News Flash — Concern over the Northern
Spotted Owl may cost 25,000 jobs, a logging
industry spokesman says.

News Flash — The Marbled Murrelet is
threatened by logging in never-cut areas of
California’s redwood forests. State officials reject
plan by logging company and want to study the
robin-sized bird which nests in the canopies of
old-growth forests.

News Flash — A local man says he caught a
glimpse of an extremely rare subspecies of the
African Dung Beetle in his front lawn. Hugh
Nash, a semi-retired recluse, said he spotted the
beetle just as he started to cut his grass four
months ago. He now refuses to cut a single blade
until a team of concerned micro-entomologists
from the graduate program of Advanced Hind-
sight at the University of Victoria complete their
study.

“T don’t care if it takes them a million years,”
Nash said. “I will, if necessary, continue to lie
here beside my mower to protect the beetle. And I
am not alone.”

Indeed he is not. Close to a dozen of his
neighbours have joined the Save The Beetle
group, chained up their mowers and positioned
themselves to watch the grass grow.

It is not just grass that’s growing and blowing in
the wind on Nash’s street. Also growing is the ire
of several spouses who object to the clouds of
thistle down and dust stirred up micro-
entemologists as they crawl about holding tweez-
ers and bottles with holes in lids at the ready.

“Bunch of lazy jerks,” said Blue Eyes, Nash’s
wife. “And I mean all of them — husbands,
university entombuggers and the city politicians
who are scared to do anything to stop them. As far
as I’m concemed, they’ve all got holes in their
lids.”

Harold Snipesworth, a post doctoral research
assistant and head of the Dung team now
wriggling about on Nash’s front yard, said it
didn’t bother him to be called a lazy jerk.

*“Wife’s called me that for years,” he said. “But
it’s like the owls and the murelets, isn’t it? If we

My subspecies is rarer

don’t stop the wholesale destruction of our
environment there’d be no baby seals, red-
cockaded woodpeckers, West Indian manatees,
Mount Graham squirrels or great grey whales
would there?”

Snipesworth said his team planned to tie tiny
radio transmitters around the tummies of any
beetles they find. “Then we’ll track the little
suckers and find out what they’re up to.”

Unfortunately for the team no beetles have yet
been captured although Nash insists he sees them
from time to time, usually when he looks up from
the book he’s reading. He also sees them when he
refills his glass from a large frosted pitcher which
he keeps close at hand.

He insists the beetle is an integral environmen-
tal cog in the disposal of unwanted animal waste
and, if it (the beetle) was exterminated by the
indiscriminate use of lawn mowers, mounds of
doggie doo would pile up and lower property
values.

“Horse puckey,” offered Blue Eyes who heads
the newly formed committee Throw the Buggers
Off Our Street (BUGOFF). “There are no bugs
out there. I keep a clean yard and nobody gets off
telling me I don’t. We have to stop this nonsense
before our property values fall to zilch.”

BUGOFF has sent to Africa for a team of dung
beetle experts complete with tracking dogs. As
soon as they clear Customs, which could be as
early as next month, the beetle-sniffing dogs will
get to work.

Informed that his wife is about to set the dogs
on him, Nash says his feelings are ambivalent.

“On the one hand maybe it'll prove once and
for all that you can’t tinker with Nature and get
away with it,” he said. “On the other hand, it
bothers me that she would bring in more doggie
doo producers. On the third hand maybe it will
serve to convince doubters that this subspecies
does exist and that it must be saved whatever the
cost may be in residential esthetics.

“Tn the meantime, it’s important, for the good
of all mankind, that we not disrupt the ecology of
my lawn.”

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Phoebe’s garden geis attention

OPENING THE JULY issue of Western Liv-
ing magazine and flipping to page 42 can bring
Peninsula residents home. A spread on the unique
countryside garden created by Deep Cove resident
Phoebe Noble graces several pages of the popular
magazine. “Subtle tints, textures and patterns
fascinate in the garden of Phoebe Noble,” the
magazine says. Several photographs justify the
Statement, and also capture the beauty of a totem
pole, prominently near the entrance — the work
of Tseycum carver David Bill. Several of Bill’s
pieces can be found in yards around the Peninsu-
lat * O&K

A BRAND NEW CAR was won by Sidney
resident who entered a contest at the local branch
of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
The keys to a 1990 Nissan Stanza were presented
to Garth Train by Sidney CIBC manager Mike
Yuen and the Greater Victoria CIBC district
manager. Train won the car in CIBC’s Win
Weekly Wheels contest.

ak OK

THEY DO LISTEN. Island Farms Dairy will
start marketing its milk products in glass bottles
soon, to match the marketing technique of Royal
Qak Dairy, which has sold milk in bottles for
some time. Island Farms is making the move in
response to numerous calls from customers
asking that the packaging be changed to retuma-
ble glass bottles, a release said. Milk in bottles
will be available for home delivery customers
first, in mid-August, then on wholesale routes to
make it available in grocery stores.

* OX

WORKING AT MCDONALD’S DOES PAY
OFE, in more ways than one, a Mt. Newton
Crossroad resident found out. Trina Ruffles was

es

* * x

a winner in a scholarship program organized for
the crew of the McDonald’s Restaurant on Mt.
Newton Crossroad at the Pat Bay Highway. She
received a cheque for $500 recently. The money
will go to help pay for post secondary education
and is just a portion of $200,000 that McDonald’s
Restaurants in Canada is giving away this year.
x kX

A MEMBER OF THE Order of Canada and a
Sidney resident artist will officially open the Fine
Arts °90 in Sooke, Friday August 3. Myfanwy
Spencer Pavelic will also present awards, includ-
ing one that bears her name, and represent the
jurors’ choice as best in the show. Jurors this year
began their selection from about 1,400 submis-
sions by almost 300 artists in the Capital Regional
District. From them, 337 works by 194 artists —
the most ever — will be on display in the Fifth
Annual Fine Arts series, which runs until
August 12 in the Sooke arena. The event is
et by the Sooke Region Museum.

* * *

McKIMM & LOTT

BARRISTERS, SOLICITORS & NOTARIES

_ NICHOLAS W. LOTT CHRISTOPHER S. LOTT
R.G. WITT LAPPER D. MAYLAND MCKIMM
TIMOTHY F. LOTT GRANT S. WARRINGTON

GEORGE F. McKIMM - COUNSEL

Personal Injury / Real Estate
Criminal Law / Wills & Estates
Family Law / Commercial & Co. Law
Municipal Law

FIRST 1/2 HOUR CONSULTATION FREE

9830 FOURTH ST.
SIDNEY, B.C.

656-3961

GANGES CENTRE BLDG.
GANGES, B.C.

537-9951

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