Big White Dogs Save the World’s Smallest Penguin in Australia

Just off the coast of Warrnambool city, Australia’s Middle Island is home to some very small residents, at the center of a big achievement.

The island is the only place in Australia where one can find the little penguin, which as the same suggests, is the world’s smallest—standing just 35 centimeters tall.

Starting in 1991, sedimentation and tidal patterns created a short window during the year when a tidal causeway allowed access to Middle Island from the mainland, which foxes quickly discovered and used to devastate this ground-nesting bird population.

Enter a rather unlikely hero. A local chicken farmer named Swampy Marsh had no professional background in conservation, but what he did understand over many years of keeping chickens was how to defeat or outfox foxes.

Running up to 5,000 chickens free-range, Marsh used Maremma dogs as guardians. These great big white pooches, officially known as Pastori Maremma-Abruzzesi owing to their Italian origins from the coastal region of Maremma, were excellent protectors of Marsh’s flock, and he figured that since little penguins are equally as defenseless against foxes, the same protection scheme would work.

And it did; though officially no dogs were allowed on Middle Island, the severity of the little penguins’ plight convinced Warrnambool city council to give it a go. Marsh then arrived with his dog Oddball and got to work.

 

Biden Spent $1 Billion To Get Schools Electric Buses. This Michigan District Says Theirs Hardly Work.

Michigan’s fourth-largest school district is having “significant” performance issues with its expensive electric buses, issues that come after the Biden administration spent $1 billion to “transform America’s school bus fleet” with electric models.

During an April 19 presentation to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education, the district’s environmental sustainability director, Emile Lauzzana, highlighted a number of issues with the district’s electric bus fleet. Those buses, Lauzzana said, have “a lot of downtime and performance issues” and aren’t “fully on the road,” despite the fact that they are “approximately five times more expensive than regular buses.” The infrastructure upgrades required to use the buses, meanwhile, were “originally estimated to be only about $50,000” but “ended up being more like $200,000,” according to Lauzzana. “I have a number of colleagues in different states who are facing similar challenges,” the district official lamented. “For the school bus market, it’s been challenging for us.”

 

If there’s a bandwagon, Hillary is ready to jump on it, dig her claws in, drain it dry with her probing hollow tongue, and wear its skin like Buffalo Bill.

“Do you want to fuck me?” Hillary whispered into the mirror. “I’d fuck me.”