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... and now it even killed Lucky the sheep!

Published 27th November 2009 - 2 comments - 813 views -

Journalistic work has quite some rules and traditions, like “When a dog bites a man, that is not news. But when a man bites a dog, that is news.” If we stick to an example of a dog biting a man, there is one more rule about what is newsworthy – it is not any dog biting any man; however, if an owner of the dog or the bitten man himself (or herself) is famous…

 

To get to the point: there have been heatwaves in Australia recently. (Soon I will show you how it is related to the first paragraph…) Did you know that? In Slovakia, I doubt many people did – I myself found out just a few days ago accidentally, as high temperatures in Australia don’t seem to be newsworthy for Slovak journalists. So how did I find out about it? Only because these heatwaves (probably caused be global warming, man-made or not – I will remain neutral about this…) killed Lucky, the world’s oldest sheep.

 

Lucky, who had made it into the Guinness Book of World Records, died on November 23, 2009, aged 23 years, 6 months and 28 days (twice the average life expectancy), on her farm in southern Australia. As her owner said, she succumbed to a heatwave, even though she had been provided her own air conditioners. She was buried under her favourite nectarine tree.

 

If Michael Jackson had died of heart failure caused by overheating due to record heatwave (or infection caused by drinking polluted water, drowning in a flood caused by global warming, poisoning caused by breathing toxic fumes from nearby illegal rubbish dump etc.), some people might start paying more attention to our environment. Can a death of Lucky change anything?

Category: Climate Reporting, Health Effects, | Tags: global warming, australia, michael jackson, lucky,



Comments

Aija Vanaga on 27th November 2009:

No.. Somehow it can’t..

Adela on 27th November 2009:

I haven’t heard about (not so) Lucky until you brought her up, but I think maybe it was about time to pass on. The heatwave was probably the last straw, as the 23 yo sheep had already defeated twice the average life expectancy.

As for your question, I think basically anything can make people open eyes. Even the death of a sheep.

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