| "Dot-Com" News - Gardener banned from village show | ||||
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A gardener has been "banned" from his village vegetable show - because he keeps winning. David Stirzaker, 73, has won 12 cups in the past four years for his prize-winning carrots, parsnips and tomatoes but has now been asked not to exhibit. North Cadbury and ¬District Horticultural ¬Society, near Yeovil, -Somerset, told him his ¬success was putting other people off entering. Mr Stirzaker said: "This is my hobby and I have been supporting their show for four years. "I find the request very insulting - it is a competition so I would have thought it is down to other growers to try harder if they want to beat me. "I want nothing more to do with the society. I won't be showing there again and I have told them that they can come and collect their trophies." Firefighters risk lives for plastic swan - Firefighters staged a dangerous night time rescue to save a swan stuck in a frozen pond - only to find it was a plastic decoy. Passers-by had dialled 999 when they saw the swan - left there by fishermen to scare away other birds - apparently stuck fast in the ice in Straubing, Germany. A total of 25 firefighters were scrambled to save the bird in an operation which put them - literally - on thin ice. "The information was very sketchy. We had to search for ages until we found the location. Eventually we saw the swan in the middle of the pond," said one firefighter. "The ice was not very thick so it was quite a dangerous rescue. "But when we got there we found a plastic swan and not a real swan which had been put on the lake to scare birds form coming to try and eat the fish. "Thankfully no one was injured and at least we got a bit of training in," he added. Annoying 'alarm' was missing parrot - A woman who complained a 'fire alarm' had been sounding non-stop for seven days has discovered the noise was made by a missing parrot. Shanna Sexton, 25, said she was "pushed to the edge" by the high-pitched tone and even called in workmen to try and locate the problem. But the mystery was solved when she finally spotted the African Grey Congo parrot perched on a water butt as she hung out washing in the garden. The noisy parrot, called Sammi, had escaped from neighbour Louise Ledger's house a week earlier and spent seven days in the garden mimicking a smoke alarm. Miss Sexton, from Torquay, Devon, said: "I'd been hearing the noise for ages. I looked around the house checking everything. I even pulled out the washing machine. "In the end a workman said it sounded like it may be my smoke alarm. We had problems with our smoke alarm before and I thought 'here we go again'. "It was driving me mad but I just could not find out where it was coming from." Three-year-old Sammi had flown out of the front door as owner Mrs Ledger returned home from a shopping trip. Mrs Ledger, 38, was distraught and spent hours searching for her beloved pet before she plastered the neighbourhood with missing posters appealing for Sammi's return. She said: "He is always picking up funny noises from anywhere and everywhere. I think he must have heard me burning the toast once as he does mimic the smoke alarm noise." |
| අවසන් යාවත්කාලීන කිරීම ( 2011 පෙබරවාරි 22 වෙනි අඟහරුවාදා, 06:25 ) |
