The mayor of the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray says he has little choice but to shave his nearly foot-long handlebar mustache for a children’s charity.
Dan Snarr is putting the decision to a vote of residents and says his fashion statement is “getting creamed.” Besides, his wife hates it. She’s sick of puckering up for a kiss and getting poked in the eye.
Yet the 59-year-old Snarr also is facing pressure from the mustache lobby. The St. Louis-based American Mustache Institute got wind of his plans and called on Snarr to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of opposition.
A local Costco store says residents have been voting since May 1. Votes will be counted May 16. Snarr says the shave votes far outnumber the save votes.
Afghans’ solitary pig taking the rap for flu
Afghanistan’s only known pig has been quarantined because of fears over swine flu, officials from Kabul Zoo tell the BBC.
The pig, a curiosity in a country where pork products are illegal, lives at the zoo, where he had previously enjoyed grazing next to deer and goats.
But he was moved into isolation after visitors expressed fears that the animal could be carrying the H1N1 virus.
The director of the zoo, Aziz Gul Saqib, says the pig, whose name is Khanzir, is strong and healthy.
The director says Khanzir, given to the zoo by China in 2002, has been moved to a large space with lots of windows and fresh air and that he hopes he will be quarantined for only a few days.
Rodent catcher needed in aisle 5
A Louisiana woman is suing a Wal-Mart store over what she claims was a much-too-close encounter of the furry kind.
Rebecca White says in her lawsuit that employees at a Wal-Mart in Abbeville let a rat-tailed rodent known as a nutria run loose and scare her. She says that not only did employees know it was in their store, but gave it a pet name, Norman, and failed to warn shoppers.
White says she was pushing a full shopping cart down an aisle in October when the nutria ran out from behind a rack. She says she pulled the cart backward in a panicked attempt to protect herself and hurt her back and foot.
The local store referred all questions about Norman to the Bentonville, Ark., headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
A spokeswoman there said the company has not seen the nutria lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Abbeville, but is investigating.
Nutria have bright orange buck teeth and can weigh up to 18 pounds. Would-be fur farmers in 22 states imported them in large numbers in the 1930s and ’40s, then released them when they proved unprofitable. They have proliferated in south Louisiana.
