It's amazing what you can buy online these days. Barry Cowan managed to buy a snake over the internet which turned out to be a man eating python. He thought he had purchased a Royal Python which only grows up to five foot in length but eventually found out when visiting an internet forum, that he had purchased a monster that can grow up to thirty foot and eat children. I wonder if it came with a money back guarantee.

A pint of milk can keep your heart healthy, thats according to this article. Research has found that dairy products can help to protect against heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

It’s such a shame that while conservationists try so hard to protect our wildlife there are still ignorant people that are intent on wiping it out. The Peak District has recently seen two species of birds completely wiped out as a result of attacks on birds of prey. The Goshawk and the Peregrine Falcons that were breeding in the area have now been decimated. There were 17 recorded attacks on peregrine falcons in the last year in which female birds were shot dead and unfortunately this amounts to the whole breeding population of this fragile species. Birds dying of natural causes is one thing, but I can't understand why someone would want to wipe out a whole species in an area on purpose.

A rare horseshoe bat who has lived on his own for seven years has now found a mate. The bat called Dean flew from Gloucestershire to Wales in his search for a mate and found Cinders. There are now hopes that the bats might start a new breeding colony.

There are many ways to propose and every guy is nervous about getting it just right. One man decided to pop the question on a shark dive. Whilst on the dive he produced a sign saying "marry me". A slightly unusual place to propose but his girlfriend was delighted, apparently.

This suitcase full of puppies was discovered in Leeds, after someone noticed it was moving. In all eight puppies were crammed into the case. They are now looking for new homes.

Even the happiest of married couples have their arguments; however, most couples manage to get through the wedding day without any fights. One couple started their marriage with a fight in a hotel room, on their wedding day which led to the groom being hit with a stiletto heel and being treated for a head wound. The bride still in her wedding dress was detained by police. The couple who are still together had to pay £500 for the damaged they caused to the hotel room during the fight. Wedded Bliss.

I came across this useful tip on how to quickly chill a warm beer, or any other drink for that matter, really quickly. Basically you put the beer in a pot full of ice cubes, fill the pot with water and add a couple of cups of table salt. Then put it in the freezer for about three minutes and you have cold beer. Magic.

Samson is Britain's biggest dog, he stands 6ft 5in on his hind legs and has paws around the size of dinner plates. Now that's what you call a guard dog.

I have been feeling a little tired and run down recently so was considering putting myself through a detox and cleansing programme. I came across this article on the benefits of colon cleansing and how it can have positive effects such as improved digestion and less bloating after meals, which suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a problem that tends to really affect me. The article went onto to recommend a cleansing product called Bowltrol. I’m usually a bit sceptical as to whether these sorts of products work, but this website contains a Bowltrol Review where the product was tested on real life customers with all of them seeing successful results after using the product.

The recent flooding in the UK, along with a potato blight could mean bad new for chip lovers everywhere. The potato blight which thrives in warm wet weather is the worst for five years and the resulting shortage in potatoes will mean a rise in chip prices.

This is Lucy doing her cute kitty act. This usually happens after she has done something particularly bad.

I have noticed recently a dramatic increase in the number of spam emails I get pretending to be from banks. With most of them it’s very easy to spot they are spam as I have never heard from the bank mentioned (usually an American bank), let alone have an account with them. Recently though the spammers seemed to have moved into targeting UK banks. I have received emails recently from Lloyds TSB and Alliance and Leicester and its interesting to see the spammers have been doing their homework. The emails fit exactly with the look and feel of the current websites and even include a disclaimer on the bottom about not divulging your banking details. I know that no UK banks would ever send you an email asking you to click on a link and re-enter your details. In addition, I am not fooled when directed to a website that looks like my banks website but has a completely different URL, however, I'm sure there must be people who do get caught out by the spam emails and end up divulging all of their account details. I have got to the stage where I automatically delete any emails claiming to be from a bank. If my bank did try to contact me by email, they wouldn’t have much luck, but then they do have my address and phone number if it’s important.

I found this on Crooked Brains. Its a hotel made completely out of ice, how cool is that? No pun intended...

I watched a documentary about harriers the other day and the work going into breeding programmes. There are fewer than ten pairs of Montagu's harriers left in the UK and there are hopes that this particular pair in Lincolnshire will be successful.

Tesco has been condemned for selling live turtles at its stores in China. The turtles are sold live and then have their heads cuts off with the knife. The turtle, however, remains aware for up to an hour afterwards and is still able to move its eyes, unless the skull is crushed. Tesco say the turtles are killed humanely and that it's wrong to impose western standards on the Chinese market. It still seems a rather cruel practice.

Cats seems to love sitting on shoes. Here is a picture of Ollie guarding a pair of my shoes.

I like to cook and often experiment with new recipes with varying degrees of success. Sometimes, however, it’s the easiest things to cook that end up in disaster, mainly because you are generally doing other things whilst cooking them. I found some sausage rolls in the freezer this weekend and decided to cook them as a snack to use them up. Unfortunately in my rush I turned the oven setting to grill by mistake. After about fifteen minutes there was a strange burning smell and the kitchen was full of black smoke. This is the result (below) with me looking very red faced, needless to say they went straight in the bin.

People living in a village in China have been digging up dinosaur bones and using them as medicine. They believed that the bones were dragon bones and so had been grinding them up to make soup. The bones are thought to be from a large plant eating dinosaur.

There have been many times when my husband has been nursing a bitten hand, disinfecting a scratched arm or cleaning up cat sick, that he has uttered the phrase, either the cats goes or I do, I know he doesn't mean it, but found this amusing.

A chinese woman has been jailed for stabbing her boyfriend in the eye with a chopstick and blinding him. She stabbed him in the eye after an argument. She had already blinded him in the other eye six years earlier after another argument. Bearing that in mind I would have removed any sharp implements from the house.

I read this article which claims that pre-packed sandwiches can contain as much salt as seven bags of crisps, that's more than half the recommended daily amount. The saltiest sandwich was Asda's Special Yorkshire Ham and Wensleydale which contained 65% of the recommended daily salt intake. Personally I don't eat a great deal of pre-packed sandwiches, mainly because they usually contain things I don't like. This article has reinforced my belief that its best to make your sandwiches at home because you know exactly what goes into it and its generally fresher than the pre-packed alternative.

A firm which advises councils on green transport has sent an email to its employees advising them to drive to work or use public transport because they think cycling in London is too dangerous. The firm which has advised Transport for London has now had to distance itself from the email after a furious backlash by TFL. Personally I don't think I would cycle in London because drivers do not seem aware of pedestrians, let alone looking out for someone on a bike.

McDonalds have recently introduced new measures in its efforts to appear environmentally friendly. They will now turn all of their used cooking into bio diesel fuel which will be used to power their vans in the UK. They have also started using non-hydrogenated cooking all in its restaurants as well as organic milk. Along with these measures they are redesigning a lot of their outlets. In all the exercise is meant to make the chain appear more ethical. I'm not sure how much difference these measures will make but one thing I have noticed is the amount of discarded McDonalds food wrappings that seems to be around.

An EU offical has said that cigarettes should be made "fire safe" because of the amount of fire related deaths caused by them. We may soon see the first self extinguishing cigarettes going on sale. Bizarre.

This cool cave home is literally carved out of the limestone cliffs; it has a sitting room and a front door but no water and electricity. That didn't stop it from fetching a cool £100,000 when it was auctioned a couple of days ago.

A wildlife park in the Isle of Man is doing well with their breeding programme. They have just had their fifth squirrel monkey born in a year. The monkeys are currently classed as endangered so this project is an important boost to their numbers.

This fox swam 40 metres and back again to an island in order to steal some goose eggs from a nest. She was caught on camera by an amateur photographer. As she could only carry one egg in her mouth at a time, the fox made a total of four trips to the island to bring back an egg for each of her four cubs.

Good news for chocolate lovers, eating some dark chocolate every day can lower your blood pressure thats according to a study carried out in the US. Eating one or two chunks of chocolate every day can be enough to be beneficial.

A charity is looking for overweight pets to take part in its "fit club". Good Friday pictured below managed to lose 1kg when he took part last year, so if you have a fat cat or an overweight dog, you might want to sign them up.

If you enter a cake baking contest and are the only entrant you would expect to come first. Jenny Brown entered such a contest and was pleased when her cake won second prize. That was until she found out she was the only person to have entered a cake in the competition. Her cake was marked down on some points by the judges who deemed it was only good enough to make second prize. Now that hardly seems fair.

Apparently having a regular glass of wine can help prevent tooth decay and gum disease and can even cure a sore throat. That's according to a study carried out by some Italian scientists. It seems to me like another good excuse to drink wine.