Quirky World: The goats of Christmas trees past enjoy post-festive feast
Goats are known to eat just about anything, but it didn’t dawn on Vince Thomas until recently that the menu might include Christmas trees.
“They’ll eat the pine needles and leave the skeleton of the tree,” said Thomas, a longtime volunteer firefighter who has come up with a new use for his family-owned goat herding business, Goat Grazers.
Thomas is launching a scheme with the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District on Friday to use his 40 goats to help recycle Christmas trees.
He says he got tired of watching people discard the trees in landfills or on public property, where they became a fire danger.
Thomas said his goats have been used in the past to help graze in areas with fire-prone weeds along the Sierra’s eastern front.
“We thought: ‘What a great way to get rid of the weeds’, ” he said. “We had the idea of doing just that with the recycling program and we thought about the trees.
“And the goats are great employees. They love their job and don’t complain.”
A hard-working pensioner has finally retired aged 90 — after 60 years’ service with one firm.
Dennis Gerrish was even still cycling to work every day Apetito in Wiltshire, where he was a gardener.
His career began in the 1950s when, at the age of 30, he joined the firm as a mechanic in the motor department at the old Waldens Farm Foods, until he switched roles in 1989.
Big fries are going back on the menu in Japan.
McDonald’s Japan confirmed it is to resume serving all portion sizes of fries on January 5 after resolving shortages due to labour disruptions on the US west coast. The fast-food giant began limiting customers to orders of small fries earlier this month.
The company said its fry inventory had improved thanks to air shipments and extra sea shipments from the US east coast. It apologised and said it would try to avoid further shortfalls at its 3,100 outlets in Japan.
Onlookers at a train station in northern India watched in awe as a monkey used all his powers to revive another monkey who suffered an electric shock and fell unconscious on the rail tracks.
The unconscious monkey fell down between the tracks, apparently after touching high-tension wires at the train station in the northern Indian city of Kanpur.
His companion came to the rescue and was captured on camera lifting the friend’s motionless body, shaking it, dipping it into a mud puddle and biting its head and skin — until the monkey came to after a few minutes and began moving again.
Neil Olson put up a Christmas tree when two of his sons went off to war in 1974, vowing not to take it down until all six children returned to his Wisconsin home for Christmas. The same tree, he says, is still standing in his living room.
Olson’s oldest son was injured in the Vietnam War, and his disability has stopped him from returning to Wausau from Washington state for Christmas. So the tree has stayed up, still covered in the same ornaments, tinsel, and lights as the day Olson decorated it. And the needles, though yellowing, are still there.
“The needles are kept on for a reason,” said Olson, 89. “It’s supernatural, I say.”
Five of Olson’s six sons live in Wausau. His youngest, Rich Olson, said the tree has become part of his father’s furniture.
“It’s like family now. I hate to take it down,” he said.Despite its permanent status in his home, Neil Olson hasn’t flicked on the lights since the year he put up the tree. The large, multi-
colored lights are now nearly 100 years old, he said.“It’d just blow up on me,” he joked. “All that dust on there. It’d be like an atomic bomb.”
Olson said he still hopes his oldest son, with whom he still talks, will make it home for Christmas one year.
“I bet you if my sixth boy comes home, the needles will drop right off,” he said.
He may not have used a broomstick or the floo network to get there, but a seal found miles from the sea has been named Dumbledore by animal rescue staff.
The adult grey seal was given the name of the Harry Potter wizard and Hogwarts headmaster by staff at RSPCA East Winch, Norfolk, where he is being treated.
He was taken to the specialist centre after being found more than 30km from the mouth of the River Mersey in a farmer’s field near Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, on December 22.
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