Hey Gang, Welcome back to The View From Silverhorn Mountain.

Sad news to report today, the United States has lost it's 38th President, Gerald R. Ford. President Ford was President Ford for about 895 days back in the early 1970's. Although he turned down several invitations to Silverhorn Lodge, well..... actually he never  replied to our invitations, although we did have a nice visit from some Secret Service chaps who stayed for tea one afternoon....nonetheless we always had a special place for him here on the mountain. He seemed like a nice man....President Ford was 93 years old when he cashed in his presidential seal...and speaking of seals...or dolphins... 

As you know, our research has shown animals are acting strange these days, and some are striking back in one form or another, take Boo the Bear, Hoppy the Irish Kangaroo and of course, Crusty Croc. Well add another one to the list. We now have Dick Dolphin, a New Zealander who put a woman in critical condition in hospital after he jumped into her boat and crushed her....

Apparently a 27-year-old woman had been watching from the bow (that means the front) of the small boat cruising among the marine mammals off the North Island's Coromandel Peninsula on Tuesday when the bottlenose dolphin landed on her, the New Zealand Herald said. Experts, (where would we be without them) say if the dolphin had a bottle stuck on his nose, that may explain his actions.....

Not happy to just crush a woman and leave, this guy also smashed the boats windshield and bow rails. Witnesses say he gave one of those high pitched Flipper laughs and then flipped them the..eh...well flipper, before jumping back into the water. 

Another expert, reportedly from the Coast guard, trying to sound like a...well...an expert, said the dolphin probably got over-excited and jumped on to the boat.....uh-huh...and duh....you can count on an expert to turn up and explain it to us dummies....this expert was breaking new ground...er..I mean water...because he added that he had never heard of such an incident before. Well obviously he doesn't read The View From Silverhorn Mountain because we reported on just such a similar incident some time ago.  Frequent readers will remember the 'indepth' report we did regarding sturgeons leaping into boats in Florida, if you don't remember you can find it <a href="http://robertparker.blogspot.com/2006/08/">HERE</a>

Experts....hmmmmmmphfff!!!

In other totally unrelated stuff, the world's oldest hockey stick, circa 1850 (I have absolutely no idea what circa means but all the antiques 'experts' say it) recently sold for 1.9 million american dollars....whew...Not bad for an old piece of hickory...It is going to be displayed at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Montreal...the building is probably not worth as much as the old stick.

The buyer, who made the purchase on an internet auction, is an unclothed Canadian man who plans to store the stick in the Hall of Fame until he decides what to do with it...oops...I think that should read "Undisclosed" not "unclothed" although after spending 1.9 mil on a hockey stick, who knows, sounds like he bid the shirt off his back....

Ok, lets leave Canada for a second and travel down to North Platte, that is in Nebraska, which is a nice name but doesn't stir up much emotion for me...well, it seems a stink at the county jail has landed a man in court. It seems Brian Bruggeman, may have...well...passed a little gas a little too close to another inmate by the name of Jessie Dorris...or Dorris Jessie, you can't be too sure with those reversible names...Well, I guess the gas leak started a little bruhaha between the two ah...er...smellmates...I mean cellmates..and ended up with Bruggeman shoving Jessie's head into the cell bars.

Now Bruggeman is enjoying some extra time in the crapper..no, I mean slammer, waiting for a preliminary hearing on January 11th. It seems the charges could earn him an additional  couple of years in prison.

Brad Dawson, Bruggeman's attorney, didn't offer much in the way of comment to our Silverhorn Researchers, but did say his client planned on causing quite a stink over this.....

Well I think I have done enough damage for one night......