Reporter's Diary

Press, 17 November 1976, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

I igiZ ended THE ALSATIAN dog that waited nearly two years at a Moscow Airport for her master to return has gone off with a new owner — and given birth to a litter of puppies. The dog took a fancy to Vera Kotlyarevskaya, a biologist from Kiev, who discovered it was pregnant, took it home and christened it "Pa!m Tree” — an apparent reference to its ragged ears. The dog had been abandoned at Vnukovo Airport by a man who did nut have a veterinary certificate to take it on his plane, and after that, for nearly two years, it faithfully met incoming planes in case he returned. Airport workers fed the animal and a newspaper which published a story about its long vigil received thousands of letters and phone calls from people offering advice, or a home for the dog. l/«vor’» phones WHILE many Christchurch subscribers are

moaning about being issued with only one telephone directory, although they have two telephones, the Mayor of Christchurch (Mr Hamish Hay) has been virtually' weighed down with an embarrassment of books. N. Stewart — a reader who has two telephones but received only one book — writes: “Passing the home of Mr Hamish Hay today, I was shocked to see, sitting on his gatepost, not one, but four new- telephone books. Is there a reasonable explanation for this, or does the Mayor really have eight telephones in his home?” No, the Mayor doesn’t have eight telephones: he has five, and according to a formula quoted yesterday by the Chief Postmaster (Mr C. J. Smith) he should have been issued with onlythree telephone books. If he had asked for more, the Post Office would have given him up to five without charge. But. said Mr Hay yesterday, he did not make any request of the Post Office. The extra book was quite unsolicited, and indeed he found the quantity ’almost embarrassing.” At his wife's

suggestion, he took the fourth one in to add to the City Council’s collection. Fair go ONE HAS to admire the scrupulous nature of the Press Association report about a ski camp and mountaineering course which will begin on the Cameron Glacier next month. According to the writer, “It is hoped that Peter Hillary, the son of Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first men to climb Mount Everest, will head the team taking the mountaineering course.” Giving Sherpa Tensing the benefit of the doubt, perhaps?

Just a label DON'T be taken in by the card shown on the left. Mr Robin Reid, regional fisheries officer of the Ministry- of Agriculture and Fisheries, says that someone recently used a card like it to impersonate a fisheries officer when talking to some boys who were whitebaiting in the Heathcote estuary area. The genuine article is the card shown on the right. The false one is just a tag from an export meat car- , ton, but it bears the Ministry's crest and looks impressive to anyone who has not seen the real Thing. Mr Reid is afraid that the impersonator maytry to “confiscate'' someone’s whitebait net or other gear by flashing the spurious card, and he warns fishermen to take a careful look.

Yuk! AUSTRALIAN scientists have developed a new way to get high-grade protein for human food from the huge quantities of animal blood -flowing daily at Australian slaughterhouses. The blood is processed and has the colour removed — coming out white powder, with a bland taste, and a protein content of more than 95 per cent. These qualities make it suitable for incorporation into tinned foods, sausages and smallgoods. The developers of the protein concentrate — scientists from the chemical Engineering Division of the C.5.1.R.0. in Melbourne and the Dairy and Meat Research Laboratories — say that it may lead to new food products. “In the past, blood protein has seldom been used as human food because of the problems of collecting it hygienically, and because of its dark, unattractive colour,” said a C.5.1.R.0. spokesman. But by producing protein curds, which separate from the red component, the scientists have eliminated the colour problem. Now they are looking into the safetyaspects of the powder. Last straw A CHRISTCHURCH furniture maker who went to a lot of trouble to obtain a

piece of marble for a tab'e top has decided never to bother again. He happened to be in the shop which is offering his table for sale, and overheard a conversation between two women shoppers who were admiring it. “Isn’t it marvellous,” said one to the other, “what they can do with plastics these days.” They’ll be lucky THE CITY Council wins the big cigar for optimism this week. In the same envelope as the rate demand it enclosed a leaflet imploring the poor ratepayer to invest anything he had left in a City Council loan. ’Bait running WHITEBAIT are running at the Okarito Lagoon, South W’estland — in numbers that reminded one Christchurch visitor of the good old days. “They’re pulling them out by the gallon,” he said. It hasn’t been like that for 12 years, and the locals are having a marvellous time dragging their nets through the black water and bringing them up heavy- with bait. He said that other rivers in South Westland w-ere producing equally good catches. —Garry Arthur