WhiteBoard News for Wednesday, January 8, 2003

Auckland, New Zealand (The Daily Telegraph)

A man trapped in his wrecked truck survived an attack by up to 300,000 bees searching for their hives after the truck crashed near Auckland.

Chris Robinson had developed partial immunity to bee stings since he began beekeeping in 1982.

"The rescuers would have been under more threat than Chris," his wife Laine said yesterday.

"He was covered in stings all over his body and neck.

"Most people would have died from that much venom." 

Mrs Robinson had to spend 30 minutes removing the stings from her husband's body.

Mr Robinson, of Hastings, was moving 40 beehives when he crashed his truck in Hawke's Bay on the North Island.

Trapped with a broken leg and head injuries and out of mobile phone range, the 52-year-old remained in the cabin as the bees swarmed in through the smashed windscreen searching for their wrecked hives.

A rescue helicopter was called in to winch him from the truck. 
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Austin, Texas (Austin American-Statesman) an

The baby possums are easier to put up with in your brassiere than the baby squirrels, says Allison Adams of Round Rock.

"The hardest to deal with in my bra are the squirrels," said Allison, 23. "The possums are actually the easiest. They're adorable, beautiful little animals, and since they're used to being in a pouch with their mom, they're used to the feeling. The squirrels, they're not used to it. They're moving around, and every once in a while you hear them squeaking."

Seriously, the animal rescue worker really does load baby animals into her bra to warm them up as part of her work for Wildlife Rescue of Austin. Let's say someone hits a mother possum by the side of the road, and the babies are brought to Allison to be saved. If they're cold, pop, there they go, straight into Allison's bra.

"Just whenever the babies come in, it's the easiest way to warm them up," she said.

So what's the record number of baby animals in her bra at one time? "The most I've had at one time was 12," Allison said, speaking of a passel of young possums. "I was living in Killeen at the time, so it was for about an hour and a half, two hours."

Allison, who works at the Northwest Animal Clinic in Georgetown, puts baby animals in her bra regularly. She figures over the past six years she's stuck baby possums, squirrels, kittens or cottontail rabbits in her bra a total of 75 times.

Doesn't this itch? "No," she said, "they get grabby, and sometimes it's a little much. 'Cause when they're on their mom, they have to get grabby. It's instinct. So you just kind of write it off as the thing that's going to happen every now and then." I'll bet that would cause a stir over at Lakeline Mall.

A tip for those who want to put baby animals in their underwear: Don't put all of your eggs in one basket, Allison suggests. Put some on one side, some on the other. Otherwise you're going to be out of plumb.

Incidentally, Allison says she can go for quite some time with animals in her bra. Maybe one day one of them will play possum in there and refuse to leave.

"I can walk around all day long with them in there," she said. "When we're going somewhere, I mean, it's unrealistic to keep them in the car in a carrier for four or five hours. They get cold."

You mean you can drive with animals in your bra? You betcha. Sometimes when Allison is driving her GMC, she has animals in her front end, so to speak.

"It probably looks pretty funny," she admitted. "A tail hanging out here, a tail hanging out there." But she's been lucky. So far she has yet to be pulled over by the police with critters in her duds. Imagine that little conversation: "Hey, lady, step away from the possum."

By the way, Allison is engaged. So how does her fiancé feel about it? "Everybody has to ask that," she said. "Well, it's kind of a stunner when I come home and he goes to hug me, and he can't, because I have hissing possums. But I guess you get used to that."
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Santa Cruz, Bolivia (El Nuevo Dia):

A Bolivian man who was shot 11 times has made such a remarkable recovery that doctors decided to leave the bullets inside him.

Jose Luis Cespedes, a sports commentator from Santa Cruz, was shot by a gang who tried to steal his car.

Doctors have released him from hospital and confirm they have no intention of removing the 11 bullets from his body.

Mr Cespedes told El Nuevo Dia newspaper: "They must have fired directly at me 20 times at least. They had no mercy."

Doctors from the local hospital initially decided to wait before removing the bullets since Mr Cespedes' condition was good.

After a few days, as he made a complete recovery and the bullets were in places considered safe, he was released from hospital.

Now the man carries 300 grams of bullets inside his body and is being called "the man with 11 lives" by hospital staff.
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Yorkshire Dales, England (Ananova):

A rare moss that lives only on very old stone walls in the Yorkshire Dales has "flowered" for the first time in more than 130 years.

Mosses do not produce flowers but have fruiting bodies that develop spores after reproduction between male and female plants.

The last time the endangered Nowell's limestone moss was seen with fruiting bodies was in 1866.

Scientists from Bradford University and the National History Museum in London have confirmed that the moss is fruiting for the first time in living memory.

Fred Rumsey, a plant diversity researcher told the Independent that Nowell's moss was one of the rarest plants in Britain, having a range restricted to a few of the oldest stone walls dating back hundreds of years.

The fruiting patch was found on the slopes of Penyghent Hill in the Yorkshire Dales with male and female plants growing in close proximity, which probably helped the event.

"Locating the moss was very exciting, but even more so when we realised it hadn't been able to reproduce successfully all these years because the moss patches just haven't been close enough to each other to reproduce," Dr Rumsey said.

Experts are now trying to move the male and female mosses closer together hoping that they will begin to produce more fruiting bodies and more spores that could spread to newer stone walls.
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Nambour, Australia (Sydney Morning Herald):

A family has been injured in a car crash in Australia after a five-year-old boy sitting on his mother's lap allegedly steered the vehicle because she was too drunk to drive.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the boy's nine-year-old brother told staff at Nambour Hospital in Queensland that his mother had been drinking and wanted her youngest son to steer while she operated the pedals.

"That's apparently what the child told the staff at the hospital," Senior Constable Dave Lonergan said. "The five-year-old was on her lap steering the car."

The car left the Bli Bli Road on the Sunshine Coast, hit a tree, hurtled down an embankment and came to rest in a paddock.

Officer Lonergan says the 37-year-old mother and the two children were not wearing seatbelts and were thrown from the car.

The family was taken to the hospital where the woman was in a stable condition with neck and back injuries and facial lacerations.

Blood samples have been taken to determine her blood alcohol level.

The five-year-old suffered a broken hand in the accident. His older brother sustained minor injuries.
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