle only has one flipper!  Should she also have to endure that boxy, black suit?  It makes her look as if she has no hips!

How Much Is That Neon Doggy In The Window

Scientists have finally figured out how to make dogs glow in the dark.  This is great news for anyone who's ever thought, "Sure, puppies are cute and cuddly, but they're practically useless as reading lamps."

Breakthroughs in cloning and gene manipulation have enabled scientists to combine dog genes with another popular household pet - sea anemones!  The next step is creating a sea anemone that will fetch a frisbee.