Lucky and Rocky the dingo puppies have gone on a bit of a lockdown adventure at the Australian Reptile Park on the Central Coast.
The reptile park is closed due to lockdown, so Lucky and Rocky were given the chance to visit parts of the zoo usually off limits to dingoes. It was kind of like a school excursion.
The pups checked out various exhibits, where they saw iguanas and snakes and Elvis the giant five-metre crocodile. In fact, they had the chance to see all the other animals that call the reptile park home.
As Lucky and Rocky are only 13 and 14 weeks old respectively, they were chaperoned by keepers Hewin Hochkins and Nick Astermann.
Australian Reptile Park director Tim Faulkner said it was a strange time for everyone experiencing lockdown in Greater Sydney, but "these days feel normal for animals at the reptile park".
But wouldn't the animals miss the people? We ran a story in Odd Spot on Tuesday about penguins who were missing visitors at a zoo in Bangkok.
Anyhow, Tim says the park's keepers were "constantly providing new experiences for the animals to explore and express their natural behaviours".
The pups' excursion gave them the chance to "experience new sights, smells and surroundings".
"We just hope we can have everyone back here to meet Lucky and Rocky in person soon, once everything opens back up again."
He said Lucky had a "traumatic C-section birth", but has since gone from strength to strength under the watchful eye of her parents Fred and Adina and the keepers.
"Rocky came to the Australian Reptile Park from Hunter Valley Zoo to give Lucky some company, playtime with a fellow dingo pup and to give Fred and Adina a break from entertaining the energetic dingo puppy," he said.
Prognosis Negative
A colleague received a text from a pathology company giving a COVID-19 test result.
The text stated this: "Dear Shawn, Result: COVID-19 virus not detected (negative)".
This was obviously great news. The only problem was, our colleague's name isn't Shawn and she didn't do a COVID test. Plus, the text referred to Queensland Health.
"Wonder if Shawn is still waiting on his result, fearing the worst," she said.
Nonsensical Census
Eddie O'Reilly was filling out the census when he found that the software wouldn't accept an apostrophe for his surname.
"There are some characters in your response that are not allowed. Please amend your answer," the census program stated in red.
Eddie quipped on social media: "2021. Surrounded by a world of digital wonders but still unable to enter a name correctly in the census. Nation with one-third Irish ancestry still grappling with apostrophes."
Climate Irony
We've been following the coverage of the United Nations report on climate change, which the UN described as a code red for humanity".
The Newcastle Herald, in its coverage, noted that Glencore chief executive Gary Nagle had said that: "Our coal business will continue to develop projects and run our operations responsibly to meet Glencore's climate change commitments".
Sounds a tad ironic, that.
Mind you, Glencore has vowed to be "a net-zero emissions company by 2050".
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