Quirkies: Perky bounces back again, Polish lace makers get saucy and pet crematorium has diamond idea
Wednesday, 31 Jan 2007 18:31
Lingerie: Lacy
Last week a duck in America grabbed the headlines when she survived the ordeal of being shot and refrigerated for two days.
Now the duck – since awarded the name Perky – has miraculously come through a third near-death experience.
While being operated on to correct injuries to her wing, leg and beak, the duck was pronounced dead after her heart stopped.
But mournful vets were shocked to hear the duck's heart monitor blinking into life seconds later. Florida veterinary nurse Noni Beck admits she cried tears of joy, saying "Perky is one tough duck".
Lace makers in a sleepy Polish village have come up with a novel way of injecting new life into their business –
by making risque lingerie.
But the decision by workers in Koniakow, who previously supplied ceremonial robes for John Paul II, has been condemned by the Catholic church.
Local priests claim that the switch to lacy g-strings and bras has brought shame upon a national tradition, but Malgorzata Stanszek, who set up the venture, says that the money flooding in is helping to fund the church.
"If we listened to everything the priest says, we wouldn't earn a penny," she said
Naming a newborn baby can prove tricky for even the most wordy parents, but no such problems for new mum Anita Baidoe, whose son has been
named after the department store he was born in.
The tot, who could quite easily have been called Mark Spencer, has been named John Lewis after staff helped the London woman get to hospital when she went into early labour while shopping at Brent Cross.
Pet lovers could have been handed a new way to keep their departed Fidos and Whiskers closer to heart after a
jewellery firm offered to turn pets' ashes into diamonds.
Hertfordshire-based pet crematorium CPC says that grieving pet owners could find a subtle diamond, worth between £2,100 and £15,000, "very comforting".