Stooges

FLORA & FAUNA

Assorted animals got caught in the shifting gears of human ingenuity last week. Some results:

P:In Ringwood, County Hampshire, England, a blear-eyed Friesian cow named Bridge Birch yielded 41,952 pounds of milk in 329 days to displace (unofficially) an American Holstein, Carnation Ormsby Madcap Fayne, as world champion. Bridge Birch's owner admitted that his cow got a daily diet-booster of half a gallon of stout.

P:In Labrador, a team of dog paratroopers made a practice jump on orders of U.S. Colonel Paul A. Zartman, Goose Bay airbase commandant. Zartman's idea: harnessed to a dogsled (which can also be parachuted), dogs can haul human chutists on difficult Arctic rescue missions. The tests proved that the dogs knew what to do with a grounded chute. Crowed an airman: "Instinctively, the dogs run to the chute and sit on it."

P:In Manhattan, Robert L. Kendall, president of the American Feline Society, proposed shipping 50,000 surplus U.S. cats to Europe to guard Marshall Plan food stocks from rat attack. Under the Kendall Plan, only "healthy and vigorous work cats" would be inducted; all would become "government wards." Cried Sydney H. Coleman, executive vice-president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: "The cats could not exist on rodents. . . . They would need supplementary feeding which people in these countries could not give. . . . We are vigorously opposed. . . ."

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