A couple of gay flamingos at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, England, have adopted an abandoned chick, according to this Agence France-Presse story.

Carlos and Fernando have been together for six years, according to the story, and had a history of trying to chase mother flamingos away from their nests in order to lay claim to the eggs inside. When another flamingo abandoned her egg, they swooped in and took over.

The story says that male flamingos can feed the hatchling flamingo by producing milk in their throats. The Wikipedia entry on flamingos says that both male and female flamingos produce a “milk” in the glands lining their upper digestive tracts.

Apparently, both the male and female flamingos feed the chicks in a “traditional” family arrangement. How progressive!

A construction worker died of a caffeine-induced heart attack while watching the England-Sweden football match on Tuesday night.

From the Bangkok Press story:

“Hall Kiddee, 38, of Sakhon Nakhon, was found dead in his living quarter of an industrial estate in tambon Tha Toom of Si Maha Phot district.

Friends told police Mr Hall was not a drinker and was very fond of watching the World Cup matches.

He stayed up late to catch the matches on television in the past several nights. To keep himself awake, Mr Hall bought himself coffee and large portions of an energy-boosting drink, according to the friends.

On Tuesday evening, Mr Hall was seen taking a cup of freshly-brewed coffee up to his living quarter after telling his friends he looked forward to watching the England-Sweden match.”

Link (via Bangkok Press)

The robotic head of an android Philip K. Dick has gone missing.

Mr. Dick, the science fiction writer whose work was the basis of such Hollywood blockbusters as “Blade Runner” and “Minority Report,” has been dead since 1982. Last year an admiring doctoral student at the University of Texas at Dallas, David Hanson, 36, built a life-size robot-version of Mr. Dick.

The android was able to conduct basic conversations abour Mr. Dick’s work, keep eye contact and make several facial expressions. The robot made several public appearances last year, including at the Comic Con in San Diego, where it was on a panel for a coming movie based on a Dick Novel, “A Scanner Darkly.”

Mr. Dick’s android had several more public appearances scheduled—that is, until robot-creator Hanson left the robotic head on an America West flight from Dallas to Las Vegas in December en route to San Francisco.

Sucks!

Link (via NY Times)

Two years ago, then 8-year-old Jerry Trujillo was issued an orange jumpsuit and locked in a New Mexico jail cell after misbehaving at school. This year, Trujillo and his family won a $221,000 settlement from the city and its insurer after filing a federal civil rights lawsuit for the offense.

Hopefully that kind of dough will help make the nightmares go away.

In August of 2004, third-grader Trujillo was sent the school counselor’s office after he hit another child with a basketball, his mother told the Associated Press. When the tot refused to go back to class, the school summoned the police, who handcuffed the boy and booked him into the city of Espanola’s adult jail.

The lawsuit alleged that Trujillo was taunted by adult inmates in a nearby cell for a half an hour until he was released to his parents by authorities.

The family will receive $85,000 initially, and the remainder will be paid out over several years for Jerry’s education expenses and college fund. He’s now attending a private school in New Mexico.

Pictured: Not a real jumpsuit, not a real kid, and definitely not the real Trujillo.

Link (via Sign on San Diego)

Some thirsy Hungarian construction works got a nasty surprise when they discovered a pickled corpse in the bottom of a barrel of rum they’d just consumed.

According to online magazine Zsaru, workers in Szeged started to moved the barrel after emptying it of its alchoholic contents. They were surprised to find it heavy and even more surprised when the body of a naked man fell out of the bottom.

The story says that the dead man may have wound-up in the barrel after his grieving wife attempted to ship him back from Jamaica without the cost and paperwork required for an offical return.

The original article is, for obvious reasons, in Hungarian, but MSNBC also ran a synopsis here if you’d like to read more in English.

Link