Alrightey then, Challenge!rs -- Are you ready to combat the whims and wiles of Mother Nature? Has your dog/cat been looking askance at you lately? Has your budgie become suddenly sullen? Here's a Challenge! for you then -- You have a choice to (1) pick one of the stories for an entry song, OR (2) go for the big doggie biscuit and incorporate all the stories into your entry song.

These are all true stories, so if you hear the pitter patter of claws or paws behind you some night, you might just wonder

What The Heck Is Going On Here?

Chicken-Duck "Troops" Battle Locusts (Xinjiang, China) - Twice a day, over 700,000 trained chickens and ducks chow down on locusts at the foot of Tianshan Mountain in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northwest China. By nightfall, the chicken-duck troops can devour nearly 100 million locusts, making a welcome dent in one of the region's worst locust plagues in years. Locusts have affected 2.6 million hectares of farmland in the northwest China region. To fight back, the region has brought in some 100,000 ducks to join the locust-killing bio-troops made up of chickens, migrating starlings and microspores. The bio-troops have helped kill locusts on over 270,000 hectares of land and the region has decided to double its number of ducks and chickens for its fight against the locusts next year. Ma Yonggang, a herdsman on the northern side of Tianshan Mountain, is breeding 5,000 locust-killing brown ducks.

Battles On the Sanglochon Line (Var, France) - Marauding bands of "sanglochons" -- a cross between a wild boar (sanglier) and domestic pig (cochon) -- have been wreaking havoc throughout the Alpes-Maritime region Var, a picturesque county in south-east France. Marcel Laugier, a local wildlife officer, said: "They're everywhere. It's like a plague. They come into inhabited areas and root through bins and dig up lawns and drink out of swimming pools. They're extremely greedy. I get a constant stream of calls from people complaining about them." Sanglochons were first bred in Belgium and north-west France at the end of the last century. The breed gradually died out, but was resurrected in the 1980s when farmers again began rearing them. The experiment didn't prove successful, however, and, unable to find a market for their pigs, many farmers simply released them into the wild. Their fast breeding rate has meant that over the last 20 years their numbers have increased by 600 percent, and it is now estimated there are over 10,000 of them roaming the Var alone. "There's no doubt that if they get into the wild they can be a real problem," says Michel Van der Oost, a sanglochon breeder from Neufchateau in Belgium. "They can be very naughty and willful, and aggressive too sometimes. Mind you, they make wonderful sausages."

(From McGrath of Harlow) Don't Monkey With Us, Monsieur! (Paris, France) - With pitbulls, dobermans and rottweilers under fire from the French authorities, youth gangs in the depressed city suburbs have discovered an alternative way to intimidate their rivals - with attack monkeys. "They're ultra-fashionable," said Didier Lecourbe, a police officer from the depressed Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. "There are dozens of them. Kids take them out on leads, and even carry baby monkeys around in nappies. But these animals can be very dangerous indeed." Imported illegally through Spain from Gibraltar, Morocco or Algeria, the Barbary apes are known for their powerful limbs, sharp teeth and short tempers. Veterinary experts say they can be turned into frightening and effective weapons. "Removed from their natural habitat, they can become highly aggressive," says Marie-Claude Bomsel of the natural history museum, "They bite, and their favoured method of attack is to hurl themselves at people's heads." Police believe as many as 500 Barbary apes may have been smuggled into France in the past two years. "Now the authorities have cracked down on pitbulls and the rest, apes look like becoming the new weapon of choice," said Mr Lecourbe. "We've heard of monkey-fights being run in tower block basements."

Monkeys See, Monkeys Threw (Jarratt, Virginia) Three monkeys hurled bananas and crab apples at cars on Interstate 95, then fled into the woods, police said. Police believe the monkeys escaped while being taken to the state fair in Richmond or a circus in North Carolina. State Trooper Mike Scott was flagged down Sunday by a driver who had pulled over near Jarratt. "When I walked up to the car, it looked like a banana had been smeared on the side," Scott said. The woman told him a monkey had thrown the fruit about a mile back. "I started laughing," Scott said. But he drove to the scene of the attack and found a van and a station wagon on the side of the highway. "A man said, 'I know this sounds crazy, but a monkey threw an apple at our car,"' Scott said. Just then, something hit the van. "Lo and behold there were three brown monkeys in an oak tree throwing crab apples," Scott said. The primates jumped down, ran across the highway and escaped into more trees.

Go For It, Challenge!rs!!