Tricks of the trade

There are practical ways to do things and solve daily problems.

Cattle raisers in Oguni, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, are dealing with flies that pester their animals when grazing in the open using an insect-repelling technique cited in a report released years ago in Aichi Prefecture. They are now trying it after experiments showed the method yielded good results.

Insect bites cause pain and itchiness that stress cattle and infect cows with disease. The Oguni farmers put stripes on black-colored cattle using bleach from hair salons or spraying them with white paint.

“Many farmers have hesitated to release their cattle on the farmlands because they feel sorry for the animals being targeted by gadflies,” said an official with the agriculture promotion section of the Yamagata prefectural government’s Tamaoki branch, Asahi Shimbun reports. “But we can now expect the cattle to relax, rest, and grow healthy if we give them stripes.”

The effectiveness of the stripes was proven by counting how many times the cattle in the pastures wagged their tails, shook their heads, and raised their hooves to ward off the insects. Cattle without stripes made those movements 16 times per minute, while those with artificial stripes did so five times per minute, or 70 percent less.

Meanwhile, a man used a novel way to steal from a cash register of a post office in Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom, last month.

CCTV footage of the incident on 10 February, released by the local police, showed 36-year-old Jelanie Scott sliding a long metal spoon under the screen of the cashier’s booth to scoop up the money, Yahoo! News reports.

An alert post office staffer foiled the theft by grabbing the spoon and pressing an alarm button that filled the office with white smoke.

While Scott escaped from the scene that day, police were able to track him down nine days later through information from his debit card that he dropped outside the post office when he boarded a taxi.

Scott has pleaded guilty to trying to steal cash from the post office and was fined £50 and ordered to pay a £114 victim surcharge and £85 in court costs. The confessed drug addict was also ordered to enter a six-month drug rehabilitation program, according to Yahoo! News.