Sounds strange, but a massive clean up operation has been launched at the disused Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State, USA where rabbits have been spreading their contaminated droppings for decades.

The site at Hanford produced large amounts of plutonium for US nuclear weaponry from the start of the Second World War until the 1980s. And rabbits which grazed and burrowed into the area's soil have since spread their little radioactive messages over a large surrounding area.

The site's massive environmental cleanup operation has recently included low level helicopter flights, covering 13.7 square miles, where GPS mapping technology has been used to record the position of any matter which triggered readings as radioactive.

Operatives will then go to each recorded spot, clean up the poo, and dispose of it as low-level radioactive waste.

The contaminated soil has since been paved over to stop any further spread of the dangerous do-do, so fluffy bunny lovers can rest assured that the rabbits are not themselves being targeted - just their droppings.

Image © Joshua Davies via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence

# posted by Fuse @ 8:24 AM  1 Comments

While most dogs are content with a walk along the river bank or perhaps a run in the park, "Fasco" the military police dog is more content being launched 12,500ft from an army helicopter while strapped to his handler's front.

With the average falling speed of around 120mph, this is not a sport for your average poodle or Chihuahua nor is it even for the average police dog. Fasco the Alsatian is currently the only known parachuting military police dog in the world.

He has now made two jumps since his introduction to the sport and is regularly accompanying his handler on other training exercises as well.

Perhaps after a few more tries he could be given his own parachute and if they perhaps got a few cats involved as well then you could almost say it was raining cats and dogs….boom boom!

[Image © jutuzga via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence]

# posted by Fuse @ 8:12 AM  0 Comments

Are you guilty of taking the escalator, instead of walking up the stairs?

Would you use stairs more if they were fun?

Well, a group of advertising guys 'n' gals in Sweden got together with some techie bods from Volkswagen and decided to create a campaign to try to make people do environmentally friendly things by making them fun.

Apparently, the experiments are a bit few and far between at the moment, but The Fun Theory kicked off at an underground station in Odenplan, Stockholm, where a staircase was turned into a piano keyboard in a bid to see if more people would self-power themselves up the steps if it sparked their imagination to do so.

Apparently, 66% more people than usual chose the stairs.

There is also word of a bin that plays crazy sound effects when you place something inside, but I foresee small children just putting anything in so that they can hear the noise - bye, bye, Mummy's purse. So long, daddy's Beamer keys.

# posted by Fuse @ 4:13 AM  0 Comments

My mum makes the best bread and butter pudding ever, but it's not complete without custard, though my brother will only eat it with ice-cream. And my mum prefers cream, whipped of course. Still there's no getting past it, it is probably the best bread'n'butter pud in the world.

And so, it was with more than a little dubiousness that I read about the latest record braking foodstuff cooked up in the heart of England that's attempting to get into the Guinness book of records. Guess what? It's a gigantic bread and butter pudding.

Yes, the bods at Hovis cooked up the 5ft by 7ft monster desert using 1,000 slices of bread, 70 apples, 56 whole eggs and horror of horrors, semi-skimmed milk and low-fat margarine. My mum will hold her hands up in horror - that's not a bread and butter pudding - she will say.

I mean, whoever heard of a bread and low-fat marg pudding. Sorry, bakers at Hovis, but a healthy pud on a winter's day is not what we in the Hoot office want after our roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. We like our roast potatoes cooked in beef dripping, and our custard made with full-cream, full-fat, full calorie milk.

So, there.

Image ©Annie Mole via Flickr, under creative commons licence

# posted by Fuse @ 1:19 AM  0 Comments