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Show A5 Castle Valley Review, March 2009 The LIGHTER SIDE Dazed Naps are Hard to Come by When You're a Dragon Lord James L. Davis Although I am not entirely sure how it happened, I have recently discovered that I am a Dragon Lord. It is a tremendous responsibility for several reasons, not the least of which is because if you are not diligent in your responsibilities as a Dragon Lord the dragons that you lord over just might eat you. Well, in my case perhaps not. After all the dragons I lord over are in fact, bearded dragons, which are nothing more than large lizards, although my son will argue that fact with me for hours, mostly because my son will argue any fact with me at any time, day or night. My family is now the owner of two bearded dragons, for reasons that completely escape me. It could be because my family discovered that you can have lizards as pets and it is their intention to own two of every kind of pet known to man. I believe my family wants to do so because they are secretly trying to drive me insane, or it could possibly be because they are building an ark somewhere, unbeknownst to me. I say that my family has bearded dragons, but that is not entirely true. It was true that they were family pets the first two days after bringing them home, but after that the dragons actually belonged to me and my wife. As pets go I have discovered that bearded dragons aren’t that bad. They don’t shed all over your furniture, they don’t piddle on your floor and they don’t demand a whole lot in the way of attention. They are pretty much like a cat, with- News of the Weird Chuck Shepherd Lead Story Belgian workers take sick leave nearly four times as often as U.S. workers, mostly attributed to Belgian law, which grants full salary the first month and then government-guaranteed 80-percent pay indefinitely. A recent study, noted in a January Wall Street Journal report, found that only 5 percent of Belgian leave-takers were proven malingerers, but that the biggest medical problem now is easily-diagnosed "depression" (exacerbated by the worsening economy), leading to free-form medical leave-taking and creative treatments often unchallenged, such as for the man who frolicked on the soccer field, bought an Alfa Romeo, and reconnected with old friends (all of which, not surprisingly, said his doctor, lessened his depression). Fine Points of the Law -- On successive days in January in the courthouse in Sheboygan, Wis., 17-year-old Alan Jepsen and 17-year-old Norma Guthrie were each out the litter box. You have to clean up after them every few days, but in return you get to watch them eat bugs with great abandon. I didn’t realize that I disliked bugs as much as I do until I had to feed them to bearded dragons. It was then that I learned how much pleasure it is being a Dragon Lord. Every day we have to drop a handful of crickets into the lizards’ terrarium and watch as they stomp around like miniature dinosaurs stalking their prey. I have discovered that the lizards (sorry, dragons) have distinct personalities and their greatest personality trait is one of overwhelming hunger. Every time I enter the room where their terrarium is I can feel their eyes upon me, watching, waiting, hoping that I have brought them something to eat. The only problem with owning bearded dragons, as near as I have come to determine, is the fact that you have to feed them crickets. It is not the dragons that I loathe, it is the crickets. We keep the live crickets in their own little keeper that has four black tubes where the crickets gather until the time when I pull out one of the tubes and offer the dragons a meal of terrified crickets. Having a cricket keeper would not normally be a huge problem, but as I mentioned before, dragons are not our only pets. We also own two house cats, who would like nothing more than to free the crickets from their keeper so they could chase them all over the house. For that reason we have to keep the crickets safely hidden in our bedroom closet. I had never imagined what it would be like to have several dozen crickets living in my bedroom room closet. I had never imagined it because I did not think I was insane. Apparently I am because I no longer have to imagine it. It is a reality. Normally the crickets in their keeper had been too terrified to do a whole lot in the way of chirping, so they had not been a huge nuisance. But apparently in the last batch of crickets there was one who had a death wish far greater than the other crickets, because it spent a great deal of its time attempting to drive me insane with its incessant chirping when I was doing my best to enjoy my Sunday afternoon nap. After a few minutes of listening to the cricket I decided that it was time to feed the dragons. I was not sure it was actually time to feed the dragons because I think my wife had already done so, but I figured I was the Dragon Lord and if I wanted to feed the dragons, it was certainly within my power. So I listened carefully to the cricket keeper and determined which tube held the chirping cricket. I removed it from the keeper and tapped it into the dragon terrarium and the feasting began. charged with sexual assault for having consensual sex with their respective 14-year-old, opposite-sex companions. However, Jepsen was charged with a felony (maximum: 25 years in prison), and Guthrie was charged with a misdemeanor (maximum, 9 months). -- In January, a judge at Britain's Bristol Crown Court dropped the case against a 20-year-old man accused of robbing a driving instructor because the victim-witness was "too believable" in her testimony to the jury. Judge Jamie Tabor explained that the victim had only seen the defendant for a split-second, but that she appeared so sincere and courageous that the jury probably regarded her courtroom identification of the man as more authoritative than the mere glimpse deserved. that it would not pay refunds to survivors of a November 2008 Brisbane-to-Cairns train crash that killed two and injured nine. The difference, according to a Queensland Rail general manager, was that the 2009 trip was just getting underway from Cairns when it crashed, but that the 2008 trip, also near Cairns, was "95 percent over" by the time the deadly crash occurred (and thus, the survivors had basically reached their destination). Compelling Explanations -- Australia's Queensland Rail agency disclosed in January that it would quickly offer refunds to passengers on a Cairns-to-Brisbane train that crashed just outside Cairns, but reiterated at the same time Not My Fault -- Timothy Hoffman, 26, was awarded $76.6 million by a jury in Viera, Fla., in January for becoming paralyzed in a 2003 incident when, on a dare, he dove headfirst into the Indian River, which, unknown to him, was about a foot deep at that point. One reason for the large judgment may have been that the defendant, C&D Dock Works, one of whose employees may have been the one that issued the dare, is bankrupt and did not defend itself at the trial. (There was also evidence that Hoffman may have solicited the dare himself.) -- Paul Sanchez, 67, an "oc- I was happy, the dragons were happy and the offending cricket was quiet. I curled back up on the bed and closed my eyes. Which is about when the cricket started chirping again. I went to the next tube and looked inside. There were a dozen or more crickets cowering in the black tube, each looking at me as if to say, “we’re all being quiet in here.” I didn’t believe them and tapped them into the terrarium as well. The dragons were a little slow to snatch them up, but they did anyway and I went back to bed, which is when the chirping started back up. The dragons had now had the equivalent of two or more days worth of crickets to eat and still the offending cricket was somewhere in the keeper, taunting me with its chirp. Tapping the last of the crickets into the waiting mouths of the dragons it occurred to me that perhaps the dragons were far smarter than I had given them credit for. Perhaps they had learned how to chirp like a cricket. casional" golfer, filed a lawsuit in Brentwood, N.H., in February against the Candia Woods Golf Links for a 2006 incident in which his approach shot hit a yard marker in the fairway, bounced back, and struck him in the eye. Sanchez claimed the course owners were negligent in placing the sign in the fairway and also should have warned him that balls would bounce off of it. Ironies -- (1) The $500,000 top prize in Alaska's January statewide lottery, to benefit the organization Standing Together Against Rape, for victims of sexual assault, was won by Alec Ahsoak, 53, who coincidentally is a twice-convicted sex offender. (2) Sweden's Hallands Nyheter newspaper reported in January that a police officer had endured four operations at a private clinic in Gothenburg to correct a birth condition that made one leg shorter than the other, but operations on the longer leg cut off too much, so it is now shorter than the leg that used to be the shorter one. Continued on Next Page. |