It’s not your usual gathering of entities.

Keithville, Louisiana has the distinction of being home to the Eddie D. Jones Memorial Nature Park with some of the most beautiful running/biking/hiking trails anywhere.  Adjacent to the trails, is Chimp Haven, a 200-acre chimpanzee sanctuary, the Northwest Louisiana Veterans Cemetery and Forcht Wade Correctional Center. 

It’s how close these properties are to one another that gives the area a serene, pride-instilling, beautiful, mysterious and sometimes eerie feeling.

From the church graveyard, the sight of prisoners farming peas, the sounds of chimps screaming to occasionally remembering that the park ranger once saw what he thought was a cougar in the woods, this is a fascinating place.

There’s something oh-so-cool and downright emotional about an animal receiving an honor for helping our men and women defending our freedom.

Maybe it’s because I believe animals have no ill-will.  Sure, there are the basic survival instincts, but I’m pretty sure they’re not sitting around gossiping and planning Desperate Housewives-type revenge on one another.

So, when the news came today of Treo, a black lab, receiving the Dickin Medal for animal bravery in war, I was particularly interested in what Treo did to deserve the honor.  Turns out, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps arms and explosives dog twice found hidden bombs while serving in Afghanistan, thus saving many lives.

Treo is way cool.

So, after sniffing around a bit, I found that numerous pigeons, horses and a cat have also received this award.

Wait.  A cat?

I seriously thought that was written as a prank.  So I searched it.

I’ll be goll dang.  Sure enough…there it was.

From Wikipedia:  1949: Simon – the ship’s cat on HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze Incident, noted for surviving injuries from a cannon shell, raising morale and killing off a rat infestation during the incident, by doing this duty despite being wounded. He was raised to the fanciful rank of “Able Seacat” and awarded a campaign medal. The medal was sold by the Royal Navy and is now a valuable collectors item, partly because Simon has been the only cat to win the medal.

Maybe I’m not hanging out with cool-enough humans, but I don’t know too many everyday people among us who are willing to kill rats while dealing with cannon shell wounds.  Oh, and try raising morale while you’re at it!

Here’s to Simon and many more than nine lives where he is now!

The South doesn’t usually lend itself to snow that lasts long enough to build a snowman.

So, when 4-6 inches accumulated last week in the ArkLaTex, southerners didn’t dilly dally around with valuable time and so much pent-up creativity.  They went to work, diligently giving life to sneauxmen and sneauxwomen who would live very short lives.

Here’s a sampling of that creativity, no doubt inspired by residual Saints cheer!

Coke Zero is building a database of pictures from around the world to help you find your digital double.  Coke Zero just wants you to have fun. 

Right. 

Actually, the company has come up with a brilliant promotion that’s engaging and fun.   It uses Facebook to match your picture with a possible double. 

Coke Zero says once the database has enough faces to ensure accuracy, the matching will begin.  When I joined, the database was 22% full.

Here’s the Coke Zero Facial Profiler   if you want to try it!

It’s called a Yes Day.

My sister and her fiance told me about it.  During the course of a randomly chosen day, they say yes to anything asked of them.  They can’t use it on each other and they don’t tell anyone about it that day.

Drive thru lady:  “Do you want to try a frozen cappuccino with that, sir?”  You:  “No tha…uh…yes..yes, I will.”

Co-worker: “Will you trade on call days with me?”  You (if it’s me asking the question):  “Why, yes!  I’d love to.”

Child: “Mom, will you buy me a new computer?”  You:  “Sure.”

See how easy that is?  Ha, the tough part is carrying out your agreement.  The cool part is what doors it may open to areas you would normally shut out by saying no.

I’ll take good notes when I have a Yes Day soon and report back.  If you try one, let us know how it goes, will you?

This baby goat was rounded up more than a year ago on Kings Highway in front of Centenary College. 

For some reason, we hear about a lot of donkeys and hogs escaping.  What gives?  The Caddo Sheriff’s Office even has a Stock Patrol. 

Here’s the latest release to hit the newsroom:

Bossier Sheriff Larry Deen says his agency is trying to locate the owner of a large hog, picked up in the vicinity of the playground at Hillcrest Mobile Home Park in Haughton on Saturday, August 1^st.

If someone wants to claim the animal, they should call Capt. Bobby Masters at 965-3431. After they describe the hog and pay the fees for care and custody, the hog will be released to them.  If not claimed within 10 days, the hog will be sold at a public livestock auction.

KTBS Photojournalist Casey Habich spied this transformer, Optimus John Deere, acting all unassuming on a farm in Claiborne Parish.

Moments after Habich snapped this shot, OJD transformed into an awesome farmbot with a real thick southern accent and began clearing the crops of nasty Deceptipests.

It was cool.

Today, the meanies at Apple shut down the ability for the rival Palm Pre to act as an iPod by disabling the iTunes sync feature on the Pre. 

Is that all they got? 

We still have our super cool full qwerty keyboard and multi-tasking and syncing capabilities the iPhone so can’t PREtend to reach out and touch!  Also, there’s the way Apple spells y’all like this:  ya’ll. 

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr (pronounced NOO’-mire, like NEW’man when Seinfeld says it ) said the update “disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre.”

On the day I saw T2, I tried to buy an Optimus Prime t-shirt before the movie (weird alert), but they had only one at Target and it was a boy’s XS.  Sorry if you wanted that for your 5-year-old and I stretched it out trying to make it work.

My favorite part:  When Opt. (that’s what I call him at home) got the powers of the older and wiser former Decepticon-turned-good and became Prime Plus!  Then, butt kicking of ultimate proportions ensued!

The hottness factor of Megan Fix, I mean Fox, was enhanced technologically.  I’m not just sayin’ that cuz men find her attractive and I’m a female.  I’m sayin’ it cuz I’m a geek and I think it’s cool how they did it.  You’re old enough to Google the details.

The humor was excellent and somewhat subtle.

The mom was funny way beyond what she was in the first movie.

There was some love tension and humor.  I cried.

A really cool Palm Pre commercial ran in the previews.

I found myself sort of crushin’ on Bumble Bee, then remembered two things.  1)  In the heart of the crush world, Bee belongs to my cousin, Kristin, and my co-worker, Trish.  2)  I claimed loyalty to Opt. even before I saw him get stronger and save the world.  Now, there’s no goin’ back.