Everything’s Ducky as Judge Sides With Bird Feeder

--An elderly legally blind woman who said she was ready to go to jail rather than stop feeding a flock of ducks near her home won a legal battle when a bird-loving judge in St. Paul, Minn., dismissed a public nuisance charge against her. Ramsey County Municipal Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick said he was dropping the charge because “I was unable to see any facts that would support a criminal offense.” “I think it’s great for the ducks,” said Leila Nicol, 85, who also keeps a pet mallard hen named Feathers in her house and a pet goose named Squawker in the yard. “It’s not me I feel glad for, it’s the ducks.” Nicol, who has fed the ducks for 43 years since she first moved into her cabin on suburban Long Lake, said she was elated and returned to her home to resume feeding the 25 to 60 ducks, mostly mallards, that flock to her property daily. The feedings draw an estimated 600 additional ducks to the area, said City Atty. Tom Hughes, and called their droppings a nuisance and a health hazard. “What she has done is interfere with the natural feeding of the birds,” he told the court. Said bird-lover Fitzpatrick after the hearing: “I had 14 cardinals at my bird feeder the other day.”

Queen Elizabeth’s visit to New Zealand has not gone well. On the second day of her nine-day visit two women protesting an ancient treaty pelted the British monarch with eggs as she greeted schoolchildren in Auckland. A day later, a well-built native Maori wearing only a grass skirt turned his back and bared his tattooed buttocks at Queen Elizabeth II’s motorcade near Wellington in an ancient warrior insult over the 146-year-old treaty, police said. The 1840 treaty turned over native Maori lands to the British crown. Dining aboard the royal yacht Britannia, Prime Minister David Lange apologized to the queen on behalf of the government for the “shameful act of gross discourtesy.”

--The death of Shigechyio Izumi in Japan last week at the age of 120 leaves Anna Eliza Williams, 112, of Wales, as the world’s oldest person, according to “The Guinness Book of World Records.”

--Judge Joe Thalhofer admitted he parked illegally in a zone reserved for the handicapped at the court house in Bend, Ore., and was ticketed for it. But he had been in a hurry to hear a court matter and parked in the handicapped zone because someone else was illegally parked in his reserved space, which he had used for 29 years. “I’m not asking you to find me not guilty,” Thalhofer told visiting Judge Richard Ber, who heard the case. But Ber reasoned that there was “no evidence that a disabled person was deprived of a parking space” by Thalhofer’s action. “I am finding you not guilty,” the judge replied.