People and Events

That well-publicized Vermont romance between a moose and Jessica the cow didn’t last, so perhaps this one won’t either, but Garrie Katznelson says the wild duck that strayed into her Tarzana swimming pool Jan. 5 has fallen in love with her collie and refuses to leave.

“They sleep together, play together and both eat out of the dog’s bowl,” says Katznelson. “The duck won’t eat duck food, but likes dog food. When Lady lies down, the duck will waddle over and walk all over her.”

Katznelson, who also has a couple of cats in addition to two young daughters, says the North American wood duck “basically has adopted our family. After about three weeks around here, it developed an attraction for the dog and started following her around.”

The 3-year-old collie and the duck chase each other in a friendly fashion and frequently race the length of the pool--one on water and the other on land.

The duck, though, is not above cheating. It will become airborne in order to win.

A current Los Angeles Police Department recruiting poster that shows Chief Daryl F. Gates challenging potential cops to “Stand and Deliver” has prompted the amused observation by some that the phrase was used in the old days by highwaymen.

Many a stagecoach driver heard those words from some masked bandit and knew he had better throw down the money box or else.

Did the LAPD know where the expression originated?

“It came from a publicist,” said Cmdr. William Booth, the department spokesman.

Advised that holdup men once used it, both here and in England, Booth responded affably, “We’re holdup men. We’re holding up the law.”

“The hat trick,” observed a Caltech spokesman.

C. Alexander (Sasha) Kamb completed his dissertation in biology at Caltech last week to win his doctorate. He is the son of W. Barclay Kamb, who got his Caltech doctorate in geology 32 years ago and has been a professor there ever since.

The elder Kamb is the son-in-law of the noted two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, who got his Caltech doctorate in chemistry in 1925.

The metallic balloon folks, it appears, are not thrilled to have Southern California utility executives blame outages on the shiny inflatables that escape and lodge themselves in power lines.

A recent Times report on Southern California Edison Co. complaints about the problem brought a response from Debra Paulk, co-founder of the National Assn. of Balloon Artists, who declared that “20,000 balloon and party professionals are patiently waiting to read about the rest of the story.”

Although a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spokesman was quoted in the piece as saying that balloons cause only “a tiny fraction of all outages,” but are the fastest-growing cause of them, Paulk charged that the power people were unfair because they failed to offer “comparative figures as to the percentage of outages caused by balloons as compared to tree branches, squirrels, etc. . . .”

She said her association’s magazine has found that although there are “strikingly similar numbers of balloonists” in both states, “it is amazing to note that the state of Florida has not encountered similar problems as has been experienced in California with balloons.”

She wondered whether it was possible that Florida is a little ahead of us in equipment maintenance.

Unless you were at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology, which closed last week in Los Angeles, you may have missed the report by University of Wisconsin allergist Robert K. Bush, who suggested that deer have found a way to get revenge.

A study of a dozen deer hunters, Bush said, showed that most of them suffered congestion, hives, asthma, sneezing, runny noses, itchy eyes and swollen eyelids or lips as results of inhaling or touching deer hair or coming in contact with deer saliva, blood or urine.

“Poor Bambi gets shot,” Bush observed, “then Bambi strikes back.”