Reporter's Diary

Press, 1 December 1978, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Canine cat WHEN is a dog not a dog? When it is a cat called Dog. That is the name of the elderly feline that has resided at the Canterbury Tavern in Lyttelton for the last 15 or so years. One night this week, when a tavern staff member was calling out to Dog to come inside, he was overheard by a passing schoolboy. And the staff member did not appreciate being called a silly old. four-eyed so-and-so by the schoolboy, who was intent on pointing out to him that anybody in

their right mind could see it was a cat and not a dog. Nursing his wounded pride, he told the publican of the episode, and was supported by other staff members as well .as some of the customers in his plea to change the cat's name to something more realistic. But the publican was adamant. ‘The cat remains Dog,” he said firmly. . ; Abandoned? IT SEEMS to be the time of year for abandoned puppies. A reader who lives near Queen Elizabeth

II Park said yesterday that while he was going for his morning run, he had come across four German shepherd puppies that appeared to have been dumped in a field near the park. They were about two months old, he said, and were yelping at the bottom of a ditch, where it looked as though somebody had tried to drown them. He rescued two of them and another passerby found the other two, as well as their mother. The other person took all the puppies and the bitch to the S.P.C.A., he said. (Earlier this week, “The Press” printed a photograph of four puppies abandon ed in Scarborough). Needles of joy ACUPUNCTURE saved Sara, a brown cow from California, from being reduced to hamburgers. Sara had long disappointed her owner, a vet at the Alta Dena Dairy, in the city of Industry, California. Twelve visits to the artificial insemination centre plus six more natural encounters had failed to make her pregnant. But, in a last-ditch attempt, eight needles inserted along her back for four minutes effected a seemingly miraculous ovulation. After a decent interval,' Sara gave birth to twins. , Lost in thought A READER who saw the item yesterday about a cow feeding lambs in the North Island was reminded of a similar sight she saw while travelling through Waikato a few years ago. It was a Jersey cow, too, she told us

yesterday, and she had seen it feeding a piglet beside the railway line as she was passing by in a train. In fact, she was so deep in thought yesterday morning, thinking about the cow, that she managed to cover her kitchen walls with the Christmas cake mix she had just put in the cake-mixer. Gardening session EVER wondered why your roses failed to smell like roses should smell? Or why your cauliflowers suddenly lost their hearts to the lettuces last summer? If you are one of those people who firmly believes that the answer lies in the soil, then you may be interested to learn of a new radio gardening session starting this weekend on Radio Rhema. It will be run by the president of the Canterbury Horticultural Society (Mr Ernie Rodgers) and listeners will be invited to telephone in with queries about gardening every Saturday after 10 a.m. Well travelled NINETEEN years and 20,000 nautical miles after being thrown into the sea from a Chilean ship off Cape Horn, a green whisky bottle containing a note has been washed up on a beach in Victoria, Australia. It was found by a national park patrolman who was driving along Ninety Mile Beach in a four-wheel-drive vehicle after a storm. The message, written in Chilean, English and French, had been thrown into the sea off Chile by Captain de Corbeta. in the ship Carlos Lemay on Novem-

ber 9, 1959. It asked the finder to return it to any maritime authority. Because of the easterly set of currents off Chile, it is believed that the bottle travelled right round the world past Australia and back around again before being tossed ashore in the storm.

Well read ONE OF our reporters received a faultily printed copy of the new booklet “Moral Education in New Zealand” a few days ago. So she got in touch with the Education Department head office in Wellington and asked to be sent another copy, which duly arrived several days later. Then, on Tuesday, she received another copy of the same booklet from the Christchurch branch of the department, apologising for the faulty copy. Yesterday morning, her fourth copy of the booklet arrived in the post. She is beginning to think the Education Department might be trying to ensure its booklet gets read. Baked beans

SALESMEN from a Christchurch insurance company ran a competition to see who could sell the most insurance. They divided themselves into two teams of four, and today the winning team will celebrate its victory at a city restaurant. They are being taken out to lunch by the losing team, who in turn have to watch their colleagues feast themselves while they eat baked beans out of a tin.

—Felicity Price