How the Goonch stole swimming

"Bathers along India's Great Kali River were being eaten by giant goonches." (Harper's Weekly, Oct. 14)

When bathing in the Ganges,
Watch out for your phalanges!
Should the insatiable goonch
Go cruunch,
Instead of hallowed,
You could be swallowed.

Udderly silly

Cows communing one-on-one in a meadow: Having a teat-a-teat?

Pachyderm peccadilloes

(From Harper's Weekly):

Scientists found that elephants can do basic math.

In an unrelated story, an elephant in Portland, Oregon, named Rose-Tu (anagram of ouster) gave birth to a 286-pound calf and immediately began to kick it. (Maybe it refused to learn its multiplication tables.)

Among other dumb stunts,
Elephants
Will stampede,
With no heed
For decorum,
Or a quorum.
You'll see parties of eight
Congregate,
And two take a notion
To swing into motion,
For the sake of some kicks;
So the leftover six --
To escape jeers and laughter --
Must tag along after,
With no special pleasure.
From simple peer pressure.

Maybe the tuatara had a thread snake in his pants

In New Zealand a 111-year-old tuatara reptile, a remnant from the age of dinosaurs, impregnated his partner for the first time in decades. The lizard-like creature,
who now has three consorts, regained his interest in sex after zoologists removed a cancerous growth from his genitals.

A U.S. biologist in Barbados claimed to have discovered the world's smallest snake, which, at less than 4 inches long, may be the smallest that snakes can possibly be. Barbadians insisted that they already knew about the animal, which they call a "thread snake."

(-From Harper's Weekly)

Even at an age extremely ripe,
This rascal has no room to gripe:
The scientists having restored his sperma
Tazoa, he's once again tuatara firma.

Presenting a lemurick

The current New Yorker has a short piece about Bill James, the famous baseball historian, sighting what he insists was a lemur in a neighborhood of Boston near Fenway Park.

The lemur hails from Madagascar,
A place as strange and remote to me
As NASCAR.
To run across, in your own back yard, a lemur
Would feel like a kick
In the femur.

Cell phones driving you batty?

Batgirl lives!
A British teenager who assumed that tremors in her bosom were caused by her vibrating mobile phone found a baby bat nestling in the padding of her 34FF bra. (From Harper's Weekly)

In other news relating to bats:
The World Health Organization warned people not to go into Ugandan bat caves after a Dutch tourist died from the Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola. (From Harper's Weekly)

We assume the Bat cave in Gotham is OK.

The bat thrives on echolocation,
The same as the real-estate maven,
Whose mantra -- which rules her vocation --
She chants evermore, like Poe's raven.
"Location, location, location" --
Qouth the Realtor, evermore.

Animal News

Geneticists were developing bugs that eat woodchips and excrete petroleum...

Rats, it was discovered, are more likely to cannibalize their young if their cages are clean...

Giant iguanas continued their conquest of South Florida, surrounding Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioner Bob Kanjian at a golf course in Lake Worth. "I had 25 to 30 iguanas," he said, "staring at me while I was playing."

(From Harper's Weekly)