SONG CHALLENGE WINNER!

The Song Challenge:   You have a choice to (1) pick one of the stories for an entry song, OR (2) go for the big doggie biscuit and incorporate all the stories into your entry song.  What The Heck Is Going On Here?  Chicken-Duck "Troops" Battle Locusts (Xinjiang, China) - Twice a day, over 700,000 trained chickens and ducks chow down on locusts at the foot of Tianshan Mountain in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northwest China. By nightfall, the chicken-duck troops can devour nearly 100 million locusts, making a welcome dent in one of the region's worst locust plagues in years. Locusts have affected 2.6 million hectares of farmland in the northwest China region. To fight back, the region has brought in some 100,000 ducks to join the locust-killing bio-troops made up of chickens, migrating starlings and microspores. The bio-troops have helped kill locusts on over 270,000 hectares of land and the region has decided to double its number of ducks and chickens for its fight against the locusts next year. Ma Yonggang, a herdsman on the northern side of Tianshan Mountain, is breeding 5,000 locust-killing brown ducks.   Battles On the Sanglochon Line (Var, France) - Marauding bands of "sanglochons" -- a cross between a wild boar (sanglier) and domestic pig (cochon) -- have been wreaking havoc throughout the Alpes-Maritime region Var, a picturesque county in south-east France. Marcel Laugier, a local wildlife officer, said: "They're everywhere. It's like a plague. They come into inhabited areas and root through bins and dig up lawns and drink out of swimming pools. They're extremely greedy. I get a constant stream of calls from people complaining about them." Sanglochons were first bred in Belgium and north-west France at the end of the last century. The breed gradually died out, but was resurrected in the 1980s when farmers again began rearing them. The experiment didn't prove successful, however, and, unable to find a market for their pigs, many farmers simply released them into the wild. Their fast breeding rate has meant that over the last 20 years their numbers have increased by 600 percent, and it is now estimated there are over 10,000 of them roaming the Var alone. "There's no doubt that if they get into the wild they can be a real problem," says Michel Van der Oost, a sanglochon breeder from Neufchateau in Belgium. "They can be very naughty and willful, and aggressive too sometimes. Mind you, they make wonderful sausages."   (From McGrath of Harlow) Don't Monkey With Us, Monsieur! (Paris, France) - With pitbulls, dobermans and rottweilers under fire from the French authorities, youth gangs in the depressed city suburbs have discovered an alternative way to intimidate their rivals - with attack monkeys. "They're ultra-fashionable," said Didier Lecourbe, a police officer from the depressed Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. "There are dozens of them. Kids take them out on leads, and even carry baby monkeys around in nappies. But these animals can be very dangerous indeed." Imported illegally through Spain from Gibraltar, Morocco or Algeria, the Barbary apes are known for their powerful limbs, sharp teeth and short tempers. Veterinary experts say they can be turned into frightening and effective weapons.  "Removed from their natural habitat, they can become highly aggressive," says Marie-Claude Bomsel of the natural history museum, "They bite, and their favoured method of attack is to hurl themselves at people's heads." Police believe as many as 500 Barbary apes may have been smuggled into France in the past two years. "Now the authorities have cracked down on pitbulls and the rest, apes look like becoming the new weapon of choice," said Mr Lecourbe. "We've heard of monkey-fights being run in tower block basements."  Monkeys See, Monkeys Threw (Jarratt, Virginia) Three monkeys hurled bananas and crab apples at cars on Interstate 95, then fled into the woods, police said. Police believe the monkeys escaped while being taken to the state fair in Richmond or a circus in North Carolina. State Trooper Mike Scott was flagged down Sunday by a driver who had pulled over near Jarratt. "When I walked up to the car, it looked like a banana had been smeared on the side," Scott said. The woman told him a monkey had thrown the fruit about a mile back. "I started laughing," Scott said. But he drove to the scene of the attack and found a van and a station wagon on the side of the highway.  "A man said, 'I know this sounds crazy, but a monkey threw an apple at our car,"' Scott said. Just then, something hit the van. "Lo and behold there were three brown monkeys in an oak tree throwing crab apples," Scott said. The primates jumped down, ran across the highway and escaped into more trees.

I'll Ne'er Leave Home by Bardford

Bardford's Comments:  Wonderful. Wonderful. Maybe there is a spin-off opportunity for Marlin Perkin's "Wild Kingdom" show here . . . Anyhoo, here's my contribution, composed while listening to sea shanties and eating animal crackers.

I'm a man of the world, well travelled am I
There is no place that I've not wandered
But now I'll ne'er leave home, no never no more
I'll not leave, not for love, gold nor plunder

Join me now lads and stand me a glass
And my stories of woe to you I will pass
These are tales tall but these tales are true
Just as sure as I sit here drinking with you

As I lay with a comely lass in a mountain meadow in France
A stampede of wild boars scared her back into her pants
Quickly back into her pants
I'll never hike those meadows again, lads, for it is no place for courting
The coitis there is interrupted by the rooting and the snorting
The pigs in France they do hinder romance, it isn't very sporting

A fair mamselle in Paris I did meet, sweet and long did we embrace
Her husband did discover us and tossed a monkey in my face
A scurvey scratchy monkey in my face
I'll ne'er go back to France again, my friends, for the customs there are strange
Six months in the hospital, my handsome face to rearrange
Six months in the hospital, my handsome face to rearrange

I met a girl in China she was bright and sweet
Her job it was to train the birds the locusts for to eat
the plague of locusts for to eat 
I'll ne'er go back to China, boys, as I found it strange to see
For the chickens and ducks in China they go to university
The chickens and ducks in China are trained in university

A lovely Virginia girl and I were parked along the interstate
A gang of monkeys pelted the car just as things were going great
But our love will have to wait
And I'll never return to Virginia, boys, for it's surely not amusing
The monkeys in Virginia there my lust they were defusing
With apples and bananas they throw to interrupt seducing

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