It was Monday. Mrs. Smith’s dog was hungry, but there was not any meat in the house.

Considering that there was no better way, Mrs. Smith took a piece of paper, and wrote the following words on it, “Give my dog half a pound of meat.” Then she gave the paper to her dog and said gently, “Take this to the butcher (肉贩), and he’s going to give you your lunch today.”

Holding the piece of paper in its mouth, the dog ran to the butcher’s shop. The butcher read the paper carefully, recognized that it was really the lady’s handwriting and pleasantly did as he was asked to.

At midday, the dog came to the shop again. It gave the butcher a piece of paper again. After reading it, he gave it half a pound of meat once more.

The next day, the dog came again exactly at midday. And as usual, it brought a piece of paper in the mouth. This time, the butcher did not take a look at the paper, and gave the dog its meat.

However, the dog came again at four o’clock. And the same thing happened once again. To the butcher’s more surprise, it came for the third time at six o’clock, and brought with it a third piece of paper. The butcher felt a bit puzzled, “This is a small dog. Why does Mrs. Smith give it so much meat to eat today?”

Looking at the piece of paper, he found that there were not any words on it!

Fifty years ago I had a young family of three boys. My husband Johnny and I left them with a friend while we made a rare trip to the cinema in Liverpool.

It was dark and pouring with rain but with the headlights shining on the road, we saw something ahead of us. Johnny pulled to a stop and I jumped out, ran to the grass edge and grabbed a small, wet, and frightened creature. I wrapped it safely in my woollen hat and insisted that my husband turn back and head for home. We thought it was a baby rabbit because it had long ears and was grayish-brown in colour. Once home, we filled a box with torn-up newspaper and a warm towel. We named our new animal Bobsy as we had no idea of its sex.

Sadly though, on the third day with us, it caught its back foot in a door and we quickly realised it was broken. We rushed to the vet(兽医), who said, “It’s only a rabbit, I’ll put it to sleep.” Our response was a very determined, “No way !”We found anther vet and told that she was a baby hare. We were told we should continue to keep her in her box for a week and her foot would heal.

After her recovery, Bobsy learnt to use the kitty litter tray. She would comb her long ears with her front paws. The local paper heard about this and came to our house to take her photo and write a story about her. We had her for seven wonderful years before we moved to New Zealand and we will never forget her.

Researchers don’t know exactly how whales direct their way in the ocean dark depths during their migrations (迁徙), and it’s difficult to study them in action. But recently, scientists discovered that whale strandings (搁浅) in Europe’s North Sea seemed to be related to the solar storms.

“We think the solar activity is wrecking their ability to tell directions,” Jesse Granger said. Imagine whales directing their way using GPS, and the sun closes the GPS in the middle of the trip.

Scientists have recorded whale strandings for decades, and in many cases the whales appeared to be otherwise healthy. If the whales were in good health when they accidentally beached, it’s possible that the issue of telling directions was to blame. Building on past research linking strandings with the solar activity, they studied 31 years of gray whale stranding data and compared it to sunspot data.

The team decided on the gray whales for their research due to their long migration. Gray whales experience one of the longest mammalian (哺乳动物的) migrations. Scientists have recorded one gray whale that covered 22,000 kilometers in six months, for example. The researchers found that whales were 2.3 times more likely to beach on days with lots of sunspots, darker areas on the sun associated with solar storms. This suggests that the whales do probably rely on some sort of sense to guide the way, and that when they receive a certain influence, they get lost, said Granger.

Granger added that it is just a beginning and that they have more work to do to explain the connection between the sun and whale strandings. The sun is just one of the several factors that might confuse whales, and the researchers didn’t include other things such as diseases or water up welling in the ocean itself.

But it’s important work, and if it holds, it might help environmentalists predict when they should deploy (部署) more observers in anticipation of live whale strandings.