DUCK PARADE
Every morning at 9:45 a.m., on Vergenoegd Wine Estate, in Stellenbosch, South Africa, about a thousand Indian Runner ducks run from a gate and run around the white manor house on a manicured gravel path, according to NPR. They might remind one of a military formation where they run in formation, all facing forward and all turning at together at the same time. And they do this twice a day.
The reason? To scare off pests from the vineyard. It’s not a new idea. According to the Livestock Conservancy, runner ducks have been used in Asia for thousands of years to glean snails and insects from rice paddies by eating them, and, no doubt, scaring some away. Denzil Matthys, the duck caretaker at the vineyard, told NPR that the ducks help make the farm sustainable. We try to keep a pesticide-free farm by using the ducks, he says. They help us not to use poison on the farm.
By Joe Bavier, Tanisha Heiberg and Emma Rumney CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - For South African winemaker Vergenoegd Lw, the pandemic could have been a disaste.
For South African winemaker Vergenoegd Löw, the pandemic could have been a disaster but a bitter trade war between China and Australia has thrown the 325-year-old estate a lifeline.
As
Western Stars comes to a close, the countrypolitan orchestral swoops found throughout the album are replaced by gentle acoustic fingerpicking, plaintive piano, muted pedal steel guitar and mallet-struck tom-toms. And the weather-beaten men who inhabit the record are replaced by a long-shuttered motel, outside of which Springsteen recalls an affair he once had there and drinks to its memory.
From:
Much of the material on
Letter to You was inspired by the 2018 death of George Theiss, the singer of Springsteen s first band, the Castiles. But it s not hard to hear the record s lovely final track, I ll See You in My Dreams, and think Springsteen is also singing about late E Street Band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. As with
Farewell, emotional support kangaroos. It’s high time the feds cracked down on flying petting zoos
As plane passengers took off with their emotional support animals, so did their stories, and the stories were wild.
We chuckled at first at the Indian Runner duck in the Captain America diaper aboard an American Airlines puddle jumper and shook our heads in disbelief at the incontinent pig booted from a U.S. Airways flight.
Then we gasped in horror at news reports that emotional support animals had bitten flight attendants and mauled passengers, including a pit bull that allegedly attacked a 5-year-old girl at Portland International Airport. The headlines about misbehaving emotional support animals grew so numerous that they became their own journalism genre.