Proving Insects Get No Respect

A roundup of unusual news stories from around the globe, compiled from Times wire services:

Bugged by “Bugs”: Leon Higley, a professor of entomology at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, has a gripe with “A Bug’s Life.” If an animated film was made about birds, he said, cartoonists would never draw four wings on the creatures.

So why did Disney and Pixar give ants in the movie four legs instead of six? Higley says it’s just one more example of contempt for insects.

Sistine II: On the seventh day, Ryan Du Val rested. He had spent six days lying on his back in his Illinois dorm room, re-creating Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Unfortunately for Du Val, his work isn’t getting the reverence accorded the original. Art or not, it’s against the rules at Northwestern University to decorate a dorm room in a way that permanently alters the off-white color of the walls.

School officials plan to repaint the ceiling while Du Val is away during winter break.

Billboard Personals: Jill Tully is hitting the highway in search of love. Since late November, Seattle motorists have been greeted by a billboard with her likeness and a caption reading: “Seeking: Spontaneous, athletic man, playful, 33-38. Professional by day, adventurous by night, looking for a long-term relationship.”

Tully, a 35-year-old divorced hairstylist, said, “I just thought this would be safer than going to a bar and that I’d get a lot more attention this way than placing a personal ad.”

Anatomically Correct Sculpture Causes Giggles: Driven down the streets of Manhattan, a life-sized bronze bull elephant sculpture made it to the gardens of the United Nations last month after years of wrangling.

Weighing 7,000 pounds and standing 11 feet high, it was made by a Bulgarian-born sculptor who tranquilized a 50-year-old wild elephant in Kenya and took a cast of it before releasing it unharmed.

But there were scattered giggles when U.N.Secretary-General Kofi Annan dedicated the statue. Shortly before the ceremony, workers hauled in potted plants and trees to block a side view of the animal’s 2-foot sexual organ.

During the dedication, Annan spoke of the statue as a whole but not its sex organ.

“The sheer size of this creature humbles us,” he said. “As well it should, for it tells us that some things are bigger than we are.”

News McNuggets:

* Residents of a small village in eastern Germany have voted to switch mayors because their incumbent is switching his own sex. Friends of the mayor said he/she planned to challenge the vote in Germany’s highest court on grounds that his rights to sexual equality had been infringed.

* Rats gnawed their way through $6,000 in U.S. currency from a Russian family’s savings stashed in a glass jar in a cellar for safety.

* What nine-point word describes the Milton Bradley plant where wooden Scrabble tiles have been made for 25 years? C-L-O-S-E-D. The Vermont plant was shut down as Scrabble celebrates its 50th anniversary. Professional Scrabble tournaments don’t use the wooden tiles, said a company spokesman, because the pros can tell what the letters are by running their fingers lightly over the wooden tiles before plucking them from the bag. Plastic is used instead.

Wide World of Weird is published on Sundays. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.