Noes! I are not fudz!

Meet Halfpint the mouse.  Halfpint was brought in by the cat last night and fled under the freezer.  With nothing to do today but stir-crazy house cleaning, the little fellow was discovered before Bel got her claws into him.  Or her.  How do you sex a mouse?

Halfpint's proper name is Apodemus, which is a suitably grand name for such a small critter.  I'm pretty sure it's an adolescent field mouse: the long tail and huge back feet give it away.

Now, here's a dilemma.  What to do with Halfpint?  Vote now!

• Make it a little mouse house away from the cat, he's so cute. 
  
• Feed it to the cat.
• Crush its vermin head under my boot-heel.
• Let it go somewhere a way away.
• Hideous experimentation, possibly involving recipes.

Five Days to Dig Your Shelter

Go Spaceguard, go!  Asteroid 2007 TU 24 is on its way.  On January 29th it will pass the Earth just over half a million kilometres away - a little outside the Moon's orbit.  It's the closest expected pass by a space rock until 2027 (suck on that, Mayans!), but you'll need a telescope to see it.  Of course as the name suggests, it was only spotted last year so more rocks are out there.  Here's NASA's press release, the JPL small-body database (NEO orbit simulator, yay!) and for yuks, the ill-educated superstitious foaming at the mouth from the tinfoil hat brigade at Above Top Secret. 

This is why science is cool.  So we can calmly say "that's neat" instead of running into the outback with our kids, raving about how a rock the size of a skyscraper will cause the Ring of Fire to set off and bring down the Great Tribulation, without even recognising the irony and futility in moving from one random location to another.