The Daily Drift

Welcome to the Saturday Edition of  Carolina Naturally.

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Touche.

~ Wallace Graham

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Today in History

1356		In a landmark battle of the Hundred Years’ War, English Prince Edward defeats the French at Poitiers.
1544		Francis, the king of France, and Charles V of Austria sign a peace treaty in Crespy, France, ending a 20-year war.
1692		Giles Corey is pressed to death for standing mute and refusing to answer charges of witchcraft brought against him. He is the only person in America to have suffered this punishment.
1777		American forces under Gen. Horatio Gates meet British troops led by Gen. John Burgoyne at Saratoga Springs, NY.
1783		The first hot-air balloon is sent aloft in Versailles, France with animal passengers including a sheep, rooster and a duck.
1788		Charles de Barentin becomes lord chancellor of France.
1841		The first railway to span a frontier is completed between Stousbourg and Basle, in Europe.
1863		In Georgia, the two-day Battle of Chickamauga begins as Union troops under George Thomas clash with Confederates under Nathan Bedford Forrest.
1893		New Zealand becomes the first nation to grant women the right to vote.
1900		President Loubet of France pardons Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus, twice court-martialed and wrongly convicted of spying for Germany.
1918		American troops of the Allied North Russia Expeditionary Force receive their baptism of fire near the town of Seltso against Soviet forces.
1948		Moscow announces it will withdrawal soldiers from Korea by the end of the year.
1955		Argentina’s President Juan Peron is overthrown by rebels.
1957		First underground nuclear test is takes place in Nevada.
1970		First Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Artis (originally called the Pilton Festival) held near Pliton, Somerset, England.
1973		Carl XVI Gustaf invested as King of Sweden, following the death of his grandfather King Gustaf VI Adolf.
1982		The first documented emoticons, :-) and :-(, posted on Carnegie Mellon University Bulletin Board System by Scott Fahlman.
1985		An earthquake kills thousands in Mexico City.
1985		Parents Music Resource Center formed by Tipper Gore (wife of then-Senator Al Gore) and other political wives to lobby for Parental Advisory stickers on music packaging.
1991		German hikers near the Austria-Italy border discover the naturally preserved mummy of a man from about 3,300 BC; Europe’s oldest natural human mummy, he is dubbed Otzi the Iceman because his lower half was encased in ice.
2006		Military coup in Bangkok,  revokes Thailand’s constitution and establishes martial law.

Stupid Food Challenges No One Should Attempt

(Video Link)

It's never a good idea to chug a whole gallon of milk, gobble down ghost peppers or gulp down dry  cinnamon, but that doesn't stop people from trying. From disgusting to downright dangerous, these food challenges are utterly ridiculous and entirely unadvisable.
Don't like to watch your facts in video form? Then check out the full-length text article at TopTenz.

Finger Cookies Are Perfect for Dipping

Italian designer Paolo Ulian has a great idea for a cookie design! His thimble-shaped cookies are ideal for dipping in chocolate, caramel, and syrup. It's a tidy, efficient way of getting these drippy foods in you mouth. Ulian is, as you can see, suggesting Nutella.

Chipotle Says It Dropped GMOs

Chipotle Says It Dropped GMOs. Now a Court Will Decide If That’s Bullshit.

Ten Simple Typos With Surprisingly Huge Costs

Most people view a typographical error as no big deal. With all of the typing the average person does today, some on very tiny keyboards and affected by autocorrect, we're used to ignoring typos. Yet there are cases in which even a single typo is a huge problem. Or conversely, as in the case of Google, it could make an already successful corporation a ridiculous amount of money per year:

"Back in 2010, research carried out by Harvard University revealed that typographical errors in website addresses were netting Google about $497 million per year. The researchers estimated that roughly 0.7 percent of attempts to visit a site ended up with users accidentally visiting a different site with a similar name. For instance, Google’s smartest and most charismatic users might want to visit Listverse.com, but end up visiting Listvers.com instead. These “typographical error” sites (often called typosquatting sites) receive up to 68.2 million page views every single day. And about 57 percent of such sites are used to host advertisements, many of them sourced through Google.

While Google has a policy of removing their ads from such sites, they’re still flourishing. In fact, if all the typosquatting sites were a single website, it would be the 10th most visited website in the world."

Not all corporate typos are moneymakers. Read about some companies that lost millions or were put out of business by a few errant keystrokes in this article.

Paralyzed man becomes first person to “feel” sensations through a prosthetic hand connected to his brain

A 28-year-old paralyzed man became the first person to gain a sense of touch with a prosthetic hand. It was developed by DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.

The clinical work involved the placement of electrode arrays onto the paralyzed volunteer’s sensory cortex—the brain region responsible for identifying tactile sensations such as pressure. In addition, the team placed arrays on the volunteer’s motor cortex, the part of the brain that directs body movements.
Wires were run from the arrays on the motor cortex to a mechanical hand developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University. That gave the volunteer—whose identity is being withheld to protect his privacy—the capacity to control the hand’s movements with his thoughts, a feat previously accomplished under the DARPA program by another person with similar injuries.
Then, breaking new neurotechnological ground, the researchers went on to provide the volunteer a sense of touch. The APL hand contains sophisticated torque sensors that can detect when pressure is being applied to any of its fingers, and can convert those physical “sensations” into electrical signals. The team used wires to route those signals to the arrays on the volunteer’s brain.
In the very first set of tests, in which researchers gently touched each of the prosthetic hand’s fingers while the volunteer was blindfolded, he was able to report with nearly 100 percent accuracy which mechanical finger was being touched. The feeling, he reported, was as if his own hand were being touched.
“At one point, instead of pressing one finger, the team decided to press two without telling him,” said Justin Sanchez, who oversees the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program. “He responded in jest asking whether somebody was trying to play a trick on him. That is when we knew that the feelings he was perceiving through the robotic hand were near-natural.”

Human Bio-Factories to Brew Vaccines

DARPA Developing Human Bio-Factories to Brew Vaccines

The next factory for lifesaving drugs could be the human body itself.

'Waterworld' Is Definitely Going to Happen

New Study: Waterworld Is Definitely Going to Happen

China's Political Elite Take the Money and Run

China's Political Elite Take the Money and Run - Abroad

Il n’y a pas de bleu sans jaune et sans orange

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

Vincent Van Gogh

(café terrace at night, 1888)

Il n’y a pas de bleu sans jaune et sans orange.

Vincent Van Gogh

************27

Man woke up during flight to urinate on fellow passengers before going back to sleep

A 27-year-old man spent about 5 hours in jail on Friday after he reportedly urinated on several passengers prior to landing at Portland International Airport. According to a police report, Jeff D. Rubin was taken into custody at 4:31am by Port of Portland Police.

Officers responded to the C-concourse to meet JetBlue Flight 47 from Anchorage after getting reports from the airline that a man had urinated on passengers, seats and luggage. When the officers boarded the aircraft, they found Rubin “slumped over asleep in his seat,” according to the police report.
Numerous airline employees and passengers told police that Rubin had been sleeping for the majority of the flight. About 30 minutes before landing, “he stood up and began urinating through the crack of the seat onto the passengers seated in front of him,” the report states.
At some point, Rubin lost his balance and he fell backwards and “urinate(d) upwards which got the passengers and seats next to him as well as some other passengers’ personal belongings,” the report states. Rubin was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center. He has been charged with one count each of second-degree criminal mischief and offensive littering. He was released on his own recognizance. Rubin, according to court records, lives in Gresham, Oregon.

Forgotten On School Bus: Special Needs Student Found Dead

A special needs student was found dead on a school bus in California.
The problem of forgotten children is widespread.
There’s a simple fix, though.

Read full story

Neighbor's unhappy with anti-alien spotlights at man's foil-wrapped house

A neighborhood in Hermitage in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, is fed up with an elderly man on their street, so much so that they’ve taken him to court for excessive use of spotlights. 78-year-old Arthur Brown lives in the foil-wrapped house.

Nancy Raich lives across the street. “Over the years he’s become a real problem. He has a lot of issues fearing aliens,” Raich said. Raich said this behavior has been going on for more than 20 years, and she’s had enough. She’s 72 and wants to downsize, selling her home to buy a condo, but no one wants to buy it.
“Who wants to buy my house? A nice decent house, garages, acreage in Hermitage, a nice place to live, when this yahoo across the street decides he wants to shine lights on me?” Raich said. And she’s not alone. “He used to have an alarm that would go off on and off on and off and that was annoying,” neighbor Donna Misinay said.

YouTube link.

“Now his new thing is, come out here and chase you with a spotlight.” It’s become so bad, they’ve taken it to court. And within the past few days, the city has filed a petition for an injunction to force Mr Brown to stop using the spotlights. “It’s a violation of the city’s zoning ordinance to have excess lighting that adversely affects neighboring properties,” Hermitage City Manager Gary Hinkson said. The neighbor's are hoping Mr Brown's lights go out soon.

Brass tap restored to mouth of the Fountain of Abundance following protests

Experts in Italy have intervened after a 2,000-year-old fountain had a plastic and steel tap stuffed into its mouth.

The ancient Fountain of Abundance in Pompeii provides drinking water for the thousands of guests who visit the Unesco World Heritage site each year.
Previously, the fountain was tapped by a more elegant brass faucet, but this was recently changed during maintenance at the site.
Following protests, the architectural superintendent of Pompeii reverted back to the previous brass tap. But not everyone is satisfied. Many people believe the tap should be removed altogether and that the water should flow continuously from the mouth of the fountain.

Police investigate break-in at police station

A man has been caught on CCTV while breaking into a Garda station. The raider broke into Lifford Garda station in County Donegal, Ireland, last weekend and spent more than an hour walking around the building, which was unoccupied at the time.

When he left, he took a set of handcuffs, a Garda walk-talkie, a stab vest and a Garda cap. He was then spotted wearing the stolen items in the vicinity of the Garda statio. Gardai viewed the CCTV footage and identified the suspect.
While the man has not yet been arrested, it is understood gardaí know his identity. He is believed to be from Strabane in Co Tyrone, just across the Border from Lifford. Gardaí are also carrying out a full audit of all paperwork at the station, but they do not believe any important documents were taken.
“We believe his was the work of an opportunist thief and we do not believe a lot of planning went into this robbery,” a Garda source said. “The items have not yet been recovered but we do have a suspect but he has not yet been arrested. We do not believe this was the work of any paramilitary organization but we would like to recover the property.”

Mysterious manure-like smell determined to be manure

A mysterious manure-like smell hanging over Northampton is due to manure being spread on farmers' fields on the town's outskirts. Dozens of people had taken to Facebook and Twitter this week to complain of the foul smell, which was said to have resembled manure.

And, according to Northampton Borough Council's environmental health team and the National Farmers Union, those people were right - with the direction of wind causing the smell to waft through the town. Complaints of the smell came in from areas all over Northampton as well as surrounding towns including Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough. In Northampton, the stench was experienced in the town center, Weston Favell, Brackmills, Parklands, Spinney Hill, Lumbertubs, Ecton Brook and Kingsthorpe.
Following the reports, Northampton Borough Council's environmental health team said it is likely the smell is due to manure being spread on fields on the outskirts of the town. The process, called muck spreading, happens at the same time every year, but due to a lack of rain the smell is lingering longer than usual. It is a process often used to help crops grow in fields. As crops grow they remove nutrients, such as compounds of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, from the soil.
These crops are harvested and taken away from the fields where they were grown. If this process is repeated for a number of years the supply of nutrients in the soil is exhausted. The land becomes less fertile, so plants grow poorly and produce only a small yield. As a results farmers use fertilizers to put back into the soil the nutrients that have been removed by growing crops. And one of those methods uses manure, which is the waste material from animals such as cows.

Random Celebrity Photos

Audrey Hepburn 

(Yes even celebrities took Polaroids in the 1970's - Andy Warhol took this one)

"Dear Abby" to harassed waitress: keep your sense of humor and stand out of reach

A restaurant server in California has a problem: customers that just won't stop touching her. Unfortunately, she now has two problems: she went to "Dear Abby" for help.
Sick And Tired In California, who works in an upscale dinner house, writes in:

I am a 24-year-old waitress who needs advice on how to handle older men when they continually flirt, touch and even ask for hugs while I'm serving them dinner. … Waitresses have to put up with this kind of thing for tips. Is there anything I can do to prevent it and still receive a reasonable tip for good service?

In response, Dear Abby told her to laugh it off to see it from their point of view before running to the manager.

Yes. Keep your sense of humor. Smile a lot, laugh when appropriate and stand out of reach. Most of these men are harmless. They are trying to be friendly.

"Most" indeed.
Now, it's possible that the letter is planted and that there's no such person. Dear Abby—officially authored by Jeanne Phillips—is often accused of fakery, so the advice might be better interpreted as an excursion into a fantasy world of ideal problems, the Dear Abby lace-napkin culture war, rather than anything reflective of consensus reality.
But many people in this situation do exist, of course, irrespective of this letter's authenticity. So, Sick And Tired In California, please feel empowered to ignore Dear Abby's glib and incompetent advice. Here's what victims of workplace sexual harassment should do, according to NOLO, the AAUW and other credible sources.
• If you feel safe doing so, you should immediately tell your customer that their behavior is inappropriate and unacceptable and to cut it out.
• Take notes on the harassment and include details: time, place, what was said, what was touched, and who saw it.
• Inform your manager and expect their support. Put it in writing and keep copies. If there's an employee handbook or sexual harassment policy, follow its guidelines and expect them to be honored. Understand your employer's obligation to protect you from a hostile workplace environment.
• If problems continue, contact your organization's HR department.
• If you still get no support, contact lawyers in your state: good ones will talk to you free of charge. Read up on Title VII and figure out if you can file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employers can be held liable for workplace hostility and are forbidden from retaliating against you for filing a charge of harassment or speaking out against harassment.
• You don't need a lawyer to file an EEOC complaint, but you do have to do it within 6 months of the event.
• The lawyer will help you understand your rights and remedies, and will know how best to handle local press and other publications that might be interested in your story.

No patient privacy: Texas health workers turn in undocumented woman during gynecology appointment

In a clear, gross and flagrant Violation of HIPPA regulations

No patient privacy: Texas health workers turn in undocumented woman during gynecology appointment

A mother who showed up at a Texas healthcare clinic for her annual gynecological exam is facing deportation after clinic staffers called authorities and detained her for them until they arrived

Chicago Columnist Says Prostitutes Can't Be Raped: It's 'More Like Theft Of Services'

Mary Mitchell, a columnist for the wingnut-leaning Chicago Sun-Times, declared over the past weekend that prosecutors had been wrong to allege a prostitute had been raped at gunpoint because the crime was really "theft of services." 

Kansas Secretary of State Fires State Employee For Not Attending Cult

A former Kansas state employee has filed a federal wrongful termination lawsuit targeting Kansas' Secretary of State and assistant secretary of state, Eric Rucker …

Americans were fortunate among people of the Earth to have lived in a nation that, for 236 years, avoided being taken over and controlled by religious extremists. It is a sad commentary, but now that the Republican cabal has been taken over by evangelical fundamentalists as a result of Republican demigod Ronald Reagan giving the religio-wingnuts the keys to government, that 236 year secular run is apparently nearly ended. Most Americans likely never believed that government officials would have the authority, or audacity, to terminate a state employee for not complying with the “official state religion,” but they also probably never imagined the Supreme Court would legalize an employer’s control over women’s reproductive health choices.

A former Kansas state employee has filed a federal wrongful termination lawsuit targeting Kansas’ Secretary of State and assistant secretary of state, Eric Rucker. The lawsuit alleges that the employee’s dismissal was founded on her refusal to attend bible and prayer services in Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office. It is important to note that the evangelical cult rites in Secretary of State Kobach’s office were officiated by, a voluntary minister with Capitol Commission, David DePue, whose cult focuses solely on evangelizing Kansas’ government leaders.

According to the lawsuit filed in federal court, Kobach’s lieutenant Rucker “repeatedly and emphatically indicated a basis for her, Courtney Canfield’s, termination as the fact that, ‘She just doesn’t go to cult.'” Canfield’s experience working for a Kansas theocrat began shortly after being hired when Kobach’s assistants “invited” Ms. Canfield to attend 'christian' religious rites being regularly conducted in the taxpayer-funded secretary of state’s office. Canfield declined to worship, study, or pray with her new evangelical colleagues in Kobach’s Topeka government office and was duly fired for expressing her Constitutional religious freedom to not worship or regularly attend cult. Apparently, not attending cult regularly and declining to worship according to an employer’s religion is something Americans are learning more every day is un-American and an attack on evangelicals’ religious liberty.

Obviously, as the lawsuit contends, Rucker’s evangelical decision to terminate Canfield’s employment violated her constitutional right of religious expression; a right evangelicals believe applies to them exclusively. The lawsuit also indicates that Rucker had full knowledge of Canfield’s view’s on religious expression including that she is a methodist, not a raving evangelical, and that she did not regularly attend cult rites. Evidently, not regularly attending cult and rejecting the “christian invitation” to do bible study and prayer rituals in the Secretary of State’s office was justification for termination according to Kansas’ evangelical theocrats. So they did what any religious extremist running a government does and fired the “non-compliant” sinner. Evangelicals yearn for Sharia-like authority that allows them to execute Americans for religious non-compliance; it is doubtless they are working on changing that prohibition with religious fervor.

Ms. Canfield said that “Participation in these religious rites was by invitation only. These invitations were distributed during normal government business work hours and included a ‘prayer guide’ to be utilized at that week’s service” in the Secretary of State’s office. Conducting cult rites in taxpayer-funded government offices is bad enough, but it gets worse.

Court documents say that assistant secretary of state Rucker appealed to the plaintiff’s grandmother to terminate the employee on religious grounds. Rucker left a telephone message for Margie Canfield, the “wayward” employee’s grandmother, who is a longtime administrator and former chairman of the Kansas Republican cabal to set up a meeting. After leaving a message on Margie Canfield’s telephone, Rucker arrived at her Topeka home and “proceeded to tell Margie that she needed to terminate her granddaughter’s employment with the state despite the fact that she had no direct authority over her employment.” Rucker apparently grew tired of waiting three days for the grandmother to fire her granddaughter from Kobach’s staff and finally notified Courtney Canfield himself that her employment in the secretary of state’s office had ended and to seek unemployment benefits.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Topeka and names as defendants both the office of the Secretary of State and Kobach’s number one religious enforcer Eric Rucker. Apparently, Secretary of State Kobach declined to comment on the unconstitutional use of government offices for religion or the illegal termination for “lack of cult attendance.” However, a spokeswoman for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said Secretary of State Kobach’s office requested legal representation in the case that prompted the attorney general to retain private counsel to handle the unconstitutional establishment of religion matter.

This kind of blatant retribution for not complying with an “invitation” to toe the evangelical line and acquiesce to worship according to fundamentalist dogma is not unique to Kansas. Last month in Georgia, a local baptist cult aired a video showing over 24 youth football players being coerced into being baptized on school grounds using school equipment prior to the Villa Rica Wildcat’s football practice with the caption, “Take a look and see how dog is still in our schools!” After complaints from several groups including the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), school administrators are being forced to investigate the blatant violation of separation of cult and state.

Local evangelicals who believe the cult is the state watched the glaring constitutional violation and said the school baptisms were a message of “hope, care, and compassion from the community.” The senior pastor of the first baptist cult said 'christians' had no need to even ask the school for permission to use its property and equipment for the mass baptisms. He said “I was so proud for these young men and their example of their new relationship with christ and what it means in that school. The school really didn’t have any say in it. It was us, the cult and men in community setting it up. There are a lot of people who don’t want dog in anything;” baptists believe otherwise.

Recognizing the pressure to comply with the coaches’ demands or not play sports that is rampant in schools, the co-president of the FFRF, Annie Laurie Gaylor, stated the obvious according to the U.S. Constitution; religion and public schools do not mix. She said, “Our students should not be forced to pray to play, and this is coercive and proselytizing. Football players are at mercy of their coach and want to please their coach, and when they are being corralled to attend a religious worship ritual to be dunked and baptized, that’s coercive.”

It is also as unconstitutional as terminating an employee for “not attending cult” or “declining to worship” in Kansas’ Secretary of State’s office. But Republicans, particularly religio-wingnut Republicans, do not acknowledge the Constitution, separation of cult and state, or any Americans’ religious freedom except for their own bastardized interpretation that entails forcing 'christianity' on Americans. This glaring effort to force religion on Americans, although occurring nationally, is rampant in Republican-nisled states; particularly in the schools whether it is teaching the bible as science or transferring public school money to corporate-run charter schools and private institutions teaching religion.

Americans are generally unaware that evangelicals are forcing their religion down the throats of Americans at every turn and they would have little to no success without legislative assistance from Republicans and the vatican-5 on the Supreme Court. It is astonishing, really, that in a nation founded on a document that prohibits “establishment of religion,” government employees are terminated for “not attending cult” and young students are “coerced” into being baptized on school grounds and with school equipment in order to participate in school sports. However, that is the price complacent Americans pay for not voting and being too cowardly to rise up and protest that their nation is being transformed into a Taliban-like theocracy with an evangelical Sharia law incrementally replacing the U.S. Constitution.

Retro Photos

1970's Rollergirls

The Next Time A Gun Nut Brings Up Switzerland Show Them This

This wins the internet.
Read more 

Viral Video Of Officer Hugging Suicidal Man Shows Exactly What Policing SHOULD Be

This North Carolina cop gets what too many don’t: It’s about compassion, above all else.

Read more 

Oregon Cop’s Life Threatened After He Turned In Racist Police Chief

An Oregon cop who turned in his racist police chief is receiving death threats, but he’s still glad he did it.

Read more 

Shoplifting seagull ejected from store after stealing packet of peanuts

A seagull was caught shoplifting from a convenience store, much to the annoyance of the shop's owner.
The bird casually waddled in through the front door of the Sweet News store in Aberdeen before heading towards a fruit stand, where after perusing the items on offer took a peck at a lemon.

YouTube link.

Seemingly dissuaded by the sour fruit, he then looked around at what else is on offer before grabbing a bag of peanuts from another nearby stand. The bird then attempted to get into the bag before quickly fleeing the scene of the crime after shouts from the shop's owner Zaman Iqbal.

YouTube link.

Mr Iqbal, 24, said: "We do get seagulls quite often trying to come into the store, but we try to scare them away and keep them out. This is the first time a seagull has shoplifted from us. When I chased the seagull out people asked what I was doing, but I had to do what I had to do."

Cow got head stuck in ladder

A mother and her son were on their way to school in Hamilton, New Zealand, on Friday morning when they saw a young cow with its head stuck in a ladder.

Karen Arden was dropping her nine-year-old son Harry off at Horsham Downs School at around 8:30am when they saw the stuck bovine in a neighboring paddock. "I did consider getting in there to help, but they're about 1 or 2 years old so they run away from you.
"It would take teamwork to get it off." Where the ladder came from is a bit of a mystery, with Ms Arden saying there was no obvious place it could have come from – there was no shed near the paddock and no obvious work was being done in the paddock.
When her son had seen the cow, he was "quite fascinated" by it and his first consideration was its welfare. "[He said] 'Oh, mummy that poor cow he wouldn't be able to eat anything." Ms Arden said the owner was called to help free the cow and believes it has since been freed.

Raccoon rescued after having head stuck in wheel for two days

A raccoon whose head had been stuck in a wheel for two days was rescued in Richibucto, New Brunswick, Canada, on Thursday. Nicole Thebeau of Kent County Animal Rescue was called to free the animal.

"He had been stuck there they said for about two days and he was starting to get weak and he was starting to scream," said Thebeau. "They didn't know what was screaming so they went to have a look. I don't know how or why he got his head in there, but he was really stuck there," she said.
"My heart broke. I hate seeing them like that," Thebeau added. Thebeau had taken corn oil with her and poured it around the raccoon's neck in an effort to let it slip its head out of the tight-fitting rim. "It's almost like he knew we were going to try to help him, so he just let us do what we had to do," she said.

YouTube link.

It took Thebeau several minutes and several dousings of corn oil to free the animal. "I was so afraid to hurt him. I didn't want to sprain his neck or anything like that," she said. Once finally freed, the raccoon sauntered off. "He was really in a bad situation there. To see him walk away makes my day," she said. "I think he may have made a lot of friends with all that corn oil on him."

Animal Pictures