Free Republic

ST. JOHN, New Brunswick, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A small Canadian seaside town in New Brunswick has been warned lobsters that wash ashore cannot be eaten because they weren't caught under license. After an Atlantic storm Saturday, the crustaceans began washing ashore at Petit-Rocher on the northeastern coast and word spread quickly, the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal reported. However, John St.-Coeur, a spokesman for the federal Fisheries and Oceans ministry issued a statement warning beachcomber they were breaking the law that says lobster can only be taken in traps by licensed fishermen during open season. Anyone else collecting lobsters could be...

B.C. mom fends off cougar attack with towel Vancouver Sun January 4, 2010 BURNS LAKE, B.C. — A mother, reportedly armed only with a towel, fended off a cougar last week as it attacked her son in north-central B.C. Burns Lake RCMP Staff Sgt. Mike Kisters said Monday the attack happened Thursday morning near Danskin, about 40 kilometres south of Burns Lake. "Around 7 a.m. a young male was outside playing at the Danskin Mennonite school and the mother heard a commotion and a small cougar was attacking her son," he said. Several reports say the mother hit the cougar...

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. (AP) -- Some Orange County nudists are fuming over the burial of a rotting sea lion carcass on a San Onofre beach. The naturists said Tuesday that state parks officials buried the animal on the beach near Trail 6, . . . the dead animal's fin sticks out of the sand just a few yards from a volleyball court near where people still sunbathe naked. He says the stench is so overpowering

The Rushford-Peterson High School basketball team won the opening game of its holiday tournament, but it was the ride home that brought the boys together and delivered a trophy to the small school. On a rural road in southeastern Minnesota, after a Dec. 28 victory over Spring Grove, the coaches stopped the team bus about 10 p.m. to help a fan whose car skidded off the icy road and was stuck in the ditch. With that rescue complete, the team resumed the 28-mile trek home when coach Tom Vix suddenly saw a flash of light to his left. Vix, 50,...

Final preparations began on Monday for the America’s Cup, sailing’s oldest and most prestigious trophy, as the Swiss team defending the title arrived in Valencia. The event was to have been raced in Ras-al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates until an American Supreme Court judge’s ruling last month forced a switch of venue following two years of legal wrangling. Titleholders Alinghi will face off against San Diego-based BMW-Oracle Racing in the 33rd edition of the event, which begins on February 8 with the first race in the best-of-three match. At its first attempt, Alinghi won the 31st America’s Cup...

A cougar attacked a B.C. family's golden retriever Saturday night after the dog stepped in between the cougar and an 11-year-old boy. Police, who later shot the cougar dead, credited the 18-month-old dog -- Angel -- for saving the boy's life.

Attempt to help viewers appreciate the importance of reasonable and effective gun control!

It is not always springtime in the heart, though at times we are led to believe this. And, of course, we would longingly hope that this could be a daily reality; nevertheless, an honest look at human existence tells us otherwise. There are seasons of winter in the soul.

Having Aunt Martha stop by for dinner over the holiday season is one thing, but having 50 ants for breakfast was more than Tommy Lam could stomach. The jeweller said he found them lining his McDonald's burritos. "It was disgusting!" Lam told the Sun yesterday soon after he said he made the gruesome discovery. The 28-year-old said he and his girlfriend stopped by the busy fast-food restaurant at Markham Rd. and Denison St. around 11 a.m. yesterday to grab a quick bite to eat on their way to work. After waiting 15 minutes in line, the couple said they ordered...

Need some FReeper help here. I now have my dad's Model 11 Remington shotgun. It's a 12 G, 2 3/4" shells, serial number 744763. Mod choke. Made 1940s or earlier. I'd like to clean and prep it quite thoroughly prior to its trip to a gunsmith for a safety/ops check. Anybody have a good source for how to dissemble/clean it? many thanks!

ALTA, Wyo. » Frito the llama defied his name and didn't get eaten. Lou Centrella seemed sure that was Frito's fate after a mountain lion killed another of his llamas on Sunday. Frito was nowhere to be found after the attack on the other llama, named Grayson. On Monday, the cougar returned to the Centrellas' yard in western Wyoming to feed on the llama it had killed. Concerned the big cat may have acquired a taste for llama, Centrella shot it.....

LONG BEACH, Calif. – Travis Pastrana shattered the world record for the longest jump in a rally car on Thursday night, making a nearly perfect flight from the Pine Street Pier onto a barge anchored in the harbor. His jump was unofficially measured at 274 feet, which would smash the old record by 103 feet.

They're back, in from the frigid north. The Drakes get here first with just a few hens in the flights, and the rest of the hens follow a little later. The little bitty guys are Pied Billed Grebes, strong swimmers and divers. They can feed in deeper water than the Mallards who just stick their butts up and dabble in shallow water. Past the Grebes to the left there is a Red Eared Slider turtle coming up for air. There is no season such delight can bring, As summer, autumn, winter, and the spring. William Browne (c.1591–c.1645) "Variety"

ZWINGLE, Iowa -- Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like 123,000 pounds of manure. Dick Kleis, a farmer in the eastern Iowa community of Zwingle, used a manure spreader to write "HAP B DAY LUV U" to mark his wife Carole's birthday this week. He said it took around three hours and four loads of liquid manure to create the message -- that amounts to about 123,840 pounds of manure. His wife said he's done strange things in the past to mark her birthday, "but maybe not this weird." Kleis said he'd intended to include a heart but ran out of manure

The annoying buzz of a mosquito means a lot more to the bugs than you might imagine. Mosquitoes rely on harmonizing the "songs" produced by their wing beats to find an appropriate mate — most importantly one of the same species and, of course, the opposite sex. "Everyone must be familiar with the maddening whine a mosquito makes as it hones in for a bite," said Gabriella Gibson of the University of Greenwich at Medway. "Many of us have wondered why it makes its presence so obvious — surely, after all of these centuries of blood-feeding, selection should have favored...

Metallica rock band leader James Hetfield has donated to Marin County a 330-acre agricultural conservation easement near his home on land overlooking Lucas Valley. The Marin Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously accepted donation of the easement, which precludes development on the land known as the Luiz Ranch. "This is a really exciting offer," said Supervisor Steve Kinsey. He said Hetfield was "taking a break from heavy metal to become a heavy contributor to our agricultural conservation efforts. "It's another indication of a continuing effort to improve our partnerships on that important ridge and I think it reflects very positively...

What's a Blue Moon? The trendy definition of "blue Moon" as the second full Moon in a month is a mistake. by Roger W. Sinnott, Donald W. Olson, and Richard Tresch Fienberg A rising full Moon lights the scene in The Fishing Party, painted by Fitz Hugh Lane after a visit to the coast of Maine in August 1850. That month contained a Fruit Moon, according to the Maine almanac's rules. Recent decades have seen widespread popular embrace of the idea that when a calendar month contains two full Moons, the second one is called a "Blue Moon." The unusual...

You may have seen this morning that CNN picked up a story out of Fort Wayne, Ind., on a new salt being used to melt ice on roadways, in parking lots, and other places where snow and ice pose a hazard. The product, called Magic Salt, is a residue created during – and usually discarded after – the vodka distilling process. The salt is said to be environmentally friendly and more effective than the road salt and other melting products used by municipalities and businesses. Custom Lawn Scapes in North Syracuse is the only local dealer listed on Magic Salt's...

If you're a fish danger can come from any direction. Those claws are almost as long as a man's finger and needle sharp.

Fly fishing is a sport that was made popular by the book and movie A River Runs Through It. Some people like it to catch fish, some just enjoy seeing the brightly colored line sweep through the air over the water. And now, fly fishing is also used for healing. "You get in touch with nature and forget about all your problems, it's just a natural way to heal yourself," said military veteran Kenny Stanford who did two tours of duty in Iraq. It's that idea that has led to Project Healing Waters -- a group dedicated to the physical...

According to Jeff Gammage, in his Philadelphia Inquirer article "Valley Forge deer shoot postponed" the deer hunt scheduled for this winter at Valley Forge National Park has been called off, at least temporarily. Thanks to the concerted efforts of members from Friends of Animals, a New York based, international, non-profit animal advocacy organization along with the West Chester, PA based group Compassion for Animals, Respect the Environment (CARE) the deer hunt is on hold. Dedicated members have demonstrated in the park with an effort to educate the public on the deer cull. Friends of Animals and CARE flied a joint...

A shopping centre in China's Hebei province has built a car park with wider spaces that it says is designed especially to suit women drivers. The women-only car park in Shijiazhuang city is also painted in pink and light purple to appeal to female tastes. Official Wang Zheng told AFP news agency the car park was meant to cater to women's "strong sense of colour and different sense of distance".

OMAHA, Neb.- Native American tribes tired of waiting for the U.S. government to honor centuries-old treaties are buying back land where their ancestors lived and putting it in federal trust. Native Americans say the purchases will help protect their culture and way of life by preserving burial grounds and areas where sacred rituals are held. They also provide land for farming, timber and other efforts to make the tribes self-sustaining.....

Link only - Hunting to help hunger - Game meat can be donated to food banks

A man has made his first appearance before a court in North Wales charged with the murder of 20-year-old who died following a snowball fight. Oliver Michael Taylor, 19, is accused of stabbing to death Anthony Finbar Burke, 20, in Clos y Berllan, at Rhuddlan, near Rhyl on Wednesday night. Taylor, of Rhuddlan, Denbighshire, appeared before a special session of Llandudno Magistrates Court dressed in a black jacket and white open-necked shirt. He spoke only to confirm his name, age and address, during the four-minute hearing. There was no application for bail and he was remanded in custody to appear...

It was a Christmas gift to Kenya this week when four northern white rhinos were relocated from the Czech Republic back to the wild in Laikipia. A Boeing 747 transported two males, Sudan, 37, and Suni, 30, and two females Najim, 20, and her offspring Fatu, 9, in containers specially equipped for the tw-tonne animals. They were then driven out of Nairobi to Ol Pejeta Conservancy. The relocation of the four rhinos — half the known population of the extremely rare animal left in the world — is seen as handing them a lifeline. Rhino experts believe that releasing the...

Surely Gators can beat beetles in nature's version of rochambeau.It's like inevitable doom in a horror flick: coming, slowly, killing everything in its path, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. Or is there? That's the question facing Miami-Dade County avocado growers and scientists locked in a race against a deadly killer stalking its way from the Carolinas through Georgia and currently found as far south as Central Florida thanks to free rides on firewood transported south. That's right -- the Redbay Abrosia beetle is coming, threatening to destroy the county's $30 million dollar avocado business even as...

I will soon purchase a rife. Purpose: Protection in the very unlikely event of civil unrest. I am a woman in my early sixties who is fit and healthy but I do not have a lot of upper body strength. Before purchasing a rife, I would appreciate any comments Freepers might have regarding the suitability of the rife I have chosen in regards to the purpose and my physical strength. At the moment I am considering buying a DPMS Panther 5.56 NATO Sportical AR 15. This rife seemed to be the easiest for me to handle. By the way, I...

Hot girls with guns need i say more.. Merry Christmas everyone.

HELENA — This cowboy wasn't about to let a crook rustle him out of a good truck. A Kalispell man chased down the thief who stole his pickup truck and held him for police despite being stabbed twice in the arm. And he kept his cowboy hat on the whole time, said Kalispell Police Detective Kevin McCarvel. The man started his Ford F-250 diesel pickup late Monday afternoon to warm it up before leaving work. But when he walked out of the office at about 5 p.m., he saw his truck being driven away, McCarvel said Wednesday. The truck owner...

DURANT, Okla. -- The Oklahoma State Health Department is preparing to test a 60-pound beaver for rabies after it bit a small boy outside an apartment complex in southern Oklahoma. Tammy Lane said her 5-year-old son went outside to get the family cat on Saturday. But instead of finding a feline, he was attacked by a beaver after trying to pet the animal, according to KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City. "I heard screaming. I went to see what was happening. His leg was pretty bad," Lane said. She rushed her son to a local hospital and called police. "They didn't believe...

Inside a secured room at the Eagan Police headquarters is the charred and shredded evidence of a near fatal crime. There's not much left of a winter jacket, worn by a 33-year-old St. Paul man. The alleged copper thief was burned by 69,000 volts of electricity, creating a flash of light in the early morning sky. "There were also calls of a large flash of light seen from several miles away and a large boom," Eagan Officer Danielle Anselment said. Police and paramedics responded to several 911 calls of a man who was on fire at the Dakota Electric power...

Lady ducks have evolved a unique way of avoiding the unwanted advances of, er, enthusiastic suitors, according to Yale scientists. According to researchers, while male ducks have developed longer, spiraled genitalia, the females' anatomy has evolved to spiral in the opposite direction. “In species where forced copulation is common ... this coevolution results from conflict between the sexes over who is going to control fertilization,” said Yale researcher Patricia L.R. Brennan. Essentially, female ducks are able to thwart "undesirable but aggressive males" and avoid becoming pregnant because the sexes have evolved mismatched equipment. Researchers released the study this week detailing...

A Greek man dressed in animal hide was mistakenly shot dead while out hunting wild boar for a Christmas dinner.

Need help identifying the following snow tracks: This is the third time I have found some strange animal tracks on my land. I live in western pa, 25 miles from Pittsburgh in the land of murrymom. The area is rural on the edge of suburban development. These tracks I photographed (iPhone) while snow blowing. The gate is 6 to 8 feet and the single track may be a double paw print. The single track is larger than my hand. The tracks entered my property near a wood pile (breaking a five wire electric fence) and traveled over two hundred feet...

AT reader Jackpine Savage has an animated videogame enabling you to throw snowballs at Al Gore, what with all the global warming that has been falling all over the east. Play it here.

Italy's highest court of appeal affirmed the illegality of insulting someone by sticking your tongue out at them. The case brought before the Cassation Court involved a farmer whose tongue gesture was captured by a cellphone camera held by the neighbor with whom he was arguing. The farmer, Carlo O., had been convicted by a justice of the peace of insulting the neighbor, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

COME MONDAY, it is three years and counting. Three years till what? Three years until the end of the world! You didn't know that? Where have you been? Dec. 21, 2012--a Friday. That's the big day. The Mayans have supposedly predicted that this is when the end will come, and so have several other previous cultures. Why, even that old soothsayer Nostradamus is said to have determined that this date will mark the end of time. Of course, that makes me a little wary, because nobody seems to recognize Nostradamus' predictions until after they happen. After the Sept. 11, 2001,...

RICHFIELD, Minn. -- When North Dakotan Dennis McCoy gets together with his uncle Wes in his retirement high rise in Richfield, they farm at the kitchen table. "That was our first rubber-tired tractor," says Wes to Dennis as they peer at a photo of a 1938 Allis Chalmers WC. It's moments like this that have led Dennis to one of the great passions in his life: locating and restoring tractors that match the makes and models his grandfather -- Wes' dad Ed McCoy -- used on their North Dakota farm from the 1920s through the 1950s. Already he's paid for...

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian surfers told of their horror as they watched a pod of killer whales attack a large group of dolphins, throwing them into the air and leaping to catch them. Jamie Kidney said he was surfing off southern Australia's Eyre Peninsula with his friend Anton Storey when the ocean erupted into a seething mass of white water and "all hell broke loose". "(It was) just chaos, you saw monstrous amounts of white water and then dolphins go flying up in the air, a killer whale would jump out of the water, grab it and body-slam it," Kidney...

Richard Branson's new commercial spacecraft, Enterprise, will transport the musicians to just outside the Earth's atmosphere where they can enjoy about 5 minutes of weightlessness and time to play one hit song.

WELLINGTON (AFP) – Two blocks of butter have been found intact after nearly a century in an Antarctic hut used by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his doomed 1910-12 expedition, a report said. Television New Zealand reported that conservators found the two blocks of New Zealand butter in bags in stables attached to the expedition Hut at Cape Evans in Antarctica. The extreme cold of the polar region has preserved the hut and expedition equipment inside, but recent signs of deterioration had prompted the Antarctic Heritage Trust to launch a preservation project. The trust's Lizzie Meek said the butter...

Has anyone out there bought a bag of Sun Chips lately? The new Frito Lay eco-friendly green bag is really LOOUUUDDDD!!!! I swear it's capable of waking the dead if you so much as breath in its general direction, much less actually touch it or reach inside to get a chip. Anyone who's touched one will know what I'm talking about, since it's very noticeable and unforgettable. I guess the new green strategy is to replace landfill pollution with noise pollution instead?

State wildlife experts believe the cougar caught on tape in Champlin earlier this month is the same big cat that left tracks in the snow in Stillwater. Video of a cougar was recorded by a police squad car dash board camera Dec. 7. Two days later a cat was spotted in Vadnais Heights. December 11, cougar tracks were found in Sunrise Park in Stillwater. DNR officials believe all three sightings were of the same cat. Dan Stark with the DNR said, "I think it's likely it's the same cat. I don't expect to see more than one cougar in the...

A statue of President Barack Obama as a boy erected in a Jakarta park has been targeted in a Facebook campaign by thousands who say it should be removed.Many Indonesians are proud of the fact that Obama lived in Jakarta from 1967 to 1971 with his American mother, his Indonesian stepfather and his half-sister. He went by the name "Barry," attended the local elementary school near where his statue now stands and owned a pet monkey.

Sarah Palin is such a cold-eyed skeptic about the Copenhagen summit on climate change that it's no surprise she would call on President Obama not to attend. After all, Obama might join other leaders in acknowledging that warming is a "global challenge." He might entertain "opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." He might even explore ways to "participate in carbon-trading markets." Oh, wait. Those quotes aren't from some smug Euro-socialist manifesto. They're from an administrative order Palin signed in September 2007, as governor of Alaska, establishing a "sub-Cabinet" of top state officials to develop a strategy for dealing with climate...

Residents of Colorado Springs, Colo., have a mystery on their hands: Who came up with the idea to erect a sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville" on the site of a homeless tent camp in the city? The sign, which was visible from the Cimarron Street ramp to Interstate 25, clearly conveyed a political jab at rising unemployment under President Barack Obama, for it read in full, "Welcome to Obamaville – Colorado's fastest growing community."

Snow chains will only get you so far in some parts of the world. When you want to really rip up the backcountry, what you need is a crazily modified Subaru with cat tracks, a supercharged engine and heavy-duty suspension. Then you’ll be ready to drive right up to the pristine, snowy peaks and snowboard your way down.

When it snows in the mountains and rains in the basin, Jessica Hall thinks of the lost streams of Los Angeles. In fact, she thinks of them all the time. For the last nine years, the 41-year-old garden designer has been retracing the paths of the native creeks, streams and springs that once ran wild before they were filled in and paved for homes. In the process, Hall has come to believe that the best town planning and landscape design principles for the future may lie in understanding the habits of the watercourses of the past. Those who missed the...