It’s an Odd World

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DETROIT — A sheep that made a surprise visit to a Detroit auto collision shop is getting a new home at a Michigan animal sanctuary.

Detroit auto shop sheep heading
for farm life

DETROIT — A sheep that made a surprise visit to a Detroit auto collision shop is getting a new home at a Michigan animal sanctuary.

The animal showed up at Nortown Collision & Glass Co. on the city’s east side on Tuesday, darting through an open door and running around for about 20 minutes before workers corralled the animal. The sheep, which may have been destined for slaughter, was OK.

The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News report it was taken Wednesday to a Michigan Humane Society facility. Group spokesman Ryan McTigue said the sheep will be “living the good life” at the Sanctuary And Safe Haven for Animals Farm in Manchester.

Detroit Police Sgt. Michael Woody says: “He got away. He deserves his life.”

Endangered Israeli birds face threat
in Hezbollah

JERUSALEM — Israeli eagles dangerously endangered by pesticides, electrical wires and poachers now apparently face a new threat: Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar website boasted of capturing an eagle with Israeli labeling that carried a transmission device on its back. It claimed the bird was an Israeli spy.

But Israeli ornithologist Yossi Leshem said Thursday he was tracking the bird for research and was “incredibly frustrated” it was harmed. Leshem has specialized in the Bonelli’s Eagle for decades and says they are in great peril. He says just nine pairs of mating age remain in Israel.

He said Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkey all targeted migrating birds from Israel before and made similar unfounded espionage accusations. Egyptian authorities recently arrested a stork accused of spying for Israel.

Evidence suggests early Britons ate roasted toads

LONDON — Britons sometimes make fun of the French for feasting on frog. But now a new discovery suggests their prehistoric ancestors may have had a taste for toad.

The University of Buckingham said Wednesday that a promising excavation near Stonehenge has unearthed a host of clues about the diet of prehistoric Britons. Among them: A tiny, partially burnt leg bone that suggests the hunter-gatherers living in what’s now known as the United Kingdom snacked on amphibians.

The charred bone was found alongside the remains of fish and aurochs — the wild ancestor of today’s cattle — at a site called Blick Mead in the town of Amesbury, about 85 miles west of London.

Natural History Museum and University College, London, researcher Simon Parfitt said that the dig had provided experts a glimpse of a Mesolithic menu that also included fish, hazelnuts, berries, deer and boar. He called the discovery of what appeared to be leftovers from a meal of roast toad “really intriguing.”

“Being English, we don’t eat frogs,” he noted.

The toad finding has yet to be peer-reviewed, and one expert — Bournemouth University archaeologist Tim Darvill — expressed skepticism over what he called “the frog story.”

Still, he and other outside experts voiced excitement about the dig where the bone was found, with Darvill calling it “the most significant find in the Stonehenge landscape for many years.”

Andy Rhind-Tutt, a former mayor of Amesbury and the chairman of the Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, said the dig was turning up thousands of flint tools and animal bones, pointing to what he said may turn out to be a major prehistoric settlement just over a mile from the world-famous circle of standing stones.

Parfitt said the find suggests “that there’s more to the site than just Stonehenge.

“There’s a much deeper history to the specialness of that place,” he said.

By wire sources