FLORIDA
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You might be a
Floridian if:
You exhibit a
slight twitch when introduced to anyone with the
first names
of Charley,
Frances, Ivan or Jeanne.
Your freezer never
has more than $20 worth of food in it any given
time
You're looking at
paint swatches for the plywood on your windows,
to accent
the house color
You think of your
hall closet/safe room as "cozy"
Your pool is more
accurately described as "framed in" than
"screened in"
You no longer
worry about relatives visiting during the summer
months
You now understand
what that little "2% hurricane deductible"
phrase really
means
Your Street has
more than 3 "NO WAKE˛ signs posted
You now own 5
large ice chests
Your parrot can
now say" hammered, pounded and hunker down"
You recognize
people in line at the free ice, gas and plywood
locations
You stop what
you're doing and clap and wave when you see a
convoy of power
company trucks
come down your street
You're depressed
when they don't stop
You're thinking of
getting your wife the hardhat with the ear
protector and
face shield for
Christmas
You now think the
$6000 whole house generator seems reasonable
You fight the urge
to put on your winter coat and wool cap and
parade around
in front of your
picture window, when you finally get power and
your
neighbor across
the street, with the noisy generator, doesn't
get electric
You ask your
sister up north to start saving the Sunday Real
Estate
classifieds
You will never,
ever, ever again say, łThis one ain't coming"
You go to fill
your gas tank up for the 3rd Hurricane only to
realize you've
only driven 51
miles since the last one.
You walk out to
the pool area where you once had a full wet-bar,
party area,
lanai, pool cage,
etc and now the the wide open feeling and the 3
plastic
chairs and a
cooler for a table don't seem that bad.
You learn to
appreciate the upside.... why clean the house
when all the
ceilings still have to come down and be
replaced?!
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A Rockville
animal-rights activist has sent out
a mass mailing to property owners in
Garrett County, Md., stating they
should not allow
bear
hunters on their properties because
40 percent of them are drug addicts,
drunks or mentally unstable.
Earle D. Hightower, chairman of the Institute for Public Safety, a
27-member group mainly concerned
with such issues as traffic and
smog, acknowledges the statistic
printed on 600 cards is phony, but
says it's all for the cause.
"My personal opinion is that anybody who goes
out and shoots helpless animals has
a psychiatric problem," said
Mr. Hightower, 82, a former hunter
and World War II veteran.
"Logically,
statistically if you look at a
sample of the regular population,
certain people will have some kind
of psychiatric problems."
The hunt is scheduled for Oct. 25 through 30. It will end when
hunters have killed 30
bears
out of an estimated statewide
population of 500. If fewer than 30
are killed, a second hunt will be
held Dec. 6 through 11. It will be
Maryland's first
black bear
hunt in 51 years.
Steven Christian, president of the Maryland Sportsman's
Association, is not amused by Mr.
Hightower's efforts.
"I am exploring my options right now
for what can really be done about
this," said Mr. Christian,
president of the Maryland
Sportsman's Association.
"I believe
this gentleman overstepped the
bounds of decency."
Mr. Hightower said he plans to distribute another 400 of the
5-by-8-inch cards because he is
concerned about residents' safety.
"You hear about hunting accidents all the
time," he said.
"Of course
every year somebody gets shot during
a hunting accident."
Mr. Hightower, who maintains he is a former National Rifle
Association member, said he also is
concerned about the
"helpless"
bears.
"These black
bears
are reclusive animals," he
said. "They
don't like to be around people and
they are easy to shoot."
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources has issued 200
permits for the hunt.
Officials estimate that about 400 of the state's roughly 500
bears
are in a section of Allegany County
west of Cumberland. They want the
hunt, in part, to reduce the
likelihood of
bear-human conflicts.
A judge in Prince George's County has scheduled a hearing Oct. 18
on a lawsuit filed by
animal-protection advocates in
September seeking to stop the hunt.
Their petition claims state officials used flawed science and
violated statutory deadlines in
authorizing the hunt.
In September, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, approved a
plan to allow the hunt, reversing a
policy instituted by his
predecessor, Gov. Parris N.
Glendening, a Democrat.
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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand's deer pizzle trade is facing its stiffest
test - the growing use of a Viagra substitute by Chinese
men.
About 200,000 of the deer penises, complete with testicles, are
sold to China each year.
"For a long time men believed that the
larger the pizzle, the stronger their own would be,"
said Murray Hamer, Oriental trade manager for the Wanaka-based
Alpine Deer Group. Now the market, mainly in northern
China, is gradually declining.
"The belief in the sexual vigour of
pizzles is slowly dying out. Modern Chinese men believe
they don't work. They have turned to the Chinese version
of Viagra and are getting results."
Frozen pizzles from New Zealand are dried in China and sold in four
grades - under 10 inches (25.5 cm), 10 to 12 inches, 12 to
14 inches and over 14 inches. Color, length, circumference
and weight are all important. In some cases they can be as
long as 20 inches, but most are around 12 to 14 with a
circumference of a 50c piece.
Mr Hamer, who has dealt in deer co-products for 34 years, said it
was important to leave a ring of hair around the pizzle's
foreskin to prove it was from a deer. Sometimes
unscrupulous Chinese traders substituted sheep testicles
for the deer's because they were twice as big and the
extra weight made them worth more.
The pizzles were generally served in a soup, after being boiled for
hours with herbs. Sometimes, a three-pizzle soup was made,
from deer, snakes and seals, and served in slices. They
could also be found whole in alcoholic drinks, similar to
the mesquite worm in tequila.
Mr Hamer said he had tried pizzle soup,
"but it was simply awful". |
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