Author: Lisa Mungovan

Today is Faux Fur Friday. Leave the real fur on the animals, and wear a fake fur coat instead. How about one with pink tiger stripes? Another way to keep warm, is with a dashing sweater vest, to celebrate Sweater Vestival. Maybe you can even find one that lights up! Today, sleeves are overrated.

Today is Make A Gift Day. Homemade gifts mean so much to people, and sometimes they cost you nothing except time! You could make a craft or knit a scarf, write a story or bake cookies. You could make a coupon book for free hugs, or shoveling the sidewalk. Make a gift of happiness!

Keith “Kebe” Edward Snyder, is a skysurfing champion. Skysurfing boards look like snowboards, but you’re riding on air. Kebe jumped out of a plane in Egypt at 13,500 feet, and set a new world record, by doing 160 helicopter spins. He saw the Pyramids, while hanging upside-down, and spinning at dizzying speeds.

The Berrybank Piggery, in Australia, has 20,000 pigs, that produce lots of poop. On most pig farms, the poop is stored in ponds, where bacteria break it down. At Berrybank, the poop is put into a biodigester, which produces methane gas that gets converted into electricity. The farm runs on poop-power!

A new kind of dinosaur, has been discovered in Chile. It looks like a very weird ankylosaur, with a tail that looked like a sword. The flat, armored tail, would have been a deadly weapon. The species, named Stegouros elengesen, lived over 70,000,000 years ago, during the Cretaceous period.

About every 10 years, an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building passes near Earth. Although the asteroid, named 4660 Nereus, is considered a near-Earth object, it’s actually nearly 2.5 million miles away. It will pass by safely on December 11th, and won’t be this close again, until 2060. Don’t forget to wave!

Today is National Mutt Day. Mixed-breed dogs are available for adoption in shelters everywhere, and they are awesome! When you adopt a mutt puppy, you never know how big they’ll grow; you get to be surprised! It’s also Fritters Day. Bits of dough stuffed with fruit, vegetables, or other fillings, are deep-fried and delicious!

Have you seen a statue, of a giant gummy bear? Willow is the mascot, of a children’s store in Louisiana called Giggles. Willow recently went missing, from the outside of the store. The gargantuan gummy bear is light blue, and bigger than most kids, so it should be hard to hide.

There’s a fox in Ocean City Maryland, who loves shoes. Penny is a red fox, who lives in a sand dune near the Princess Royale Resort. When people take their shoes off to take a stroll on the beach, the sneaky fox steals them, and stashes them in her den, to play with later!

Today is Package Protection Day. As more people order products online, there are reports of deliveries disappearing. Security cameras have caught many porch thieves in action. Sometimes, the thief is an animal, like a bear. Human criminals should beware, because sometimes the package is a decoy, full of glitter and poop!