{"id":7177,"date":"2018-05-11T22:54:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T05:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/?p=7177"},"modified":"2018-05-11T23:09:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T06:09:00","slug":"7177","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/?p=7177","title":{"rendered":"<span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">Rat Tales<\/span> \u2013 <em>tw&#8217;nsnn<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago I was a participant in a writers group. I did not write the great American novel, but we had a lot of nice people and some did get material published.<br \/>\nIn one sense, we all did. One of the group knew a publisher and that got us the task of writing tales involving rats. I did not have a good story to tell, so I converted a standard chicken casserole dish to a rat casserole recipe. Yum!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">Item #1: Will, Ahu, Wai \u2013 dogs all <\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-2-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7178\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-2-203x300.jpg 203w, http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-2.jpg 265w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 203px) 85vw, 203px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The three dogs listed helped rid South Georgia Island of rats.<br \/>\n Two of these can be seen in this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2018\/05\/rat-begone-record-eradication-effort-rids-sub-antarctic-island-invasive-rodents\"><strong>LINK<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More story and photos here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecourier.co.uk\/fp\/news\/local\/dundee\/649930\/in-pictures-the-amazing-story-of-how-dundee-charitys-team-rat-turned-around-200-years-of-man-made-environmental-damage-on-south-georgia\/\"><strong>LINK 2<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<em>I&#8217;ve had to refresh that one to get the photos.<\/em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-1-283x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"283\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-7173\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-1-283x300.jpg 283w, http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-1.jpg 288w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 283px) 85vw, 283px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here is a photo of one of the birds in the story:<\/p>\n<p>   South Georgia pipit<\/p>\n<p>I recall reading about this project about 4 or 5 years ago.<br \/>\nNothing since, until this week.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">Item #2: They work for peanuts <\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-4-Rat.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"288\" height=\"248\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-7174\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A Belgian nonprofit has found African giant pouched rats are much better at detecting old buried landmines than people or dogs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/2015\/10\/151006-giant-rats-landmines-cambodia-science-animals\/\"><strong>Big rats<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">Item #3: Just a photo <\/span><br \/>\nPlace: Hawaii.<br \/>\nI hope you do not have relatives or friends living in the area where magma is flowing.  These housing sites should never have been allowed where they are, and it is going to cost a lot of tax dollars before the residents are resettled. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-3-Gate-and-lava.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"804\" height=\"451\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7175\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-3-Gate-and-lava.jpg 804w, http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-3-Gate-and-lava-300x168.jpg 300w, http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/M-3-Gate-and-lava-768x431.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/>Nevertheless, I thought the photo with the gate was priceless! <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">Item #4: A captioned photo <\/span><br \/>\nThe Russians have been in the news quite a bit.  If you are aware of them being blamed for many things \u2013 and now you are \u2013 you will get a chuckle:<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Dog-poop-cartoon.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"587\" height=\"560\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7176\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Dog-poop-cartoon.jpg 587w, http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Dog-poop-cartoon-300x286.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 587px) 85vw, 587px\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.<br \/>\nJohn <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago I was a participant in a writers group. I did not write the great American novel, but we had a lot of nice people and some did get material published. In one sense, we all did. One of the group knew a publisher and that got us the task of writing tales &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/?p=7177\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;<span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">Rat Tales<\/span> \u2013 <em>tw&#8217;nsnn<\/em>&#8220;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s72iNf-7177","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7177"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7186,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177\/revisions\/7186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}