Twin lambs born - one white, one black

ONE'S black, one's white and they have amazed their owners.

Salt and Pepper are twins, born to a ewe, which is white and a ram, which is a sussex breed, sporting a black face, legs and bottom.

Jan Cowan, who has just begun building a flock on the family property in the Manning Valley on the NSW mid-north coast to make sheep cheese, said yesterday that the twins born a week-and-a-half ago were inseparable, The Daily Telegraph reports.

"We have them in a pen next to the house because of the foxes," Mrs Cowan said.

"They play together, they sleep together with one resting its head on the other.

"If one goes one way the other will follow. They take a teat each, side-by-side of each other when feeding."

Mrs Cowan said a local vet who helped deliver the twins had told her their being born with different colouring was a very rare event.

But the Cowans may not have a black sheep in the family for long.

Bob Murray, NSW branch president of the Black and Coloured Sheep Breeders Association of Australia, said nature could still intervene despite years of selective breeding to produce sheep with white wool.

"Put simply, the genes which ensure white wool are dominant over the genes which produce the darker wool," he said.

"But sometimes the dark gene sneaks in and takes over, and if you have a dark-woolled ram and a white-woolled ewe, there's a 50 per cent chance you'll get one of each.

"And in sussex sheep it's not uncommon to get lambs which are all dark when born.

"But when they are about six months old they will lose that darkness and look like other sussexes with the dark face, legs and backside and white body."


News.com.au

Puppy flushed down toilet

LONDON - A PUPPY in Britain had a lucky escape after a four-year-old boy accidentally flushed it down the toilet when he was trying to wash it, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Monday.

The week-old cocker spaniel's young owner, Daniel Blair, thought the puppy needed a wash after it got muddy playing in the garden, so he put it in the toilet and flushed it.

But his plan went disastrously wrong when the animal was swept away and became trapped in a waste pipe for nearly four hours.

Firefighters and animal welfare officers could not reach it, so Daniel's mother eventually called a plumber, who found the dog lying upside down in a pipe about 20 metres away from their house in Northolt, west London.

The dog - which has been named Dyno after the plumbing firm which rescued it - is now safe and well and back with the family.

Daniel has apologised, blaming his twin brother for getting the dog dirty and saying: 'I had to give him a wash. I'm so, so sorry. I won't do it again.' -- AFP

Source : The Straits Times

Teen Wakes Up to 3-Foot Snake Staring at Him in Bed

A New York city teen came face-to-fang with a 3-foot boa constrictor Sunday that slithered uninvited into the youngster's home — a jarring confrontation that had the whole family in a panic.

"The snake was just staring at me," said a shaken Kareem Lewis, 18.

The close encounter came around 10 a.m., when Lewis was waking up in the family's first-floor apartment on Sherman Avenue.

"I started to panic when he started to slither at me," said Lewis, whose mom was at church.

The teen called 911, and police held the snake inside a pillowcase until animal control arrived.

Lewis guessed that the snake slithered in through a window.

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