Wednesday 18 February 2009

Oh for a rich daddy

Not much to report today. It was dull this morning so I decided that I would spend the morning on the PC designing some leaflets, but I wasn't getting very far - the creative juices just weren't flowing. So off I went to do a spot of knitting, I got a bit engrossed though and never got back to the PC!

Gaussian showed a very small amount of interest in the food troughs today :-) At lunchtime when the girls got their sugar beet he actually looked into the trough which is a first! Then this evening whilst Duchess was clearing up any crumbs which might have been left (this is a ritual she carries out at every feed) Gaussian went and sat next to the trough. Here's hoping that over the next few days he may decide that he will actually eat from one.

Finally, I have just read Rolf Barbakken, a fellow bloggers posting about an article in the Wall Street Journal, talking about scientists exploiting an unusual feature of the immune system of alpacas to develop new treatments for diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and Alzheimer's. Apparently llamas, camels and their alpaca relatives are one of only two animal families that create extremely small antibodies, the molecules that are the soldiers of the immune system.

My dad is riddled with arthritis so this is something that I found very interesting - best tell daddy he needs to buy himself some alpacas to borrow some of their antibodies. Better still he could buy them for me as he can hardly walk so wont be able to care for them! I have my eye on a couple who would fit in at Barnacre very nicely.

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