A Look at the Paper

FLORA & FAUNA

If the human race would just quiet down, news from the animal world would easily fill all departments of the newspapers. Last week animal stories were pouring in.

Some of them plainly belonged on the back pages among the shipping and travel notes. At LaGuardia airport, an American Overseas Airlines transport unloaded 30 dogs from Frankfurt, Germany and 97 reptiles from London, including twelve adders, three asps, four viperine snakes, 50 slowworms and two sandboas. On another plane from the Philippines, en route to The Bronx Zoo, came eleven tree shrews, three monkey-eating eagles, 14 giant cloud rats and 30 tarsiers. The tarsier (TIME, March 3), an insect-eating cousin of the monkey, is smaller than a squirrel, weighs only half a pound, has long fingers tipped by adhesive discs. Banjo-eyed is no word for a tarsier; its brown orbs suggest bass drums, at least.

On the Waterfront. For the feature writers, there was a tearjerker capped by a heroic rescue. In the few months since her arrival in this country, Susie, a self-made immigrant from India, had built herself an enviable reputation as the toughest cat on the Brooklyn waterfront. Last week Susie, who weighs 20 pounds and has killed as many as four rats in an hour, aimed a potent left at an adversary at the Kerr Steamship pier. The rat ducked and Susie's haymaker carried her clear off the pier. Gamely Susie struggled shoreward, ending up on a piling under the pier. Dockwallopers combed the waterfront looking for her. After six days, the longshoremen heard her calls and organized a successful rescue party.

An Heir for Heritage. There were the usual disasters in the air. Ducks, gulls, buzzards, and even whistling swans, reported the Wall Street Journal, were colliding with man-made airplanes at the rate of nine a week. Other birds, after being electrocuted and tied in sacks, were being hurled at speeds up to 500 m.p.h. at the windshields of stationary airplanes by scientists of the Civilian Aeronautics Administration.

There was an international item for the deep thinkers: zoos in London and Moscow had agreed on a trade in snakes; and a social tidbit for the gossip column: a cow of Victoria, Australia, whose husband had lived in Bucks County, Pa. since 1939, gave birth to a calf. It was all legitimate, however. The father, Imperial Regal Heritage of the Jersey Island Jerseys (he had left home on the last ship before the Nazis moved in), achieved his parenthood through artificial insemination over the longest distance yet recorded. Sealed in two thermos jugs and packed in ice, the Imperial Regal sperm (diluted to serve 100 cows) took the long way round to Australia. It was flown across the Atlantic in a British diplomatic pouch to prevent its being opened and spoiled by unsympathetic customs men.

The labor news was serious. Melody, the Washington, D.C. mockingbird who for years has shown up to sit on a lamppost and chirp with the National Symphony Orchestra at Washington's Water Gate concerts, was at it again. Melody, says the Symphony's manager, prefers Mozart and Schubert, but last week he gave a notable and unadvertised rendition of the bird part in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. "He did not strike a single false note," said Washington Evening Star Critic Alice Eversman. "If he could only read the scores--" sighed one of the musicians. But trouble lurked: Melody carries no card in Petrillo's Musicians' Union.

There was news aplenty for the sports fans. In San Francisco an enterprising rat fancier was busily training some 80 albino rats, their tails dyed distinguishing hues, to run races in a specially designed treadmill. "I just put 'em on the wheel and poke 'em," he said. "They get the idea pretty fast." In France, Britain's pigeon fanciers let loose some 4,000 prize birds in the France-to-England Grand National and Northeast Lancashire classics. Only 50% of the birds returned to England, but pigeon racers are philosophical about their hobby. What with the heat and bad flying weather, they admit, many a pigeon just hasn't the guts to stay the distance. Others meet French lady friends on the way home and decide to give up racing. What burned the pigeon people was the callous remark made by London's Columnist Paul Holt. "Well," he asked, "would you come home?"

Mystery in the Tower. But, as always, the big news of the week was a story of mystery, gore and violence. In the blood-stained Tower of London, MacDonald the Raven had been found brutally murdered, his head severed from his body. When the ravens leave the Tower, says an old legend, Britain's majesty will topple. As it searched in vain for MacDonald's murderer, Scotland Yard suspected the worst. Another raven was hastily imported to maintain the garrison, and an extra guard of six troops thrown about the remaining ravens. Solemnly and in full state the Tower Beef-Eaters buried MacDonald near the moat.

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