Employees at The Home Depot in Harrison, Ark., say a great horned owl apparently has chosen the store as its permanent hangout.

James Toon, an employee at the store’s garden center, said the owl’s mother laid its eggs in the garden center in January and employees could not disturb the nest due to the wildlife regulations for great horned owls, the Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times reported.

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The bovine backside has been attached to the side of the Rowan Tree pub in the city’s historic Old Town.

It lifts its tail and shoots out a cloud of white smoke at passers-by throughout the day.

Pub landlord Norrie Rowan, a former Scotland international rugby star, said the cow was becoming as popular with tourists as nearby Greyfriars Bobby.

It was installed on the side of the pub earlier this year, but the mechanics that allow it to break wind at 1100 GMT, noon and 1300 GMT are a new addition.

A dry ice machine ensures the flatulent beast is regular and helps locals keep track of time in a similar way to the city’s famous One O’clock Gun.

Mr Rowan said the cow was a bit of fun that had already become a popular landmark in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh.

He added: “The cow is already famous around Edinburgh and I get hundreds of tourists coming by and taking pictures of it.”

News reports in Phnom Penh said that Kann Veasna was relieving himself through a hole in the fence after a hard day drinking wine when the incident occurred.

The Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper suggested that the puppy may have thought Veasna’s penis was toy.

He’s modelling the latest in pampered petware – a wig for your cat.

They’re available in a range of colours to suit their owner from a new American website.

And are bound to be a hit with dippy owners who already spend thousands every year on gifts for their animals.

Cat-mad Julie Jackson came up with the designs to spice up her cat’s wardrobe and give the animals a more exciting choice of outfit.

The designs – called The Kitty Wigs – are available in blue, silver, blonde and pink.

We recently told how a barking mad store had started flogging wigs for dogs on the web.

Cats probably prefer wearing them because they’re arti-fish-ial.

This machine is the latest craze for spoilt pooches in Poitiers, France and at $30,000 it’s an expensive one!

To prove that the machine is safe for dogs, the machine’s owner climbed in too! The $30,000 automatic dog washing machine takes just four minutes to wash and dry pets.

Although it may be the latest craze in France, I don’t see it catching on!

Charles and Linda Everson miraculously were unhurt, but the cow had to be euthanized.

The couple was driving through Washington to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

Charles Everson said that he didn’t see the cow coming and that he kept repeating, “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this.”

The goal is to make controlled substances unappealing to drug abusers without adding dangerous substances to the environment, as often happens when prescription drugs are flushed through the sewer system.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says in a press release: Consumers should always check patient information accompanying the product to see if it contains specific directions for disposing of unused medication, and follow those directions. If no specific information is provided then unused medication should be properly disposed of by mixing it with undesirable substances (e.g., old coffee grounds, used kitty litter), sealing the mixture in a container and placing it in the trash. Whenever possible, unused medication may also be donated to authorized community prescription drug take-back programs.

The agency is working with a private contractor to distribute flyers at 6,300 pharmacies across the USA. They’ll evaluate the results at the end of the 26-week pilot project, which is costing the government about $700,000.

He asked 2500 pet owners to complete online questionnaires and found they shared such traits as happiness, intelligence, independence and a sense of humour with their companions.

“For years owners have insisted their pets have a unique personality” he told London’s Daily Telegraph. “Not only does this work suggest they might be right, it also reveals people’s pets are a reflection of themselves. Similarity promotes liking in humans. Research has shown couples that are like each other stay together longer.

“Extending this to the animal kingdom, I think it is likely someone who is fun and playful is more likely to go for a dog, for example.”

Wiseman says cat lovers are dependable and emotionally sensitive, reptile owners are independent and fish owners stand out as the most contented of individuals. “Around 60 per cent think their fish have a sense of humour,” he said. “I’m not sure how that works. On the other hand, people who keep lizards and snakes don’t think their pets have a sense of humour, and those owners are pretty humourless, too.”

“We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle,” wrote OLPC’s Arjun Sarwal, in an e-mail dated Oct. 21 and posted to one of the group’s discussion lists.

Sarwal and others are now finalizing the design of the cow-powered generator.

The goal is to develop a low-cost energy source that can be used in Indian villages. Working in a village close to Mumbai, Sarwal said the group considered using solar energy but sunlight near Mumbai was not “consistently strong.” There was not enough wind or running water nearby to use these as sources of power, and the cost of running a gas-powered motor was too high.

“But the village had an abundance of cattle that were being used in the fields. So we decided to design something around that,” Sarwal wrote in a subsequent e-mail.

The dynamo used in the system was taken from a Fiat car that is commonly used as taxis in Mumbai and therefore both cheap and readily available.

OLPC is close to putting its XO laptop into production, but has been beset by delays and rising costs. Originally intended to cost $100 each, the cost has since risen to nearly $200. And production is also moving slowly.

After a trial production run in August, OLPC had hoped to start mass production in late September or early October. That date has now slipped to Nov. 12, according to a Reuters report that quoted the group’s chief technology officer, Mary Lou Jepsen.

It would be the first of its kind in the country, Raman Sukumar, Professor, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and an internationally acclaimed expert on elephants, told The Hindu on Thursday.

The project would not only solve the problem of waste disposal but would also provide alternative earning opportunities to villagers. The raw material would be collected from the waste of captive elephants in the sanctuary, M.C. Biswas, Divisional Forest Officer, Cooch Behar, said. Presently, there are 59 such elephants there.

A feasibility study for setting up a similar project in the vicinity of the Gorumara National Park is on for which technological know-how has been sought from World Wildlife Fund’s [WWF] offices in South Africa, WWF’s senior programme coordinator, Sikkim and north Bengal, Dipankar Ghosh added.

There are 13 captive elephants at Gorumara, according to Tapas Das, Divisional Forest Officer (Wildlife II), Jalpaiguri. “Disposal of the waste of these elephants was a major problem particularly as the dung is not decomposable,” Mr. Biswas said.

“On learning of projects taken up in Thailand and Japan, where elephant dung is being converted into pulp and manufacture of hand-made paper, we took up the matter with the authorities at the National Handmade Paper Institute, Jaipur, and got an encouraging response regarding the feasibility of such a project,” he said.