When one considers the words “courage” and “fortitude”, the words “adorable baby penguins” don’t spring instantly to mind. But, if today’s news is any indication, maybe they should. Also, Massachusetts finally shows some concern for a family member who usually gets stiffed in the will: the family dog. All this, smaller portions of beer in Britain, and Jenny McCarthy really was horribly wrong, today in Uproxx News.
First, we’ve got the story of a baby penguin in the Berlin zoo, which was known only as number 459. 459 wasn’t happy with her enclosure. She wanted more, to explore, to discover, to dare. So, as Berlin got slammed with winter weather and her handlers were distracted, 459 managed to jump the fence and took herself on a personal walking tour of the zoo.
This would simply be cute, except 459 decided to one up every animal in the zoo, including the handlers, and entered the lion enclosure. Fortunately for her, the lions didn’t like the cold and were snoozing in their den. On the other hand, that also stuck the zookeepers with the task of getting a penguin that blithely walks into danger out of an enclosure full of creatures that viewed it as a penguin nugget. They wound up resorting to the classic trick of laying down a line of herring and grabbing 459 as she walked out of the enclosure, possibly with a comically large net and a mallet.
There’s one good thing that came out of this, beyond a cute story. 459 now has a name: Leona.
Meanwhile, animal lovers in Massachusetts are trying to get dogs their fair share of their owners’ wills. An ongoing problem in the Bay State is that pets have money set aside for their care by their deceased owners, but the trustees abscond with the funds, abandoning the dog. Which kind of makes us wonder what kind of jerks live in Massachusetts that they steal money from a dog, and whether there’s a special level of hell for people who do that. If not, there really should be.
Anyway, instead of being a polite suggestion from beyond the grave, the dead person’s wishes about their pets would be an enforceable mandate. Believe it or not, there’s actually a good reason behind this: when the trustee steals from the puppy, it’s the town that winds up taking care of it. So essentially, the bill on the table would end an ongoing form of doggie welfare, except welfare recipients don’t get sent to the gas chamber, despite the greatest dreams of Pat Buchanan.
The bill, currently sitting on the Governor’s desk, would also allow people to set up trust funds for their pets, so that younger dogs can buy tallboys of PBR, ridiculous hoodies, and perform ridiculous performance art pieces that become hilarious memes.
That is what you have to do to get a trust fund, right?
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- 459 goes on a name quest and is highly successful. All hail Leona the Fearless! (National Post)
- Puppies now don’t have to worry about what’ll happen to them after the owners pass on. And have better trust funds than you. (Reuters)
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- Speaking of beers, Britain is facing one of the most worrying crisis in the history of alcohol. Namely, they’re about to be faced with smaller beers. The pint, which has been British beer tradition for three hundred years or so, was actually required by law, which proves Britain to be the most civilized of nations. Apparently the British government is convinced that this will reduce Britain’s taste for alcohol. We think a better policy would be to send us their beer and they can have ours. That should reduce their drinking quickly. (Washington Post)
- Meanwhile, elsewhere in Britain, the study that argued there was a link between vaccines and autism has been definitively proved as a fraud. So, let’s just repeat this: there is no link between vaccinating your child or yourself against horrible diseases that we’ve been trying to wipe from the face of the Earth, and a mental disorder dealing with structures that the vaccines can’t even reach, Jenny McCarthy. (CNN)
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- The British spent over $34 billion on beer in 2009. Which makes sense, if you’ve ever eaten toad-in-the-hole. (Guardian)
- Oh, and there were over 72,000 preventable diseases between 2007 and 2010 thanks to that study. (Jenny McCarthy Body Count)
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