So many plans to blog today, but instead it was errands, then aquariuming, then a last minute trip to the (dreadful) rugby.
These are shrimpfish (not pipefish), which swim vertically and are therefore both pretty weird and pretty cool.
Author: 6000
Kelp Help
The weather this Friday is so different to the weather last Friday. I even have high hopes of seeing Saturday, which is not how I felt this time last week. Of course, I did get to see last Saturday, but it was only because of the building skills of the local builders, who built the walls and the corrugating skills of the local corrugators, who did the steel roof.
So, survive we did, and then when we braved the icy temperatures outside, some of us kept warm by dragging kelp along the beach:
Wet kelp is heavier than it looks (and it looks pretty heavy). A few hundred metres dragging wet kelp along sand in the wind is equivalent to doing an Ironman.
If you’re very-nearly-almost-six-years-old, anyway.
Pretty Fly
This just in from our Agriculture correspondent:
Great news for the Western Cape agricultural sector. We farm sheeps, cows, pigs and the like. We have pretty canola fields. Grain, lots of grain: it makes our beer. We do grapes really, really well.
And now, we’re about to do flies. Common houseflies, black soldier flies and blowflies.
We’re about to have [clarkson] the biggest fly farm – in the world! [/clarkson]
8,500,000,000 of the little buggers.
That’s a lot of flies.
The 8 500 square-metre undercover facility, being built by Gibraltar-based AgriProtein, is due to be completed next year and aims to produce 23.5 metric tonnes of insect-based protein meal and oils and 50 tonnes of fertiliser a day. Fish and chicken farmers have already signed contracts to buy the feed, an alternative to soy and fishmeal, according to Jason Drew, the company’s co-founder.
That 23.5 tonnes of “insect-based protein meal” is a long-winded and fancy way of saying “maggots”. Can you imagine 23.5 tonnes of maggots? Each day? That’s almost 9,000 tonnes of maggots every year. From this one facility alone.
Fear Factor eat your heart out (but not like this).
It might not sound like the nicest thing in the world, because 8.5 billion flies eating rotting food, manure and abattoir waste isn’t the nicest thing in the world UNLESS YOU’RE A FLY AND IF SO, HOW THE HELL ARE YOU READING THIS?, but the science is good, it’s ecologically sound and it makes commercial sense.
My only concern is that the insects will be:
housed in giant cages
Presumably, they’ve considered the size of their livestock and calculated the space between the bars of the cages accordingly, right?
Barry on the 7-1
Barry Glendinning on the Brazilian forward selection last night
You would think that Big Phil Scolari could go down to the Copacabana at any time of any day, throw a stick and hit someone who would be better up front than Fred.
Eina.
Toddler stuck in mop bucket rescued by firefighters
Yes. Seriously.
And it’s in my hometown of Sheffield, famous for knives, forks, the Tour de France and now – small children stuck in mop buckets.
Crews from South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service’s Dearne station in Rotherham, rescued an 18-month-old girl from a mop bucket at about 1pm today. The toddler, from Adwick road, Mexborough, was rescued safely and was not injured.
The fire service tweeted:
Child stuck in a mop bucket? No problem! 18 month old girl freed by Dearne firefighters without injury.A spokesman for the service added: “It was nothing too serious and was put out to show we do attend more than just fires. Most of the time we are called to people stuck in railings and that sort of thing.Personally I have never heard of something like this but it’s not unusual for us to release children.”
I have no particular comment on this, save for the fact that I’m glad the little girl was unhurt.
I just thought it was a cute story. Sadly, no pictures, but on the plus side, that does mean that you can let your imagination run riot.
I’m sure that this unfortunate event will never be mentioned again – especially on her 21st birthday.