Gecko makes a ‘bazillion’ calls

Marine mammal veterinarian Claire Simeone was at lunch when she got a call from Ke Kai Ola, the Big Island hospital where she’s director. There was silence on the other end. Nine more silent calls followed. Fearing a seal emergency, she rushed back.

She wasn’t the only one getting calls and people started asking why the hospital was calling non-stop.

Trying to figure out why a bazillion calls were made from one line, she called the phone company and a rep tried to talk her through finding a possible line on the fritz. She walked into a lab and found the culprit.

A gecko was perched on a phone, making calls to everyone in the recent call history with “his tiny gecko feet,” she wrote on Twitter, detailing the saga.

Social media delighted in the tale and some people offered jokes about a certain company’s gecko calling to save you money on your car insurance. After discovering the mystery caller, Simeone caught the gecko and put it outside on a plant.

Giant hammer artwork stolen

Authorities in Northern California are looking for a hammer. A really, really big one.

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat says police in Healdsburg in California’s wine country are looking for an enormous artwork that vanished over the weekend.

The artwork was an 800-pound ball-peen hammer made of metal with a long redwood handle. The hammer measures 21 feet long and the head is six feet tall.

The piece, valued at $15,000, was loaned by the artist about a year ago to the Healdsburg Community Centre. It vanished from the lawn.

The artist, Doug Unkrey, says it would have required about eight people or a flatbed trailer with a winch to carry off his work. Police, of course, want to nail the thieves.

A chunk of the moon for sale to the highest bidder

Anyone who can’t make it to the moon to gather a few lunar rocks now has the opportunity to buy one right here on Earth.

A 12-pound (5.5 kilogram) lunar meteorite discovered in Northwest Africa last year is up for auction by Boston-based RR Auction and could sell for $500,000 or more.

“It is one of the most important meteorites available for acquisition anywhere in the world today,” and one of the biggest pieces of the moon ever put up for sale, RR said.

The rock classified as NWA 11789, also known as “Buagaba,” was found last year in a remote area of Mauritania but probably plunged to Earth thousands of years ago. The meteorite is actually composed of six fragments that fit together like a puzzle. The largest of those pieces weighs about six pounds.

Most lunar meteorites found are the size of a walnut.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 20th, 2018