SUBSCRIBE NOW

SIGHT

Be informed. Be challenged. Be inspired.

STRANGESIGHTS: THE CASE OF MAURICE THE ROOSTER (AND OTHER NEIGHBOUR DISPUTES); LOCH NESS MONSTER MYSTERY SOLVED?; AND “WORLD FIRST” CONVEYOR BELT CHEESE RESTAURANT

Rooster

DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…

Rooster

A rooster (not Maurice) exercising his right to crow. PICTURE: Dusan Smetana/Unsplash

Maurice the rooster, who lives on the French Atlantic island of Oleron, has won the right to crow in a court battle in which neighbours had complained he was “noise nuisance”. But, as Thomson Reuters Foundation reports, the case is just the latest in a string of unusual battles based on neighbourly disputes. Others include a case in which people living next to a zoo in Cologne, Germany, filed a noise complaint over the barks of its sea-lions; the case of a vegan in Perth, Australia, who took her neighbours to court in a failed bid to stop them holding barbecues outside in which she told local media that she could no longer go into her garden due to the smell of grilling fish; and, a case in Los Angeles in the US in which residents become enraged when a neighbour decorated her house with emojis, saying the design was “bullying” nearby homeowners and had also attracted crowds of unwelcome curious onlookers. 

The Loch Ness monster may not be so much a relic of the dinosaur age as a monster of another kind – a giant eel. A team of international scientists who analysed water taken from the Scottish loch where Nessie is said to live reportedly found a considerable amount of DNA belonging to eels in the samples. Professor Neil Gemmell, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, said that while the data shows eels are “very plentiful” in Loch Ness, it “doesn’t reveal their size”. “[B]ut the sheer quantity of the material says that we can’t discount the possibility that there may be giant eels in Loch Ness,” he said, describing it as a “plausible theory” to explain sightings of the monster. But Professor Gemmell did go on to say the evidence was not conclusive – “For the people who still want to believe in monsters, there is still a lot of uncertainty in our work,” he said. “The absence of evidence isn’t necessarily evidence of absence.”

The “world’s first conveyor belt cheese restaurant’ has opened its doors in London. The Pick & Cheese restaurant in Covent Garden reportedly features 25 different varieties of British cheese – including Red Leicester, Yorkshire Pecorino and Cornish Gouda – which sits on a 40 metre long conveyor belt cycling the dishes past customers who can pick anything that catches their fancy. “Off-belt dishes” are also available. 

 

Donate



sight plus logo

Sight+ is a new benefits program we’ve launched to reward people who have supported us with annual donations of $26 or more. To find out more about Sight+ and how you can support the work of Sight, head to our Sight+ page.

Musings

TAKE PART IN THE SIGHT READER SURVEY!

We’re interested to find out more about you, our readers, as we improve and expand our coverage and so we’re asking all of our readers to take this survey (it’ll only take a couple of minutes).

To take part in the survey, simply follow this link…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.