This Week’s Not So Nasty News {TW’NSNN}

. . . . from John, awaiting Nancy’s draft of her week’s news.

Item #1: A Drunk at a Cash’s Liquor store

Many years ago, nephew Rod was stationed at Naval Air Station Pensacola near the western end of Florida’s Emerald Coast. Thus, this location caught my attention.
The town of Fort Walton Beach is along that stretch and is home to 3 Cash Moore Liquor Stores. Another resident of the Emerald Coast is the Virginia Opossum. Opossums are skilled climbers.
Awesome the Possum got into the rafters of a Cash Liquor store and came down onto a shelf holding bottles of bourbon. Oops!
With a broken bottle on the floor and a thirsty Possum, and nothing better to do – Awesome got snockered. In the morning the police were called to take the tipsy marsupial into custody. She was taken to the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge, sobered up, and released.

Item #2: Detroit’s Silverdome

This is funny, except to the on-site folks that expected something different. A second day of explosions finally got the Pontiac Silverdome to collapse. Embarrassing, might be the word.
STORY

Item #3: The Sense of Smell

Hultquists and Brittanys go back a few years. In about 1959, give or take a year, John’s oldest brother Ken bought a liver&white Britt. Shortly after that, John saw his first “point.” The bird was an American Woodcock (some call it a Timberdoodle). These have a long bill, and are related to the Common Snipe. The eggs are buff-colored and mottled with brown. Very pretty.
But I digress.
Elephants and Silkmoths can detect certain things miles away but neither are useful when it comes time to putting the nose to use for the benefit of humans that are smell challenged.Our doggy friends have an ability to discriminate among smells. At Auburn University there is a Canine Performance Sciences center. (Yes, that’s the place with a football team.)
See: Dogs & Explosives
An Auburn trained dog has followed the path of an individual across the campus a day after the person passed, after thousands of people had crisscrossed the area.
The ability of dogs to discriminate among smells and be trained to alert handlers to some situations (drugs, explosives, people — alive or dead) makes them the go-to-choice when a nose is needed.
Why then does the USA mostly rely on imported dogs for these activities? There are several reasons – and we and our many friends in the Brittany world understand.
Read about this National Security issue here:
America needs more bomb-sniffing dogs

Item #4: Alcohol And Throwing Axes

I have several axes. We used to go to garage/farm sales. Such is the source of my small collection. The shape of the handles and the head vary. The photo below shows double bit axes. Some of these have one bit sharpened and honed as a felling edge and the other was ground to be slightly more blunt for use on knots and other difficult grain. Often called “cruiser” axes, the single tool serves multiple purposes. When designed for throwing, the two edges are similarly shaped, as these appear to be, and the handles will be straight. A reporter named David Hookstead writes – – –
I’m actually kind of an expert on this issue because I know a lot about weapons and I know a lot about beer. Generally speaking, combining the two isn’t exactly a genius idea.

He explains the activity at Axes and Ales

More than you want to know about axes

And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John