It seems to be trifecta day in fowl news.
Item: It is generally not a good idea to shoot your wife's pet chicken. She might just shoot you in return.
"We don't know if it was an accident or if it was on purpose," Sgt. Clint Riley said. "It depends who you ask."
Riley said the couple had been drinking for much of Monday while they did yard work at their rented home in the town northwest of Eugene, and they began arguing after Stephen Gray shot the chicken with a .44-caliber handgun.
Deputies said he was then hit with a shot from a .22-caliber rifle, and is recovering. Mary Gray was arraigned Tuesday on an assault charge.
Guns, alcohol and chickens do not mix.
Item: Microsoft is giving lessons in the Latvian language! Repeat after me: Vista, fowl, Vista, fowl. It seems the word Vista means just that in Latvian. It also has a slang meaning that is somewhat less flattering.
RIGA (AFP) – As global software giant Microsoft proudly previewed its Windows Vista operating system, in the small Baltic nation of Latvia, people were clutching their sides about the system's name — which means 'fowl' in Latvian.
Worse still, it's a slang term for a frumpy woman.
"Everybody in my office bursts out laughing whenever I start talking about the new operating system," 26-year-old customer assistance manager Zanis, who works in the Latvian capital, Riga, told AFP.
"Sure, the Microsoft people in the US cant be expected to understand all languages, but this really is funny," he said.
Arvis, an IT manager of a chain of casinos in Riga, was also chuckling about Microsoft Frump. Or Fowl. No, make that Vista.
But, in an odd sort of way, he thinks the off-target name has hit the mark in Latvia.
"My people giggle about 'Vista', but I think it is positive because there are not many computer-related things that make you laugh," he said.
Raise your hand if you didn't already know Vista would be a fowl product. Anyone who has battled with Windows XP expected no less.
Item: Scientists are proudly pointing to their latest effort to track the spread of bird flu: Radio controlled swans! Oh sure, they say they're just tracking the waterfowl, but we know better.
Ten whooper swans were captured in far eastern Mongolia, near the borders of Russia and China, by an international team of scientists in early August as part of a study to shed light on how wild birds may be involved in spreading bird flu.
The whooper swans were chosen for the experiment because large numbers of the species have died in Mongolia and western China in the past two years. Tests verified that some of them were infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The H5 and H7 types of avian influenza cause very high death rates in poultry and are blamed for the vast majority of bird flu cases in humans, with the H5N1 bird flu strain killing an estimated 141 people.
An international team of scientists will track the birds' migration routes to glean information to aid in the fight against bird flu.
We strongly suspect that these radio controlled waterfowl are up to no good. But we can't prove it. So we'll leave to to the 9/11 conspiracy theorists to come up with the real "TRUTH". They're much better at spinning something out of thin air than we are here in the Crabitat.
