Suburban tales: cat versus washing machine

Add to this, the story of Kimba the kitten, who, while walking around in the Machiavellian way cats do, decided the interior of a front-loading washing machine was the perfect place to hatch her next plot - and snooze.

You can see where this is going…

After the spin cycle had finished a half hour later, and her distraught owner Lindsay Rogers rushed her to the nearest vet.

The Manly Daily reports that I/Vs were inserted, the word ‘stat’ was probably yelled more than once, and Kimba was brought back from the brink. Understandably, Lindsay didn’t tell Kimba’s other owner Margaret, who was travelling abroad, about the soapy adventure until she’d set foot back in Oz. That’s not a long distance phone call you want to make.

Ceci n’est pas une jambe: In the grand tradition the whole found objects art shtick, a Brisbane art curator is putting together a collection of prosthetic limbs.

Quest News reports Priscilla Sutton - an amputee herself - has drawn together a collection of used plastic appendages as part of the Spare Parts 2010 exhibition. And she’s put a call out for more.

Old, ill-fitting limbs apparently litter cupboards around the nation because of the embarrassment that can ensue from putting them in the bin.

“You can’t just throw your leg in the rubbish, it freaks out the garbage man”, Ms Sutton explains.

The great tasty chicken massacre: When neighbours came to Daniel Zaccagnini and told him his pet rooster Thor’s crowing was waking them at the ungodly hour of dawn, he did the only logical thing.

Mr Zaccagnini killed the offending scamp and cooked it into a Cambodian noodle feast.

When the two hens of the house, Bertha and Chicken Little, saw the power vacuum left in the wake of Thor soup, they immediately started crowing too, as a way to sort out the pecking order.

Soon, the Northcote Leader reports, a nice man from the council arrived and demanded silence again.  And Bertha was turned into an old-fashioned roast - veggie and gravy-style.

Chicken Little now finds herself the chief - and only - chick of the house. Unfortunately she has also started crowing - presumably in remembrance of her slain family.

This will probably not end well.

Let’s push this bastard upscale: What to do with a popular street festival involving face painting, petting zoos, inoffensive bands and general family fun? Organisers looked at Brisbane’s Racecourse Road festival and figured it could do with a reboot.

Thus this year, the grand plan for the festival is: to scrap it and replace it with free opera and symphony orchestra performances.

The City North News reports the new artistic director says the bold new direction will attract 60,000 people - an impressive increase of minus 30,000 on last year’s crowd.

We are yet to ascertain whether face paint will be allowed among the patrons. Presumably there will be a dagwood dog aria somewhere in there though.

Stop being so goddamn laissez-faire: In moves that will no doubt spur all freedom-loving Australians to start stockpiling weaponry, police in Melbourne’s Yarra Ranges will fine people if they don’t lock their car doors.

A spokespoliceman said fines also applied to anyone who failed to stop the engine, put on the handbrake or wind up the window.

Securing your car and handing your keys to the nearest street urchin or skanky ne’er-do-well is probably OK with the fuzz though.

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