Bylaw drives joggers nuts, Police train radar on speedy runners

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Bylaw drives joggers nuts

Police train radar on speedy runners

Crackdown to help mating squirrels

BILL TAYLOR
FEATURE WRITER

A new crackdown on speeders is being launched today with police concentrating their radar traps on parks all over the GTA.

Their targets will not be motorists but joggers.

In a rare example of environmental co-operation, mayors across the megacity have joined to rush through a temporary bylaw requiring joggers in parks to run no faster than 10 km/h. The region's distinctive black squirrels are entering their mating season and, with the squirrel population falling in recent years, ecologists urge that they be disturbed as little as possible.

For the six-week duration of the speed limit, unofficially dubbed "Operation Quickie," first offenders will be issued a warning. Repeat speeders will be fined as much as $500, depending on how fast they were running. They will be banned from parks for up to a year and required to attend animal-sensitivity classes.

"We're not saying black squirrels are on the verge of extinction," said zoologist Flora Lipo. "And, yes, some people regard them as pests. But they're quite a scarce variety of Sciurus carolinensis,the eastern gray squirrel, and it would be a shame if their numbers were thinned out to the point where they were forced to mate with their more common cousins and became mundane dark gray squirrels.

I think this is an April Fool's joke.

I'm not even sure you could use a radar gun on a jogger.

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I can confirm that they have black squirrels. I wonder if they have white polar squirrels in Northern Canada.

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ARCTIC GROUND SQUIRRELS make underground dens with lots of tunnels and rooms. They live in colonies . During the spring and summer they eat and eat (tundra plants, seeds, fruits) to prepare for a long sleep . In late summer they store food in their burrows. When they wake up in the spring there is stored food to eat until the new plants begin to grow.

Ground squirrels are the only Arctic animals that hibernate. They line the burrows with lichens, leaves and musk ox hair, then roll up into a ball and sleep for seven months. The body temperature drops to just above freezing and the heartbeat slows down during hibernation.

- awwwwwww .

More at http://www.saskschools.ca/~gregory/arctic/Awildlife.html

If it is, this would have been a beaut!

:headbang:
rocknation

What if the squirrels like roasted nuts?

"Polfoir was involved some years ago in a similar effort to save the Jersey Devil, indigenous to his state's Pine Barrens natural park."

Jersey Devil? Ha!

But even better - "Lipo runs a private animal-behaviour clinic, financed by her grandfather who invented the liposuction technique..." I was looking for a liposuction reference as soon as I saw her name. :-)

I love how most April Fool's stories do give themselves away if you pay attention. It's a great tradition.