Sheep bought to maintain grass at churchyard end up ruining graves.

If you’re looking to save money on mowing a graveyard lawn make sure the sheep you buy to graze there don’t also have a taste for flowers.

That’s what happened when Holy Trinity Church’s plan to use livestock to keep grass levels low went awry.

Although the ten sheep did eat the grass, they also went a step further by munching on flowers and gifts left at the Berkshire gravesites, according to the Reading Post.

‘The condition is awful – basically they’ve ruined all the flowers and bent forward one of the headstones, and there is a lot of debris over the graves,’ said Nicola Millard, who has grandparents buried at the site in Grazeley.

The church’s Reverend Chris Leslie defended the decision to use the ewes and said the method had been around for a long time.

He added: ‘There is no source of income for mowing of the churchyard and the use of sheep in this way keeps the grass short.’

(Credit; The Metro)

Coo blimey: Peace is world’s oldest pigeon ever at 24.

Peace prospers: Pigeon Peace, aged 24, and owner Valerie Whittingham (Picture: INS)

Retired racer Peace is believed to be the world’s oldest pigeon at 24 – that’s 147 years in bird time.

The old bird has lived 16 years longer than the average feathered friend and is still going strong.

His owner Valerie Whittingham took him under her wing nearly 20 years ago when she spotted him recovering in a nest box at a rescue centre.

It’s the third time the bird lover has owned the world’s oldest pigeon.

Her first old bird, Farewell Farthing, lived to the ripe age of 22 in 2002, before another pigeon, Old Man, beat that record by almost a year.

But a ringlet around Peace’s ankle shows he is 24 years and 188 days, so he is now the cock of the coop.

Mrs Whittingham puts the longevity of her pets down to the top-quality food she feeds her birds.

She said: ‘Peace did not have the best start in life. When he came to me he could not fly and was full of parasites. Now he is a healthy looking bird, despite his age.

‘Seven or eight years is good for a pigeon and he’s three times that. He’s a lovely old bird,’ added Mrs Whittingham of Ashford, Middlesex.

Peace prospers: Pigeon Peace, aged 24, and owner Valerie Whittingham (Picture: INS)

(Credit; The Metro)

World’s first robot suicide? Android ‘rebels’ against monotonous housework.

Austrian fireman claim to have witnessed the world’s first ever robot suicide after a cleaning robot apparently rebelled against the monotony of work (Picture: CEN)

Has the world just witnessed its first ever robot suicide?

Tedious housework was seemingly too much for one cleaning robot to take, when it apparently rebelled and decided to end it all.

The android was given the tiresome task of cleaning up some spilt cereal before it climbed on to a kitchen hotplate where it was destroyed, according to reports in Austria.

It had reportedly grown weary of being forced to clean the same house every day and decided to become a martyr to the robot cause.

‘Somehow it seems to have reactivated itself and made its way along the work surface where it pushed a cooking pot out of the way and basically that was the end of it,’ explained fireman Helmut Kniewasser, who was called to tackle the blaze at Hinterstoder in Kirchdorf.

‘It pretty quickly started to melt underneath and then stuck to the kitchen hotplate. It then caught fire. By the time we arrived, it was just a pile of ash.’

A robot (not pictured) took its own life (Picture: File)

He added: ‘The entire building had to be evacuated and there was severe smoke damage particularly in the flat where the robot had been in use.

‘It’s a mystery how it came to be activated and ended up making its way to the hotplate

‘I don’t know about the allegations of a robot suicide but the homeowner is insistent that the device was switched off.’

It took an hour to clean and make the building safe. The homeowner plans to sue the robot’s manufacturer.

(Credit; The Metro)

Non-Swimming Goldfish.

Blackpool Man Makes Life Vest For Non-Swimming Goldfish.

TO Blackpool, where Leighton Naylor has made a lifejacket for his pet fish Einstein.

Naylor says Einstein would do tricks: “Then he sank to the bottom, stuck on his side, and couldn’t go any further. He just looked depressed, the poor fish. I was heartbroken. I thought I’m going to have to do something about this.”

He got tubes.

Naylor adds: “People have said I’m crazy but every animal is a valued family member… I’ve tried to train all of my fish but Einstein’s my star pupil. He can swim through my fingers and he was getting into fish football when he fell sick.”

(Credit; Anorak)

Cute alert:

Exhausted owl takes a break on a canoe deck.

This little guy had one hoot of a day after being rescued from a freezing cold lake in Finland before deciding to take a break on the edge of a canoe deck.

The exhausted and soaking northern hawk owl was found stranded in Lake Tuusula, north of Helsinki by local adventurer Pentti Taskinen.

The owl was taken safely back ashore and dried off before it was able to fly to the forest.

Unlike many other owls, the northern hawk owls are active during the day, but also feed on small rodents, mammals as well as other birds.

They are often found in north America, Serbia and northern Scandinavia.

(Credit; The Metro)

‘Bionic’ tortoise with amputated leg walks again thanks to Lego wheel,

A piece of Lego has helped give a disabled tortoise a new lease of life.

Schildi, who has been billed as the bionic tortoise, was facing an uncertain future after losing his leg and being discarded by his owners.

But now the creature has a brighter outlook following a procedure to fit him with a toy building block in Baden, Germany, reported the Local.

                                                                                                 (Picture: CEN)

Dr Panagiotis Azmanis said the idea to use the Lego wheel was a spur of the moment thing after he had seen how unhealthy Schildi was.

                                                                                                           

‘He was in pretty bad shape when they brought him to us,’ he said.

‘The lower part of his front leg was missing, and the upper part was very bad with bone showing and maggots in necrotic flesh.’

Vets at the Bird Consulting International practice decided to amputate most of the animal’s injured limb before deciding on the unorthodox use of Lego.

Dr Azmanis added: ‘First we fitted a double wheel but it was difficult for him to turn corners so we replaced it with a single wheel and that is much better for him.’

The animal doctors used superglue to secure the wheel.

(Credit; The Metro)

Meteor 'Fireball' Lights Up California Sky.
'People in southern California have reported seeing a fireball that forecasters said was most likely a meteor streaking across the sky.' Reports the Sky News US Team.

'The sightings were made by people from Santa Barbara down to San Diego starting at around 8pm local time on Wednesday.

There were also reports from Arizona, Nevada and Utah.

The National Weather Service said the sightings were most likely associated with the South Taurids meteor shower that has been especially active in early November.

Astronomers say the Taurids do not bring big numbers of visible meteors but a high percentage of extremely bright ones that look like fireballs.

"Under clear, dark skies, some 10 to 15 Taurids may appear per hour. They are often yellowish-orange and, as meteors go, appear to move rather slowly," wrote the website space.com

Twitter lit up with reports of the sightings, though few were able to capture the streak on camera.

Twitter user @Casheets posted: "I saw a meteor tonight, the coolest scariest thing I’ve ever seen."

Comedian Eli Braden tweeted that he "just saw an absolutely INSANE meteor in the sky above Glendale, CA ... Either that or the alien invasion has begun."