That was in the 19th century, Bob.
Cormorants have since mastered counting to 11, which would further tax
the miners both in labor wrestling 12 or more to the surface (they
could only count to 11, but if they reached that and there were no
more, they'd figure something was wrong), and the gasses created by
the fishes for lunch food and by so many birds defecating in the mine
shafts. Large mines, dozens of shafts, x dozens of birds. Pitiful
working conditions.
A sad but continuing problem.
Pastie Crusts ????????? Women work the mines as well, or were some of
the miners a bit o'strange?
On Jan 25, 2009, at 11:36 , Bob W wrote:
There was a documentary on here recently about the tunneling
cormorants of
South Wales (Phalacrorax Troglodytes Gallensis). It seems the coal
miners of
the Welsh valleys used cormorants to detect gas when they ran out of
canaries, Welsh pits being particularly prone to gas because of all
the
leeks (no, honestly!), and cormorants being far more common in the
wild than
canaries down Rrhonddha way.
The cormorant, although stupid, is not nearly as thick as the canary
and
they quickly cottoned on to the shrinking population, correctly
figuring out
that in general fewer cormorants came out of the lift at the end of
the day
than went in at the start. So they took to using discarded pastie
crusts to
dig their way through the coal face until they hit bare earth, at
which
point their beaks were up to the job.
Living on earthworms and moles' eggs a small population established
itself
among the slag heaps and flint, earning themselves the local name of
slag
shags. They have recently been designated by the EU a protected
species,
earning large amounts of European money which pays for the
preservation of
their habitat and a large museum-cum-shopping centre specialising in
sardines, pilcahards and related fish not noted for their relevance
to the
coal-mining industry but providing an essential outlet for spare EU
cash.
Of course, if the miners had realised that cormorants can't count
past 5,
they could have made sure always to bring at least 6 of the oily-
plumed
beauties back to the surface, and none of this would have happened.
Joseph McAllister
Lots of gear, not much time
http://gallery.me.com/jomac
http://web.me.com/jomac/show.me/Blog/Blog.html
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