Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

"Screw this, I'm going to McDonald's!"

India uses 'mooing' ringtones to catch leopards

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) -- Forest guards in western India are using cell phones with ringtones of cows mooing, goats bleating and roosters crowing to attract leopards that have wandered into human settlements, officials said on Monday.

The wild cats in the state of Gujarat often roam into villages near forests in search of food, say officials, adding that this results in attacks on people.

But rather than use methods such as live bait like goats tied to trees to lure the leopards, which then fall into large pits dug by guards, officials say they have found a safer method to trap the cats.

"The moos of a cow, bleating of a goat from the phone has proved effective to trap leopards," said D. Vasani, a senior forest official in Gujarat. "This trick works."

Vasani said forest guards have downloaded the sounds of over a dozen animals as ringtones on their mobiles which they attach to speakers and fix behind a cage.

They then play the ringtone continuously for up to two hours until the curious leopard appears and moves into the cage looking for its easy meal.

Saturday was AC Storage Locker Day!

I spent the weekend out in Pittsburgh to do inventory of the Anthrocon storage locker. I had originally expected this to take most of Saturday afternoon, it ended up only taking about an hour and a half, thanks to our hard working volunteers: swift_fox, silaria, cadpigjr, firefoxbc, and sinha_lion.

This then left us with the rest of Saturday to spend as we like. We walked around downtown Pittsburgh and visited the art festival that was in town. Afterward, Swift Fox thought it would be a good idea if we uh, "stress tested" some fire equipment. Here's me trying not to get knocked off my feet:



Back at the station, Swift Fox shows us that Firefighters have a sense of humor:



Also, Taz was apparently a new hire in the department:


Later in the evening we went to one of the many observation points on the side of a hill in Pittsburgh and I was able to get some nice night-exposure pictures of downtown Pittsburgh:



On Sunday morning, we visited The Pittsburgh Strip for breakfast. The strip is within a reasonable walk of the Westin, and is not unlike Philadelphia's Italian Market. Since I had less than 4 cups of coffee, I wasn't awake enough to take pictures from there. :-P

I then hopped in my rental car (yay AVIS!) and drove back home.

From my stay there, I gotta say that Aspinwall was a really nice town. It reminded me of Emmaus, PA, a town which I visited frequently in my youth (and was also on the side of a mountain).

The rest of my Pittsburgh at night pictures can be found here and additional pictures of testing the fire equipment can be found here.