From Nexxus on alt.fan.furry: "You know that we have been attempting to add new services to our system for quite a long time now. Now that we are back online at our present location with new equipment and faster lines, we decided it was about time to unveil our newest service!



FurEauction.com! An Official FurNation Affiliate! Auction, online sales,
and all around cool website!" Read on for the details.

Yahoo had an interesting article on what seals use their whiskers for. Not all decoration, it seems. And off the Animal Planet site, a rather amazing story (bordering on News of the Weird) about a human woman who saved a couple of panda cubs with spare milk.

Pitch Weekly attended last month's 'Howl, Growl and Purr' - A Missouri furry minicon, and thoughtfully wrote an Article On it!

Tony Esteves has released the new Cigarro & Cerveja website. Along with new comics the site has a new look and feel, boasts a F.A.Q, a forum, a store where you can buy C&C merchandise, a mailing list and more.

FurNation is now taking pre-orders on magazine #2 and is also selling subscriptions up to magazine #5. Magazines #1 & #2 will be on sale at Anthrocon.




The proofs for #2 came back from the printer Monday the 2nd and look fantastic! It will be printed by July 15th. Pre-orders will ship the same day we get the magazines from the printer.




Go here to purchase a subscription today.

CNN has this interesting article, Wily coyote outgunned by bigger canine cousin, about how coyote populations in Yellowstone National Park have been affected since the reintroduction of gray wolves in 1995. Coyote populations have been decreasing due to competition from the wolves, but naturalists are not concerned, seeing it as restoring the natural balance between these two predators, noting that the coyote population probably increased when wolves were eliminated from the park in the 1930s.

It's.....MI5 Spy Gerbils!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1415000/1415469.stm

Security Service MI5 once planned to recruit a
team of specially-trained gerbils as a secret
weapon to sniff out spies, it has been revealed.

Micah's Note: The British are just weird sometimes.

From the PawPet folk, off of alt.fan.furry: "Anthrocon is less than a month away, and Funday PawPet Show is looking to book puppeteers for the 3 hour live show that will be occuring on Friday night between 4-7pm." Read on for more.

Stephen Silver is a British cartoonist & animator who's currently a character designer for Disney. As a personal project, he's developing an ecology-minded animated series involving a group of endangered species who are also time-travelling pro wrestlers. It's called Wild Life Force. Looks nifty, especially the Howard Cosell ferret.

From Chama on alt.fan.furry: "For those of you who asked why the Furry Music Foundation website has been unreachable lately, the server has been down due to a security issue (which is resolved now). You can yet again download furry music from FMF at http://www.furrymusic.org"

There's definitely something bizarre about being attacked by a komodo dragon. Fortunately, the man who got bitten had a good sense of humor about it. Read about the incident, and then for laughs check out Salon's interview with the dragon in question.

Not sure whether to call this sf or furry news; it's relevant to both. Publishers Weekly recently had a fascinating article about selling graphic novels in bookstores, why booksellers should and how to do it... as well as a series of articles on how comics publishers are trying to reach a broader audience through online and bookstore distribution channels. This is greatly encouraging to me, since one of the reasons I've never really considered doing a graphic novel was because of the ghetto graphic novels are shoved into when the time comes to sell them. You don't reach an audience without distribution, and it looks like booksellers might be waking up to the fact that graphic novels do sell. Indeed, I remember the pleasure I felt when I discovered my local Borders had a shelf of graphic novels (and in fact, I bought one; while I don't buy single comic books, I will buy compilations of them). Here's hoping there'll be more graphic novel sections in the future. And hey, wasn't there talk of a Fusion graphic novel? Lex, are you reading? *grin*

Some of you might remember a post I found off New Scientist a while back about rescuers attempting to free a male right whale, one of the few left in the wild. Unfortunately, their attempts didn't work and now they're hoping the whale will be able to free himself. This has to be one of the more frustrating times to be a scientist... being unable to save a creature so rare there are only 300 left, and giving it up to fate. You can read more about it at Salon. On a more upbeat note, cows also enjoy music, though they prefer ballads to hardcore rock and roll.

The NY Times reports an entrepreneur in upstate New York wants to engineer a cat without the protein that causes allergic reactions in 60 to 90 percent of sensitive people. He plans to sell sterilized animals for up to $1000. (Free registration required to access that site.)

In order to provide for a more stable system, FurBid will be moved to a new server tonight, starting at 11pm. As such, FurBid will be down from 11pm to 5am Pacific time, on 6/27/2001. All auctions that are scheduled to close during that time will be extended.


If you haven't been to FurBid, I invite you to check it out at http://furrybid.transform.to



Any questions, please send them to aatheus@transfur.com


Aatheus

FurBid Administaur