To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

Yesterday was National Cold Cuts Day and I missed it.

Cold cuts, also known as lunch meats, luncheon meats, sandwich meats, cooked meats, sliced meats, cold meats, and deli meats are precooked or cured meat, often sausages or meat loaves, that are sliced and served cold or hot on sandwiches or on party trays.

They can be bought pre-sliced in vacuum packs at a supermarket or grocery store, or they can be purchased at a delicatessen or deli counter, where they might be sliced to order.

The British Poultry Council said yearly salaries of nearly $60,000 are failing to attract applicants for a specialized position...chick sexing.

The council said there wasn't a single new applicant last year for vent chick sexing, which involves looking at a baby chicken's backside to determine its gender. But the government rejected a plea to have the job listed as experiencing a chronic shortage of staff.

Officials said being listed would have allowed the industry to recruit from other countries, including South Korea, where chick sexing is a high-status job.

"Chick sexers examine the vent -- the anus -- of a chick, its genitalia, and by a very minuscule difference in the size and shape, then determine whether the bird is male or female," said Andrew Large, chief executive of the British Poultry Council.

"Poultry breeders need to be able to separate the chicks into those that will lay eggs and those that will be roosters."

"It is proving difficult to get people to stay in the job," Large said. "It takes three years to train someone so they develop the sensitivity and dexterity to reliably sex the bird, and a lot of people don't want to spend that amount of time training."

Large said there are an estimated 100 to 150 chick sexers in the country currently, but vacancies are going unfilled despite offered salaries of nearly $60,000 per year.

"I think the problem is the job itself. You are spending hours every day staring at the backside of a chick. That is not seen as being attractive," he said. "In southeast Asia, a chick sexer is a high-status job. In the U.K., it is more likely to be the butt of humor."

During a discussion concerning Utah legalizing medical marijuana edibles for people with certain ailments, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration said legalizing medical marijuana in Utah could lead to rabbits getting high on it.

Matt Fairbanks, who works for the marijuana eradication team, started by saying how medical marijuana could affect pot use among young people. He then said that he's seen the effects on rabbits firsthand.

While getting rid of illegal pot plants in the mountains, he's seen "rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana where one of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone."

Several studies have found that marijuana should be kept away from animals, because they will often consume too much. It can cause health problems for smaller animals.

A pair of Russian bears purported to have become alcoholics from living outside a Sochi restaurant for 20 years are being offered rehab in Romania.

The Big Hearts Foundation said the two male bears which a court ruling ordered to be seized from the owner of the restaurant have been offered a new home at a bear sanctuary outside Brasov, Romania, where officials said the animals would be treated for alcohol addiction.

"The people there have worked with dancing bears who had similar problems," 

Anna Kogan, head of the Big Hearts, based in Britain said, "It can be done but it's a very expensive process to move them abroad."

Sergei Zenkov of the Russian Nature Ministry said the agency would support moving the Sochi bears to the Romanian sanctuary, but the animal rights charities would be responsible for taking care of the necessary paperwork.

The Big Hearts Foundation said the bears "drowned in beer" at the restaurant for 20 years, as patrons would frequently pass drinks to the animals. The owner of the restaurant said "beer is good for the bears because of the Sochi climate."

"There are drunken people who come to the restaurant, park their cars in front of the bears and throw things to the animals so that they get drunk."

A woman told police she dug up her father's grave in search of his "real will" but found only vodka and cigarettes.

Melanie Nash, 53, was one of four accused in the plan to open Eddie Nash's vault then rifle through his casket in a scene a prosecutor compared to an Edgar Allan Poe story.

Police said she felt she was shorted in her share of the inheritance after her father died. 

They didn't find a will in the casket.

Nash agreed to plead guilty to charges of criminal mischief, interference with a cemetery, conspiracy and abuse of a corpse.

Nash told police she did not receive anything when her father died in 2004 and had been thinking of digging up the grave for years to prove that her sister, Susie Nash, "hid the will." Susie Nash has said there was only one will when her father's estate plan was done in 1995 and everyone involved knew about it.

In a written statement to police last June, Melanie Nash wrote that "All this was done for the right reasons and I know my father would be OK with it."

She ended her statement with: "What I did was to dig up my father's coffin looking for documents. I did it with respect."

Eddie Nash, who died of a heart attack at 68, started an equipment business in 1979 still run by his family.

He's since been reburied.

After her sister pleaded guilty, Susie Nash said she is relieved the case is at last resolved but that the effects will linger.

"It still leaves an impact on you," she said. "Every time I visit the cemetery, I will be thinking of this."