Posted on 08/10/2018 11:57:36 AM PDT by SJackson
PETZAEL, West Bank -- An Israeli businessman appears to have bitten off more than he can chew with plans for a crocodile farm in a West Bank settlement. Hundreds of crocodiles have been stranded at the farm in a remote spot in the Jordan Valley -- left behind by a pair of failed business ventures.
The crocodiles were brought to the settlement of Petzael in the mid-1990s as a tourist attraction. Ensuing Israeli-Palestinian violence kept visitors away, prompting the crocodiles' purchase by entrepreneur Gadi Biton, who hoped to sell them for their skin.
But his venture flopped after Israel passed a law in 2012 defining the crocodile as a protected animal, and banning raising the animals for sale as meat or merchandise. Multiple attempts to sell them abroad have failed.
"We found ourselves with hundreds of crocodiles in this farm that no one knows what to do with," said David Elhayani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council. A lone worker feeds the animals dead chickens once every eight days.
Dozens of the crocodiles lazed recently on the sun-baked shores of a lagoon on the property, their jaws ajar, revealing menacing teeth.
The animals have become a pain for the owner, the region and Israel. Dozens of crocodiles have escaped on two occasions, including once when 70 flew the coop only to be found after a three-day croc-hunt. The reptiles, which can live well into their 70s, are also reproducing. Their numbers are expected to grow to the thousands in the coming years.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
It's 59 degrees right now. Yesterday it was 78.
It seems the rain from himicane Michael has wandered off into the Atlantic and we have clear skies. And standing water in the easement for the county ditch..
I see on the radar that there is a mass of green outwest stretching from Michigan's thumb to north Texas. It appears that the weather foreguesstinators are implying it will reach us Monday and be with us all that day. So much for the clay drying out enough to allow shortening of the advanced grass substitute.
I'm watching the projected lows in the extended foreguess because last year we had the first killing frost before Halloween. So for they aren't showing that but they're getting close - a couple nights with a low of 33° before November hits. I'm thinking new growth will be inhibited going forward. I just need to 'harvest' before frost turns the remnants into mush.
I’m glad to not be hot. We had snow on Halloween one year in Norman, OK.
Kewl on getting the letter! I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but it’s what I do on weekends. Or when I get bored!
I got a letter from my daughter today. She had The Guilts over not writing last week. Poor baby. She sends me all the “Frank and Ernest” and “Mother Goose and Grimm” comics for the last week. She and her Main Squeeze got a new bed this week, so I’m hoping its a trend. Charlie wants one, as well, but he only wants a twin. As tall as he is, I don’t know how he can sleep on the one he has!
And of course, there’s my somewhat unsuccessful search of a new bed. But ohwell. It will happen. (I haven’t had a NEW bed since the 80’s!)
W00t!
Thank you very much for the kitteh Rockette lineup!
So sad....
Hippo Freeday sounds better to me than anything else! God Bless!
My daughter’s letter was full of snowy coldy things, as well as talk about a generator, several cords of wood and a “deep freeze,” so I’m thinking she may be co-habiting with the right guy because Rob’t “knows things.”
All that stuff we took for granted when I was growing up. You took precautions to survive before the bad weather hit, or you may not live to tell the tale of your lack of foresight.
Our “freezer” was the cold storage locker downtown. It worked! And my mother was Old School canning fruits, vegetables, jams, jellies...and our “nanny” was Swedish and she made all the breads and rolls a person could ever want.
The Dad went out and fished, bartered sign-painting for sides of beef, chickens and pork and even killed a deer or two. We were poor, but we never went hungry. We seldom had second helpings, but we had enough to eat. (There’s something to be said for having knowledge of Pioneer survival!)
I hasn’t been outside in a while but the window in my Windows is saying it’s 62 f’s outside.
They are reporting on one of those rail forums that it is snowing along the CSX somewhere in Illinois. I looked at the radar display and, yep, there’s a blue blotch there between Chicago and Iowa..
And another CSX freight train hit a car whose driver thought it was ‘supercar’ in the stretch between Buffalo and Cleveland. Weather was not a factor there, just a human interface error on the part of the vehicle..
I have avoided wandering outdoors so far today but I am being encouraged to wander to the end of the drive and check for junk mail and bills. Or maybe a dream book, er, catalog to keep Mrs. NoC happy.
Momentarily.
It’s a brother-sister act.
I’ve wandered a lot today. Our mail had no interesting catalogs.
My mail had interesting catalogs, but as usual, I can afford nothing. Oddly enough, what is displayed is not worth the money I could spend. I told Charlie that most days, I couldn’t even afford to smell the pages.
The migraine that attacked me yesterday, just about the time I was turning in for the night, is trying once again to get a foothold. I hate when that happens.
So I’m going to bed. Tomorrow will be a Saturday. Lucky me.
I hope you have a successful Saturday. Speaking of the weekend, we’re going on a campout, so there will be no Morning Kitteh on Sunday. Perhaps I’ll have time for an Evening Kitteh when we get back, but it’s not the same.
No ‘useful’ mail.
Just the bill from the phone company/internet provider people. Seems some of the ‘taxes and fees’ went up adding a nominal $3 to my monthly billing..
And the green on the radar out west has encroached on northwest Ohio. It’s raining on the Deshler Rail Park..
So I’m sitting here minding my own business (which by the way isn’t too profitable since I don’t pay) and working on putting a laptop back together that has been languishing in my project area for ages. I have the Deshler railcam up on EweToob and the Broadcastify feed of the radio channel on.
I note that train Q350 is northbound and will be taking the connector to run west to Chicago. The train enters the north to west connector and waits for the signal to proceed, then the fun begins.
The dispatcher (sitting warm and dry in Jacksonville) cannot get the switch at West Deshler to give a clear indication. That would be the switch from the north to west connector to east-west main #2 and of course if the dispatcher can’t get a proper indication that train will sit there, locomotives on the connector, remainder of train out on the main. The train is ‘only’ 12000 feet long..
Since the dispatcher now cannot be sure of the status of the switch, the conductor is tasked with going out in the wind and storm and rain and walk to manually inspect the switch. While the conductor is slogging through the weather the engineer gets an indication from the second locomotive that it is low on fuel. He goes out to verify the level and returns to report there is 150 gallons left - definitely not enough to make Chicago. Or even the next closest spot that he could be refueled. The decision making folk decide that since NW Ohio is basically flat they can make it to the next fuel spot on only one engine so they shut down engine number two. Just slower..
So here’s the picture. We have a train that is now down to one locomotive sitting on the N-W connection with a nominal 12000 feet of train behind it tying up the N-S main. We have a switch in an unknown limbo position that is preventing movement not only from the N-W connector to the E-W main #2 but also any movement across that switch in the E-W direction. In effect two of the three main tracts are now blocked.
And the dispatcher tells a westbound train that he has five trains now backed up because of this but he will ‘try to get you through Area 51’.
I went back to the laptop reassembly..
One may assume that the building of the Tower of Babel was a government project.
LOL! Remind me to stay out of my Hobo Mode for the next few months, lest I get sandwiched between confused trains.
Government project, yes. The Late Igor had a cartoon sheet of What the Customer Wanted, which went through various stages and departments and came out at the end with What the Suppliers Provided.
Picture a swing on a limb as the item the customer ordered and at the end one line was on one limb on one side of the tree, the other line on the opposite side with the tree where the seat would be. So yeah, NoC, I got the train picture! :o]
That looks like The Thinker, using his rear elbow! (Cats have knees in the front, elbows in the rear.)
Good morning.
The new chair is in the process of being put together. When its finished, I’ll sit in it and write a letter to my daughter who seems to think she’s forging a trail in the wilderness. But I guess in her mind, she is!
Unlike most items I’ve put together in the last 20 years, this one has clear instructions in the actual English language, and not some translation of it from Lower Slobovian. The assembly instructions are simple diagrams and I’ve learned, since having CFIDS/ME that I can’t follow written directions. Pictures or a demonstration in real time, please.
As is usual lately, a text came in at 1730 last night. I tried to ignore it, but another came right on its heels. And then a third. It was my niece in Idaho, the one who is going to build the sewing cabinet for me.
Her living room is nearly done, having finished up the paint and trim yesterday, and the entertainment center she built being finished last week. Waiting for the carpet. Which is the reason for the text. They brought it, but it was the wrong color and there would have been a seam in the middle of the living room, and she said that was not acceptable.
They couldn’t get a full section of it until Nov 1, but to compensate for time lost and aggravation experienced, they laid the two pieces in two other rooms for free. Yep. Free. And they are also paying for a full month on the storage unit that was rented to hold everything in the living room.
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