BBC Online reports police in Burundi, Africa, "arrested" a stork on suspicion of spying. The South African stork was fitted with a satellite tracking device and was part of a study of the migratory patterns of the bird. There's a picture of the stork and the device in the story.

According to NewScientist:
"Fires in eastern Russia are threatening the last stronghold of the Siberian tiger, according to WWF."

Apparently, Six hundred square kilometers are ablaze near an area densely populated by this endangered species. The WWF have six fire brigades attempting to control the fires.

For more information, check out NewScientist's article

From yahoo.com

New Line Cinema has picked up the comedy spec "The Centaur" from writing pair Jack Angelo and Sam Brown for management-production outfit Benderspink to produce.

The script is described as a romantic fable about a woman who falls in love with a seemingly perfect man, only to discover that he is a centaur (half-man/half-horse) brought to mortal life through the aid of magical potion.

'The Centaur' was one of those rare screenplays where you find yourself literally laughing out loud," New Line president of production Toby Emmerich said. "Few writers can weave adult humor with romantic innocence and make it work. Jack and Sam creatively manage this difficult task in a way that is endearing and fun."
Benderspink's J.C. Spink and Chris Bender, who have a first-look deal at the studio, will produce the project. New Line production executives Michele Weiss and Cale Boyter are overseeing.

Angelo and Brown previously teamed on the short film "Chutzpah," which can be seen on IFILM.com

BBC News Online also reports that new accelerator mass spectrometry tests on the carbon atoms from the ancient charcoal drawings of horses on the wall of a cave near Chauvet, France, date the pictures at 30,000 years old. The spectacular pictures have been described as intricate and sophisticated, indicating that early humans began developing art techniques far earlier than previously thought. The article includes a photograph of a portion of the cave drawings.

BBC News online reports the existence of a six-month-old lamb cloned from a dead member of an endangered species of wild sheep. The mouflon sheep is native to Sadinia, Corsica and Cyprus. The surrogate mother was a domesticated ewe of a related species. Click on the link to read the full story. There's a picture of the cute little lamb there, too.

The Conifur Northwest artshow has reached maximum capacity!

Artist registration was closed last week due to an overwhelming response, and after some compilation of figures, it turns out we're sold out of panels! If you would like to participate and haven't already registered, then you can still get on the standby list for abandoned panels. Just email me at artshow@conifur.org and let me know.

Four heads of a 'Space cult' were arrested in a murder-for-hire plot here in Maryland.
Full article by the Baltimore Sun. Aparently, at least one of them is whacked out of his mind: they used cats to communicate to their "mothership".

George Gately, the creator of the 'Heathcliff' cartoon, passed away Sunday after a heart attack. He was 72 years old. Further details are available

A suggestion to anyone who likes to follow news stories about animals - bookmark the Yahoo! Animal News site and check it on a regular basis. They get many stories that individually would be worthy of mention on Flayrah, but collectively would be a bit overwhelming if we tried to include them all (though we still welcome submissions of particularly interesting animal stories).

At this writing, the top four animal stories listed are:

• Tiger shot dead after it attacks farmers
• S.Africa to Launch Massive Elephant Relocation
• Knowledge is power to manage Namibia's big cats
• Meerkats Become Fat Cats in Large Cooperatives

Feel free to post comments on any of the above stories.

November is National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in that time. Whether it's brilliant or dreck (or brilliant dreck), your novel-writing efforts are welcome.

From the FAQ: "People looking to write classy, complex novels should not participate. People looking to get extensive feedback and people who take their writing very seriously should also go elsewhere. Everyone else, though, is warmly welcomed."

If you've been mulling over a novel for a while, this might be your motivation to actually do it.

I found a duck is the first global duck race happening across the face of the earth and across the web. 500 ducks have been deposited across London, each duck has the website address around its neck and a unique ID number (DUC001 through to DUC500.)

It's not anthropomorphic, but click here for a photo of the giant golden "Monument to the Defenders of the Fatherland" statue in Astana, Kazakhstan: a medieval archer standing on the back of a winged leopard, symbolically soaring over the steppes raining arrows down upon the enemies of the fatherland:
Kazakhstan was recently mentioned here in August under "Furries aren't the only ones who risk public scorn..." (I found this while web-searching without luck for a picture of the five-headed eagle of Turkmenistan. Can anyone help with that?)

Need to delve a bit into werewolves and the Germanic Underworld? Black Dogs? The mythological significance of bridges? Does the power of lonely places hold some meaning for you? How about landmarks for the Saxon kingdom of Mercia influencing town layouts in present day central England? Or my favorite, European folklore of dogs being psychopomps (literally guardians of the corpse way). Bob Trubshaw and Albion Press has kindly put up a web site chronicling back issues of At The Edge and Mercian Mysteries.

Any Internet user who enjoys fiction and literature should know about Project Gutenberg. It is a large body of public domain works, mostly books whose authors have died and whose copyrights have expired, available free on the Internet as plain or ZIPped ASCII text files. At over 3000 books and still growing, it includes just about every major literary classic up through the early 20th century as well as some noteworthy non-fiction volumes.

Some of the authors represented whose books are of particular interest to furry fans are Kenneth Grahame ("The Wind in the Willows"), H. G. Wells ("The Island of Doctor Moreau"), Jack London ("Call of the Wild"), and Rudyard Kipling ("The Jungle Book").

Just a reminder that this is the last week you can register for FCU (aka FC2002) at the low price of $30! Effective October 2nd, our registration fee for the full weekend goes up to $35. Act quickly and save money! You can register online or by mail--see our Registration page.