Variety

Strange, but true animal tales

Have you heard the saying, 'Truth is stranger than fiction!' It means what is true or what has really happened is more surprising, unexpected and unaccountable than what is made up or imagined. Here are some true stories that are unexpected and more surprising than stories made up by story writers.

There are many strange stories about man's best friend, dogs, especially about their unusual and unpredictable behaviour which we cannot understand. This is one such story I picked out from an Australian newspaper, sometime back.

According to this story which took place in Kenya, a stray dog looking for food in a forest near Nairobi, had come across an abandoned baby. The dog had carried the baby across a busy road and over a barbed wire fence, safely to its own litter of puppies. Most of her puppies had died by then and perhaps she wanted another 'puppy' to care for, like her own.

The dog not only saved the life of this baby, but also looked after it until someone discovered the dog's adopted baby and took the baby to the Kenyatta National Hospital. The hospital staff had then adopted the baby and named the baby Angel. The dog had been given the name Mkombozi which in their language means 'saviour'.

The dog is a domestic animal living among humans, so obviously a human baby is not a strange thing to these animals. They see how humans care for their young ones, their puppies. But imagine a lioness caring for baby antelopes! Normally lions prey upon antelopes, but this too happened in Kenya way back in 2002. A lioness in the Sambura National park had been rearing some baby antelopes. The game rangers seeing how tenderly she mothered the antelopes, had been utterly baffled. They had watched from a distance how well she cared for them for a number of days, and named the lioness Kamuniak, which means 'Blessed One'. Unfortunately one day when the lioness was asleep, some male lions had killed and eaten up the little antelopes.

My other story is also about a dog, a Springer spaniel. Her owner had noticed that she was bloated and in discomfort and when she had vomited stones, her owner had rushed her to the veterinary surgery. There two vets had spent two hours removing stones from her stomach not just five or six or ten, but about 267 pebbles weighing 3 1/2 pounds! One vet had exclaimed 'this is the most amazing thing I have seen in my five years as a vet.' Swallowing stones is common among dogs and many have been brought to the vets for surgery. But no dog had been brought with so many stones. She could have died of this dinner of 267 stones. However the dog named Belle had recovered soon. On the advice of the vets, her owner had replaced the small pebbles in her courtyard with larger ones - too large for Belle to swallow.

If you have dogs who love to swallow whatever they come across, be on the lookout!

-Sumana Saparamadu

What's your hobby?

What are hobbies? Hobbies can be described as leisure time activities most children are engaged in and also enjoy a great deal.

The proverb "One man's meat is another man's poison" proves to us that our tastes vary, and our interests differ from person to person. So, if one likes to read books as his hobby, another may like to collect stamps. Some other person will love to listen to music while another will want to write short stories or collect coins.

As you may all be aware of, there are a large number of hobbies that people are interested in such as watching TV, writing short stories,composing poems, making ornaments with discarded material, playing games like chess, scrabble and draughts to name a few. What's your hobby?

You can have any amount of hobbies, but whatever the hobby may be, there is a great deal of importance attached to it. For example, take reading. When you read as a hobby, you become a very knowledgeable person, since you learn many things in different fields such as history, geography, science, international affairs, politics, current affairs and so on.

The famous saying by Sir Francis Bacon that "Reading Maketh a full man" is ample proof of this. You are a recognised, accepted and respected person among the general public if you are a well read and learned person.

Similarly there's so much knowledge you can gain from collecting stamps and coins as hobbies. You learn a lot about different countries, national leaders, prominent figures of society who have rendered a great service to the people, various important events and incidents, places of cultural value and of historical importance and so much more.

In addition to the accumulation of knowledge from these two hobbies, there have been instances where some people have had windfalls and because millionaires over night by simply presenting rare and old coins and stamps at international fairs and competitions, from what they had been collecting for a long time, as a hobby. Some have won overseas tours, and also been invited to attend international fairs.Some of you may have heard of great writers who first started writing as a hobby during their leisure time. Some of their masterpieces were included in the curricular of higher studies of the language later on and finally they became world eminent writers. However, these above-mentioned hobbies aren't the only ones that enhance one's knowledge and also bring fame and money.Playing chess as a hobby too is very important because children can improve their power of concentration, analytical strength, patience, promptness, alertness and also self-confidence through this game. Therefore, it is very important for every child to engage in some kind of hobby during their leisure. It is the duty of parents to orient their children to develop a genuine interest for some hobby from their small days because it would greatly benefit them and also keep them away from getting involved in the wrong type of activities.

- Jaliya Wijeyekoon