Who've thought it?

by David Grand
December 18, 2003

Here's a few eye-openers I plucked out of the papers you may have missed that I hope will provide a brief respite from your hectic Christmas shopping and slipping and sliding on the ice like a seal:

• Going hog wild in Texas . About 2 million wild hogs are rooting throughout Texas damaging crops, raising havoc with wildlife, and reproducing at a rate that makes rabbits look like they're practicing birth control. And trying to kill 'em off with guns isn't easy, what with their tough, thick hides and weighing up to 400 pounds. Maybe they could hire wranglers to lasso 'em, or place baited traps in the creeks and rivers they use as their interstate network. But either way, they'd be as hard to capture as a tiger with a mosquito net.
   
• A doggone freak of nature. Now, I've heard of three-legged chickens and of a rhino born with two horns, but not till now of a five- legged dog that was found running loose near a North Carolina state park. Vets removed the extra rear left leg as well as the other more fully developed left leg because it was rotated on a 90-degree angle making it useless. But it ended OK, for the lady who found her adopted that three- legged dog she named Popcorn, albeit that Hopalong might be more fitting.
  
• Escape artist back in pen. After breaking out twice, an escapee who goes by the name of Little Joe is back in isolation watching his favorite cartoons. And because of his wanderlust, he won't appear in the reopening of Boston's Franklin Park Zoo's gorilla exhibit in January with the other apes, who are in a holding pen banging on plastic drums, blowing toy horns and listening to classical music and rock 'n' roll. Who knows? They could become a famous "hard rock" group someday.
  
• Turtle gives off distress signal. That's who the U.S. Coast Guard found was behind the emergency signal they picked up from a beacon off the Bermuda coast. And after conducting an extensive air/sea search, they located it and discovered a turtle tangled in its dangling rope. I hope they freed it instead of making turtle soup out of him.
  
• Lindbergh led double life. DNA tests in Berlin have proven claims by three Germans that Lindy was their father. Apparently he wasn't content with having six children with his American wife, spending five to 14 days with his Fraulein and offspring in Munich three times a year until he died in 1974. To his credit, he did set up trust funds for the kids and helped buy a family home. (At least he was able to fly there much quicker than the 33 hours it took for him to reach Paris in 1927.)
  
• A thorny (and horny) Bush. It looks like Ned, the younger brother of the Prez, has become a "thorn in his side," after the disclosure of his sexual escapades in Asia were revealed in a deposition taken as part of his divorce in March. It also brought to light his lucrative and questionable business dealings, especially about a contract he had with the Grace Semiconductor Corp. As he admitted, he knew zip about semiconductors, and had done really nothing to earn the $2 million he was to be paid in that company's stock. But he added, "I personally object to the assumption that they were investing $2 million in me." And when asked what he did to earn $15,000 every three months as co-chairman of the Crest Investment Company, he said he "provided Crest miscellaneous consulting services," like "answering phone calls when the other co- chairman sought his advice."

As concerns his trysts with women on his trips to Asian countries, he stated "they'd simply knocked on his hotel door, entered and had sex with me, and didn't ask to be paid nor did I offer to." What did he think brought them there? Because they found him irresistible? To improve their countries' relationships with the U.S. by having sex relations with him? Or was it because whoever sent them to his door were hoping to gain favor with him and be repaid, in turn, when they needed a favor. That's some quid pro quo.   (The only time I ever got an unexpected knock on the door in any hotel where I've stayed was when a drunk mistook my room number for his.)

Oh well, at least the president can take comfort in knowing he's not alone in being embarrassed by a brother, such as Carter was by his brother marketing "Billy's Beer" and Clinton by his brother Roger trying to broker pardons at the end of his administration. But as they say, "every family tree produces nuts."