[Green Squall]

Lets file this one under wacky!

NEW YORK – Multitudes of feral cats roam New York City's concrete jungle, and some now have a practical purpose: They're helping curb the city's rat population.

A group of volunteers trained by the NYC Feral Cat Initiative traps wild cat colonies that have become a nuisance or been threatened by construction, then spays or neuters and vaccinates them. The goal is to return them to their home territory, but some end up in areas rife with rats.

Feline rat patrols keep watch over city delis and bodegas, car dealerships and the grounds of a Greenwich Village church. Four cats roam the loading dock at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, where food deliveries and garbage have drawn rodents for years.

"We used to hire exterminators, but nature has a better solution," said Rebecca Marshall, the sustainability manager at the 1.8-million-square-foot center. "And cats don't cost anything." About 6,000 volunteers have completed workshops where they've learned proper ways to trap cats.

The program is run through the privately funded Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals, a coalition of more than 150 animal rescue groups and shelters. It estimates as many as half a million feral and stray cats roam New York's five boroughs.

The life of a street cat is a tough one. Some are former pets, abandoned by owners. Plenty die of disease and malnutrition or are hit by vehicles. Others ingest poisoned cat food — set deliberately to get rid of them, cat advocates say.

Many of the animals are displaced as a result of New York's development, with new construction creating perilous conditions for those that once inhabited the city's nooks and crannies, from vacant lots, decaying factories and empty warehouses.

One colony of two dozen cats living in a lot on Manhattan's West Side are about to be displaced by construction on a new $3 billion office tower. A City Council member is working with residents and developers to make sure the creatures are moved to a safe location.

The Javits Center's quartet of cats — Sylvester, Alfreda, Mama Cat and Ginger — were lured to its 56 loading docks about two years ago with pet food brought by animal-loving employees. On a recent fall morning, Sylvester stationed himself next to a commercial truck, ready to pounce if needed.

The cats are predators but don't necessarily kill rats. Instead, experts say the feline scent and droppings repel the rodents.
"A mother rat will never give birth near a predator because the cats would eat the babies," said Jane Hoffman, president of the mayor's alliance.

The cat population is controlled through spaying and neutering, provided free of charge by the Humane Society of New York and the ASPCA. In most cases, adoption is out of the question for feral cats because they are just too wild to be domesticated.
Thanks to the volunteers, says Marshall, "we're protecting wildlife in the city, and the cats get a second chance at life."

[Robrites]

BURLINGTON — Troopers arrested a 49-year-old man who mistakenly drove to a Washington State Patrol office while high on marijuana in an effort to pay an unrelated bill.

The man arrived around 6 a.m. Friday at the Burlington WSP office, WSP Sgt. Mark Francis said. The man parked his car and walked into the office, where he attempted to pay a public utilities bill.

Troopers told the man state patrol had nothing to do with public utilities, WSP said, but the man insisted he had paid his bill at the office before. The man appeared confused, and smelled of marijuana.

Troopers questioned the man about the smell, and he allegedly admitted to smoking a sizable amount of weed before heading to the office.

Troopers arrested the man on suspicion of DUI.

[Robrites]

[Green Squall]

The U.S. Secret Service has been on a mission to hire a bunch of new agents over the past several months, but the agency says it is having trouble finding qualified recruits—because so many of them have used drugs without a prescription.

Federal officials have grown perplexed in their hunt for talented young men and women interested in a career with the Secret Service. The problem is so many of the applicants are being disqualified from the interview process due to their pill popping days of the past—mostly because they used Adderall back in college—according to report from USA Today.

This phenomenon has now challenged the agency, which is currently engaged in an aggressive hiring blitz, to find more than 1,000 qualified agents and other personnel by the fall of 2017.
To put this into perspective, there were somewhere around 27,000 people who responded to the agency’s call for applications in 2015, and only 300 passed the criteria leading to an offer for employment.

For a position with the U.S. Secret Service, candidates are put through an extensive vetting process, which includes a series of personal interviews and a polygraph test. In times past, it has been the polygraph that has typically meant the early demise of an aspiring agent, but now, officials say, the high rate of prescription drug abuse is what has prevented most applicants from advancing to the next level.

Recruiters say this is likely the most prescription drug use they have ever seen out in the field.

“It is definitely a struggle with this generation,” said Susan Goggin, Chief Recruiting Officer at the United States Secret Service. “Adderall is a huge, huge issue.’’

In a recent interview with NPR’s Here and Now, Kevin Johnson, the journalist who penned the Secret Service piece for USA Today, said most candidates do not view their use of Adderall and other prescription drugs as something that could be held against them. It seems the stigma behind the use of pills is not as cut and dry as it has been throughout the years for other illicit substances, like marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

“A lot of the candidates don’t view their use of substances, like Adderall and other amphetamines, necessarily as being wrong,” he said. “They’ve been using it to help them in their studies, as a study aid, to be able to work longer into the night.”

This is not the first time a federal agency has expressed concern over the difficulty of hiring new recruits based on previous use of illegal drugs. In 2014, FBI Director James Comey admitted that is was becoming increasingly more difficult to hire hackers because a lot of them use marijuana. The Justice Department echoed this sentiment in a 2015 report.

Some of the latest federal data shows the recreational use of Adderall has increased among adults by around 67 percent since 2006. This is mostly due to the fact that the high-powered stimulant is now being prescribed at a rate of 30 times more than it was just two decades ago. Interestingly, a 2014 HIGH TIMES analysis into the state of the “American Tweaker” found there is enough legal speed being manufactured throughout the nation to keep every citizen awake for a solid month—giving those interested in a job with the Secret Service plenty of time to plot out a new career path.

[Meraxes]

https://mysticalraven.com/news/1734/s...-of-this-world

[Robrites]

Originally Posted by Meraxes

https://mysticalraven.com/news/1734/s...-of-this-world

Good Read!

[St. Phatty]

I had a feeling that Hillary had some more tricks up her sleeve.

Things that would emerge before the election.

Thought it would be about her health, e.g. early onset Parkinson's.


Isn't it refreshing that Hillary's aide's ex-husband is so comfortable with his sexuality ? /sarc


Now I understand better what happened.

Weiner was sharing a laptop with Huma.

He used it for sexting.

She used it to email with HRC. Sounds like there are about 15,000 emails.


I reckon this is like a double-barreled shotgun to the career prospects of HRC. Not necessarily because wrongdoing will be found.

Because of the timing, and the closeness of the race.

[Meraxes]

Damn, did they solve the Bermuda Triangle, and Amelia Earhart in the span of a week?...Go fuckin science!

[Meraxes]

https://www.westernmassnews.com/story...y-badly-burned

[WelderDan]

Eh, I live in Florida. I can't drive five blocks without experiencing Weird, Wacky or Insane. It's just part of the experience.