Er...this is E sharp

I can't be the only one who read this...

Mice can "sing" like a choir by matching the pitch of their voice to that of others, scientists claim.

...and immediately thought of this:

Quote of the day - Ankh-Morpork special edition

The BBC expresses itself with unaccustomed ambiguity...

Exeter takeaway find £17,500 for hygiene offences

A judge fined a Devon restaurant owner £17,500 for food hygiene offences and said only rats and mice were safe to eat there.

Vermin in Westminster - again

What do you do when you've got mice? Get a cat, of course. At least that was the suggestion Lord Elton put forward to deal with a rodent infestation in the Palace of Westminster.

There's a pleasing touch of Schadenfreude in considering that all those expenses-guzzling MPS may be getting a £1,000 pay rise, but they've also got free-range mice in their offices, tea-rooms and subsidised bars.

So last week, Lord Elton asked the Chairman of Committees 'whether consideration will be given to acquiring a number of respectable cats to reduce the rodent population of the Palace of Westminster'.

Not, you will notice, any old moggies or battle-scarred toms - only the best for our ruling elite. Sadly for this picturesque image, Lord Brabazon of Tara was adamant:

The possible use of cats, respectable or otherwise, to control the rodent population in the Palace of Westminster has been considered and rejected on a number of practical grounds. For example, the cats would ingest mouse poison when eating poisoned mice; there would be nothing ...to stop them walking on desks in offices and on tables in restaurants and bars; they can carry fleas and other parasites; and many people are allergic to cat hair.

His Lordship is, I suspect, not a cat-lover. Sadly we are to be denied the delightful concept of cats - honest, decent and beyond reproach - patrolling the corridors of power and removing intrusive vermin, since the problem is to be tackled with poison instead.

I feel there may be some kind of metaphor there.

Ernest Rutherford Seagull - a Cautionary Tale

A piece of fiction today, with sincere apologies to Richard Bach.

Staff at Sellafield are considering a cull of seagulls as the site is overrun with birds, cats and mice, representing a substantial risk of contamination. Meanwhile, natural wildlife deaths on site mean they have 350 little frozen carcasses in storage as 'putrescent' nuclear waste pending proper disposal.

Ernest Rutherford Seagull hovered in the updraught from the cooling tower, watching mice scurry over the brickwork. The faint glow from his extended wingtips was matched by the eerie luminescence of the waste water lagoons where his friends were swimming.

He knew there was something different about the mice – something new about the way they gathered in small groups, then moved on decisively. Things were changing around Sellafield. Certainly the cats he had seen looked thinner, more desperate. Some of them were even hungry enough to tackle a seagull.

His friend Robert Oppenheimer Seagull manoeuvred into position beside him. Ernest Rutherford Seagull pointed downwards with his beak. “Do you see anything different about them?” he asked.

“So you’ve noticed too.” Robert Oppenheimer Seagull didn’t sound surprised. “I think they’re evolving intelligence. They’ve already learned to evade the cats.”

“Poor little things,” said Ernest Rutherford Seagull. “They probably wish they could fly.”

At that moment there was a loud bang and Robert Oppenheimer Seagull crumpled into a ball, plummeting downwards towards the ground and landing in an untidy heap. A man in a biohazard suit picked him up with tongs and placed him carefully in a freezer bag.

Behind the man the grass stirred, although there was no wind. There was a glimpse of fur, the twitch of a tail, a slight hissing sound. The mutant feral cats were gathering. And they were hungry.

Ernest Rutherford Seagull wheeled on the updraught and flew sadly away towards Whitehaven, his wings still glowing faintly.

No Parachutes for Algernon

Can you build an anti-gravity machine for mice? It sounds like one of those questions you’d ask in the pub, but those clever scientists at JPL have done just that.

Not content with making frogs hover in mid-air – who said science was boring? – they’re using magnets to suspend mice above the floor of a specially designed cage to study the physical effects of weightlessness on mammals.

A superconducting magnet generates a field which levitates the water inside living tissue and the rest of the animal goes along for the ride, so to speak. Which is probably a good thing, really, particularly for the mouse.

Their first subject became agitated and disoriented – wouldn’t you? – so the next mice to try it were sedated. Just imagine what was going through their tiny, stoned rodent minds; ‘Hey man, I think I’m flying! No, really!’

The plan is to continue the experiment long enough to study the long-term effects of a zero-g environment. What we don't know is what will happen to their brains - experiments have shown that exposure to magnetic fields can affect brain activity and can duplicate effects sometimes described as profound religious experiences.

Who knows? This could be the beginning of a spiritually enlightened super-mouse.

101 uses for a Dead Mouse

In another strange bit of news classification - on a par with this gem - the unpleasant discovery of a dead mouse in a malt loaf has been placed by BBC news in 'Northern Ireland Politics'.

As the deceased rodent was the subject of a court case, it seems that it automatically qualifies as political news. Since the BBC has at its disposal a juggernaut of news-gathering machinery, are we to assume that the same resources were brought to this story that would normally be deployed for rather more momentous events?

For those of us who grew up to the constant soundtrack of reports of Northern Ireland's sectarian violence, there is something truly satisfying in the knowledge that things are currently peaceful enough for journalists to go out and report on dead mice.