Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (53 page)

As a species, the platypus is 150 million years old. (Humans are about 200,000 years old.)

ODD DOGS

According to the American Kennel Club, the most popular dog breed is the Labrador Retriever. Here’s a sampling from the opposite end of the spectrum—breeds that few people have ever heard of.

L
ÖWCHEN
First bred in France, this small but lively dog was the fashionable choice of Renaissance ladies throughout 16th-century Europe. It got its name, which means “little lion” in German, from the way owners groomed its long wavy coat into a mane. Traditionally a lap dog, the Löwchen is actually fearless and very assertive, often cowing larger dogs into submission. Its popularity peaked in the early 19th century, when Francisco Goya and other artists often pictured Löwchens in their paintings. By the end of WWII the breed had gone into decline. In 1960 the
Guinness Book of World Records
declared the Löwchen the rarest breed in the world, but it has since climbed back in popularity enough to be considered merely “rare.”

CATAHOULA CUR

The official canine of Louisiana, this tough working dog has an amazing story that begins in 1539. That’s when Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto crossed what is now the southern United States looking for gold. Dogs always traveled with the Spanish troops: Mastiffs for use in battle and Greyhounds to hunt game. When de Soto died in 1542, his army retreated back to Mexico, leaving their sick and wounded animals behind. The native tribes adopted the dogs, which then interbred with the local red wolf. Eventually a new cross emerged—tough, wily, quick, and known as the “wolf-dog.” When French settlers arrived in the 1600s, they brought with them the Beauceron, a boar-hunting hound. This new dog was bred with the “wolf-dog” to create the Catahoula Cur, which looks like a dog designed by committee: Its motley short fur is multicolored in irregular spots, and its eyes are unusually glassy. But owners swear by the intelligence and uncanny abilities of these dogs as herders, guard dogs, and hunters. They’ve even been called “cat-dogs” because they like to climb trees.

There were over 300 banana-related accidents in Britain in 2001. (Most people slipped on peels.)

SPANISH WATER DOG

This woolly-coated herding breed is thought to have come to Spain with the Moorish invasion of A.D. 711, although some experts claim they came from the north with the barbarian invasions of the Vandals and Visigoths. Either way, by 1100 they were popular all over the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in Andalucia in the southeast, where they were known as Turkish dogs. Great multitaskers, they not only herd goats and sheep but also are expert field dogs, adapted over the centuries to work the marshes retrieving birds and hares. Like their cousins, the Portuguese Water Dog (a more popular breed, to which Uncle John’s dog, Porter, belongs), they often work with fishermen retrieving nets and lines. These days they are widely used by the Spanish government for bomb and drug sniffing.

PERUVIAN INCA ORCHID

The origins of this breed, also known as the South American Hairless Sighthound, are lost in time. But by A.D. 750 they were common among the Moche, a Peruvian people whose empire predated the Incas. Primarily bred for swiftness, like the Greyhound, Peruvian Inca Orchids have hairless and coated pups in the same litter. The Incas kept the coated ones outside as hunters; the hairless ones were brought inside to be house pets and bed warmers, and were highly prized. Their name in the Quechua language of the Incas translates into “dogs without clothes.” During the Spanish conquest, the conquistadors often found the dogs inside the orchid gardens of noble Incan homes, which is how they got their modern name.

FOO

This ancient breed was long thought extinct. In appearance a combination of Spitz and Chow, today the Foo is best known as the traditional mascot of the mysterious Chinese tongs, the Chinese version of secret fraternal orders like the Masons, which dominated immigrant Chinese life in San Francisco and other American cities at the turn of the 20th century. Thought by its name to have originated in Foochow in southeast China, the Foo may be the missing link between the Chinese wolf and the modern Chow. This watchdog goes by many names: Sacred Dog of Sinkiang, Chinese Choo Hunting Dog, Chinese Temple Forest Dog, Chinese Celestial Dog, or Chinese Dragon Dog.

Maybe that’s a good thing: Dogs have fewer than 2,000 taste buds…humans have about 9,000.

NORWEGIAN PUFFIN DOG

The Lundehund (its Norwegian name) is one of the rarest breeds in the world and the oldest purebred dog in Norway. Much like a miniature Spitz, the Lundehund is small, compact, and rarely weighs more than 15 pounds. The breed is known for several remarkable traits: six toes on each foot, and ears that shut tightly against its head to keep out dust and water. Its unusual neck joints enable the dog to bend its head so that its forehead touches its back, and its hyperflexible shoulders let it splay out its front legs at right angles, allowing it to lay flat on the ground like a rug. These traits are all useful when hunting puffins, small sea birds that nest in crevices and burrows along the rocky slopes of the Norwegian fjords. Breeders claim the Norwegian Puffin Dog is descended from
Canis forus
, a primeval dog that survived the last Ice Age. It’s been around in its present form since 1432.

*        *        *

OFFICIAL STATE FOODS

• Florida’s official pie is key lime.

• Grits is Georgia’s “official prepared food.”

• The official snack of Illinois: popcorn

• The official muffin of Massachusetts is the corn muffin. Minnesota’s is blueberry; New York’s is apple.

• The Oklahoma state meal consists of fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecued pork, biscuits with sausage gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken-fried steak, black-eyed peas, and pecan pie.

• The state cookie of New Mexico is the
bizcochito
, a Spanish shortbread.

• The official drink of Rhode Island is coffee milk (sort of like chocolate milk, but made with coffee syrup instead).

• South Dakota’s official dessert is
kuchen
, a German-style pie.

• Official beverage of Ohio: canned tomato juice.

Are you mad as hell? January 7th is I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore Day.

THE REIVERS

Think the American “Wild West” was wild? It was tame compared to the border between England and Scotland in the 14th century.

T
HRONE TROUBLES
In A.D. 1286, King Alexander III of Scotland died when his horse fell over a cliff (he was on it). The Scottish crown passed to his four-year old granddaughter, and when she died four years later, 13 different nobles stepped forward to claim the throne.

The Scots were unable to settle the issue themselves, so they appealed to King Edward I of England to select a king for them. Bad move. Although the Scots wanted to remain independent, the English wanted them to be weak. So, after more than a year of deliberations, in 1292 Edward selected a noble named John Balliol to be the next king of the Scots. Four years later, Edward invaded Scotland, defeated the Scots in battle, and forced John to abdicate.

England and Scotland fought almost continuously for the next 300 years. The people living on the border suffered terribly as armies from both kingdoms repeatedly sacked towns, burned crops, and slaughtered people by the thousands, collapsing the traditional rural economy and rendering the area a wasteland. Result: Many border families, or clans, on both sides resorted to raiding each other to steal what little food, livestock, and valuables were left. Raiding, or
reiving
, as it was known, began as a crime of necessity, but as generations passed it evolved into a way of life, one with no social stigma attached at all.

MEET THE REIVERS

The reivers were the cattle rustlers of the Middle Ages. They worked as farmers, laborers, or tradesmen during the day—some were even members of the nobility—and raided at night. Their weapon of choice was the lance, a long wooden spear with a daggerlike metal blade. They were excellent horsemen, riding small, sturdy horses called hobblers. Their armor: steel helmets and leather vests with metal plates sewn on.

Nationality meant nothing—it was common for English reivers to raid the English side of the border, and the same was true of the Scots. Reivers from both sides of the border even went on raids together.

More battles of the American Revolution were fought in South Carolina than in any other colony.

About the only way to avoid being attacked was to pay a clan to protect you. But average citizens didn’t appreciate having to pay thugs to protect them from other thugs, of course—the farmers who paid rent (or
mail
, as it was called) took to calling the payments
black mail
. (Blackmail isn’t the only word that has entered the English language courtesy of the reivers:
Kidnap
,
debauchery
, and
bereaved
come from them, as well.)

Things didn’t change until 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I died and her cousin, King James VI of Scotland, became King James I of England. Determined to bring reiving to an end, James offered amnesty to any reivers who ended their “foul and insolent outrages” and declared war on any who didn’t. Most clans bowed to the inevitable and gave up reiving. Thanks to King James’s diligence, by the 1640s only a few roving gangs of reivers remained, having been forced off their land and reduced to hiding in the hills.

YOU REIVER, YOU

Are you of Scottish or English descent? If your last name is Henderson, Armstrong, Chamberlain, or any of the names listed below, you may be descended from one of the reiver clans.

Archbold

Beattie

Bell

Burns

Carleton

Carlisle

Carnaby

Carruthers

Carrs

Charlton

Crisp

Crozier

Cuthbert

Dacre

Davison

Dixon

Dodd

Douglas

Dunne

Elliot

Fenwick

Forster

Graham

Gray

Hall

Hedley

Heron

Hume

Irvine

Irving

Johnstone

Kerr

Laidlaw

Little

Lowther

Maxwell

Milburn

Musgrove

Nixon

Noble

Ogle

Oliver

Potts

Pringle

Radcliffe

Reade

Ridley

Robson

Routledge

Rutherford

Salkeld

Scott

Selby

Shaftoe

Storey

Simpson

Tait

Taylor

Trotter

Turnbull

Wake

Watson

Wilson

Young

Priciest painting by a female artist:
Calla Lilies with Red Anemone
(Georgia O’Keeffe, $6.1 million).

STRANGE LAWSUITS

Here are more real-life examples of unusual legal battles.

P
LAINTIFF:
Curtis Gokey of Lodi, California
DEFENDANT:
Curtis Gokey of Lodi, California
LAWSUIT:
A city dump truck backed into Gokey’s car, so he sued the city for damages. Gokey, a city employee, was driving the truck at the time.

VERDICT:
Pending. The city denied the claim, saying it amounted to Gokey suing himself, so he filed suit again—under his wife’s name. And she upped the amount of damages. “I’m not as nice as my husband is,” she explained.

PLAINTIFF:
John Melo of Massachusetts

DEFENDANT:
Massachusetts Department of Correction

LAWSUIT:
Melo was convicted of home invasion, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, and armed assault in a dwelling house in 1997. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In August 2004, he sued the Department of Correction, saying that they had miscalculated his sentence—because they hadn’t taken Leap Years into account. The suit claimed that his sentence of 10 years referred to 365-day years, and not the 366-day years that include a February 29. By the time of the suit he had already served in two Leap Years, 2000 and 2004.

VERDICT:
The lawsuit was rejected by the court.

PLAINTIFFS:
Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller

DEFENDANT:
The Gorilla Foundation

LAWSUIT:
Alperin and Keller were animal handlers at the foundation in Woodside, California, home of the famous gorilla Koko. Koko uses sign language and knows more than 1,000 different signs. According to foundation president Francine Patterson, Koko also has a fascination with human nipples. In 2004 Alperin and Keller were fired, and they say it was because they refused to expose their breasts to the 300-pound gorilla. Their suit claimed sexual discrimination, as well as wrongful termination in retaliation for reporting health and safety violations, and failure to pay overtime or provide rest breaks. They asked for more than $1 million in damages.