Via Radar Magazine…

Katie Couric, thin-skinned? Maybe just a little. In the just-out January issue of Esquire, the first-ever female network anchor makes it clear that she reads her own press—and remembers it. “There are a lot of circling vultures that will eat you alive,” she tells interviewer Tom Junod. “You guys even take a shot at me. You have something in the November issue, something about how since I’ve become an anchor, you don’t know me anymore. You don’t know me anymore? Bite me.”

America’s sweetheart is no fan of bloggers, either. “My younger daughter read something on some AOL blog, and it really bothered her,” she says. “I said, ‘When people say something like that, they’re not talking about me as a person, they’re talking about me as a commodity.’”

Feisty, I like it! And maybe Katie (or at least her daughter) does catch The Trolley Dodgers Podcast…the world may never know.

Interesting…

Dec. 13, 2006 — A new fossil discovery from China shows that a tiny squirrel-like creature glided through the air during the age of dinosaurs, more than 75 million years earlier than scientists had documented that ability in a mammal.

The creature might have even beaten birds into the air.

Like today’s flying squirrels, it stretched a furry membrane between its limbs to provide an airfoil for gliding after it jumped from a tree. But it’s not related to anything living today.

Read the entire story on Discovery.

Oh, you’re killing me guys…

A PROFESSIONAL forager from Kent is to front a new BBC show called Roadkill Café.

Fergus Drennan will use the programme to promote mown-down foxes, rats, hedgehogs, badgers and squirrels over processed food.

Mr Drennan, who describes himself as a “vegetarian who eats roadkill”, runs a company called Wild Man which sells fresh mushrooms, nuts, berries and weeds.

Eating roadkill, said Mr Drennan, is acceptable because “it’s not been killed on your behalf”.

He added: “It’s not factory farmed or pumped full of antibiotics. It is fresh, local, seasonal and nutritionally rich.”

The series will be screened on BBC Three next year.

Via kentnews.co.uk

When will they learn?

Lafayette, LA — A squirrel crossing a power line on Gilman Street near Cora Drive left 10,165 LUS customers in the dark this morning.

The outage occurred at 9:41 a.m. with power back up to about 9,000 customers within six minutes, said Terry Huval, LUS executive director.

By 10:32 a.m., the remaining customers had their power restored, Huval said.

“The cause of the outage was a squirrel that placed itself in a bad position,” Huval said.

Read the full story at The Daily Advertiser.

Too funny and yet something else that we should hope that PETA doesn’t find out about, because you can be assured that they have an opinion on the matter.

CHICAGO - Squirrels hit the genetic lottery with their chubby cheeks and bushy tails. It’s hard to imagine picnickers tossing peanuts and cookies at the rodents if they looked like rats.

But good looks alone don’t get you through Chicago winters. Nor do they help negotiate a treacherous landscape of hungry cats, cars and metal traps.

So how do they do it? And why do they search, huddle, dart, and sometimes forget where they hid their nuts?

Joel Brown aims to find out.

“We’re trying to get a glimpse of what your life is like if you are a city squirrel,” said Brown, a biologist at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

He and a team of students will trap squirrels in Chicago and its suburbs this winter, taking skin samples for DNA analysis. They’ll strap collars on them and watch what they do. And they’ll attach threads to acorns and hazelnuts, then see where the squirrels take them and when they eat them.

Read the entire story at Yahoo!

On her blog, Katie Couric questions Vlady…

Investigators from around the world are now involved in trying to crack one of the biggest spy scandals in recent memory: the death–by poisoning–of a former KGB agent, living in London, who was a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Alexander Litvinenko was killed by what one expert called a “tiny nuclear bomb” in the form of the rare radioactive substance Polonium 210…and, on his deathbed, he said Putin did it.

And then last week, more bombshells: the former Russian prime minister was also poisoned. An Italian security expert, who told Litvinenko that they were targets, tested positive for radiation poisoning…and so did Litvinenko’s wife.

While Russia denies that Putin is behind it, all these coincidences raise serious questions about an important American ally.

President Bush once said he looked into Putin’s soul and saw a good man.

But maybe it’s time for a second look.

…I have to say that I actually like this stance from Katie. More please…

You must check out the photo over at SlashGear…

If you’re anything like me you’re currently wearing a jumper, drinking strong coffee and harbouring a love-hate relationship with squirrels. On good days, I think they’re cute little fellas with their bright eyes and capable claws; on bad days, I think they’re disgusting rats with show-off tails. Either way, I know that they cause havoc in gardens eating all the food people put out for the birds (don’t get me started on birds!) and becoming fat little barons. Well, look out squirrels, because you’re going down!

The Rollerfeeder is a precariously-balanced drum of bird-food which, when a squirrel sets foot on it, tumbles round and dumps the rodent unceremoniously to the ground. A carefully weighted bottom (just like my third wife) then rightens the drum so that small birds can again feast. Large birds are probably unable to eat from this, due to being too heavy, but then they should lose some weight anyway unless they want to be cat food.

…PETA is going to be all over this.

If you have $80 to shell out for one of these, you can buy one at Solutions.

Yet again…

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) _ The lights are back on after a squirrel jumping on power equipment knocked out power to 6,500 Twin Falls residents yesterday.

The squirrel landed on equipment at a substation causing an electrical short and killing the animal.

Power went out at about 11 a-m and didn’t come on until an hour later.

[via KIDK-TV]

More good stuff out of Edinburgh, Scotland…

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Dec. 8 (UPI) — Scottish officials hope contraception can bring the numbers of a U.S. import, the gray squirrel, under control, allowing the native red squirrel to survive.

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive Council told The Scotsman that experiments with a “fertility control agent” are being done on a number of species. He said the method has been used successfully in the United States.

The gray squirrels would be captured in humane traps and injected with a contraceptive.

The newspaper joked that the gray squirrels, like the U.S. soldiers stationed in Britain during World War II, are “over here, over-cute and over-sexed.” They have been so fertile that in Scotland there are estimated to be 3 million grays and only 160,000 reds.

[via United Press International]

Squirrels are damaging houses and running rampant in Pennsylvania…

We have a large hole in the side of our house. Damn squirrels!

We have a real squirrel venturing periodically into the attic. I’m reminded, in fact, of the scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation when the squirrel jumps out of the tree. Someone yells “squirrel!” Panic ensues and destruction follows. Geeky Girl freaks out when she hears the squirrel. It is primarily underneath her room and so she believes the squirrel can get to her. She, like the people in Christmas Vacation, has a tendency to panic.

[via Geeky Mom]