COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE MEYER PARK SHOPPING CENTER’S SITTING DUCKS “Is anyone but me concerned about the poor ducks I see constantly killed in the Walmart parking lot at MeyerPark? I saw another one yesterday, killed with 2 of his buddies near his body, waiting to be killed by the throngs of people there. Their breeding ground is becoming a Kohls and they are unsafe, in danger, and being killed off. The management company should pay to have them relocated before they are all killed.” [Sharron Reilly, commenting on Comment of the Day: Mystery Neighbor for the Meyer Park Walmart?]
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Critters
Pot-bellied pig Wilbur Sardo now has more than 3300 friends on Facebook, a Twitter feed, a growing YouTube channel, and an online petition with more than 500 supporting signatures, but still only 17 days left before he’ll have to find a new home outside The Thicket at Cypresswood subdivision in Spring. Owner Missy Sardo says she was told at an HOA meeting and over the phone last week that she could keep her household pet if she got 51 percent of residents to sign a petition in the pig’s favor. But a certified letter Sardo received over the weekend indicates that the neighborhood’s board of directors has decided that its “initial decision [to banish the pig] will stand.” The neighborhood’s deed restrictions prohibit “animals, livestock, poultry, reptiles, or insects of any kind.” Household pets, defined as “domestic animals commonly and traditionally kept in homes as pets” are allowed, as long as they do not include “any wild, semi-wild, or semi-domesticated animal.”
- Spring family fighting to keep pet pig says HOA won’t budge, despite petition [KHOU]
- Save Wilbur Sardo
- Deed Restrictions excerpt (PDF) [Save Wilbur Sardo]
- Wilbur Sardo [Facebook]
- Previously on Swamplot: Some Pig
Video: Wilbur Sardo
SOME PIG The host family of a 60-lb., 8-month-old pot-bellied pig named Wilbur, who resides on Fir Forest Dr. near Big Cypress Dr. in Spring, plans to go door-to-door asking for neighbors to sign a petition that would allow its pet to remain at home. Deed restrictions prohibit owners in The Thicket subdivision from raising livestock. Missy Sardo received a notice from her homeowners association giving her 30 days to find a new home for the pig — after neighbors complained. “‘One of the complaints was that he roots in your backyard, and I said, “So? It’s my backyard,” and he said, “The other complaint was that they smell,” and I said, “He doesn’t smell, they have no sweat glands, they smell better than most dogs who’ve been outside.”‘” At a neighborhood meeting this week, Sardo was told that if 51 percent of the pet’s 250 neighbors sign her petition, Wilbur will be allowed to stay. The pig has already collected close to 1000 friends on his Facebook page. [KHOU 11 News] Video: Wilbur Sardo
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BACK IN THE WILD DAYS OF CASTLE COURT “I’m sure the townhouses on Mandell near Castle Court are quite nice, but what could ever compare to the story of the house formerly on the site that housed Hugo the gorilla? Thanks to a friend who lived nearby, seeing him remains one of my most vivid memories after over 40 years.” [Hellsing, commenting on Comment of the Day: You Can’t Buy Home Again; more info]
Thank you, readers, for all the pix you’ve been sending of the ongoing strip show on Lower Westheimer just east of Montrose. Why are the outside walls now gone from the former Felix Mexican Restaurant? Termites ate ’em — or at least polished off enough lard-laden cellulose to require the entire exterior wood structure to be rebuilt. And really, how could the new walls going up for Austin sushi import Uchi — which will reportedly have “many of the same exterior features” as its Tex-Mex predecessor — taste any better?
- 4610 29th St., Dickinson [HAR]
HOUSTON BITES THE MOST Dogs bit mail carriers more times in Houston last year than in any other U.S. city, the U.S. Postal Service announced yesterday — in advance of National Dog Bite Prevention Week. 62 dogs got a taste of a Houston postal employee in 2010; San Diego and Columbus, Ohio, ranked second, with only 45 incidents each. The nationwide tally: 5,669 canine attacks on mail carriers in more than 1,400 cities, costing the agency nearly $1.2 million in medical expenses. [USPS]
HOUSTON’S COMING CUDDLY ANIMAL INVASION 
Look out for a migration of flamingoes, and a few more bunnies for Easter, announces the Houston Press‘s John Nova Lomax, after an interview with stencil artist Coolidge. “A lot of people are like, ‘Aw, you need to do a cat!’ or ‘You should do a rhino!’ or something, and I’m like, ‘Well, if I was gonna do that, I’m not now.’ . . . It’s almost like I should stop doing them on city property. I should probably stick to private property. Some people have contacted me to thank me after I’ve done their buildings up. The city won’t mess with that stuff, but if it’s on their property they’ve been taking them down pretty quick.” [Art Attack] Photo of Taylor St. bridge at I-10: Alex Luster
CALLING OFF THE IDYLWOOD BEDBUG INVASION 
That great wave of bedbugs storming through the East End that Swamplot reported on last week? Probably didn’t happen, reports the neighborhood resident who first sounded the alarm. After a careful investigation that included the assistance of a local science teacher and microscope, Idylwood blogger Lauren H. now indicates that she believes the critters found in her living room were carpet beetles. “At least we don’t have blood sucking parasites. We just have little critters who love to eat fabric and wood and are equally hard to get rid of. I found the source of our problem today. It’s our maroon chair we inherited from Jason’s parents. They have been telling us to get rid of it for years.” [East End Escapades; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Lauren H.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LOOK WHO’S READING SWAMPLOT NOW! “But for Swamplot’s prestigious Neighborhood of the Year award, Idylwood would have maintained its quiet anonymity and escaped the notice of these blood thirsty parasites.” [Mel, commenting on Shocking Documentary Photos from the Idylwood Bedbug Invasion]
“Remember a couple weeks back when I thought I was bit by a spider?” asks Idylwood blogger Lauren H. “Well, pretty sure that wasn’t the case.” She and her husband now think the critters who’ve seen fit to bite them in their east-side home 3 times each are actual bed bugs. “Or more specifically, couch bugs,” she notes in her online account. “Our living room is now covered in diatomaceous earth. It took care of our flea issue, and now we’re just hoping it continues to do [its] magic.”
Sure, we’ve all heard rumors about bedbugs in Houston. But until now, how much actual documentary evidence has been available? You know, the kind backed up by this kind of careful investigation and research:
WILL THEY EVER GET TO PLAY THE HOUSTON FLOOD? 
In a rare and surprising victory for regional realism, prospective fans have chosen to name Sugar Land’s new minor-league baseball team the Skeeters, the Atlantic League team’s management announced yesterday. Defeated at the baseball ballot box: also-rans the King Canes and Lizard Kings. Fans should be able to watch the Skeeters and swat mosquitoes from $8 seats in Sugar Land’s new strip-mall-inspired open-air stadium on the banks of Oyster Creek by the 2012 season. While one rendition of the new team’s logo pictures a mosquito piercing a baseball with its proboscis, an animated version (featured at the top left of every page on the team’s new website) depicts it angrily and repeatedly stabbing into Fort Bend County on a map of Texas. (See also less-charitable responses to the name from Around the Loop and Deadspin.) [Skeeters News; previously on Swamplot]
BIOSAFETY LEVEL 4, GALVESTON 
How’s tricks inside the air-tight $174 million Galveston National Laboratory on the UTMB campus, where space-suited investigators get to hang out with anthrax, avian influenza, bubonic plague, Ebola, typhus, West Nile, SARS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, Rift Valley fever and other bad boys? “There’s negative pressure and high air flow. It’s all built to keep stuff inside of the envelope. Animals are housed in containment devices and any individual that comes in must be decontaminated,†director of “high containment facilities” Thomas G. Ksiazek explains to reporter Amanda Casanova: “Construction on the 186,267-square-foot building started in 2005 and scientists moved in earlier this year. In the last few months, there has been only one report of possible exposure to a level 4 agent. In August, an employee stuck herself with a needle of a Central European Tick[-borne] virus while dosing mice, according to a medical branch incident report. The incident was reported to the Centers for Disease Control, and the employee was treated and monitored for three weeks but did not get sick.” [Galveston County Daily News] Photo: Nick Saum [license]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW TO TELL WHO’S BEEN VISITING “A lot of the time what people think are rat turds are actually cockroach turds. Cockroach turds are cylindrical while rat turds are more oval shaped. The fact that she caught a cockroach in her rat trap kind of confirms that suspicion.” [Carey, commenting on Dorm Rats: Where Are Those Owls When You Need Them?]
Rice University Facilities, Engineering, and Planning department spokesperson Susann Glenn denies there’s been any increase in the number of reported on-campus sightings of rats over the last 2 years. But senior Marina Masciale tells the Rice Thresher rats have “pretty much infiltrated” the new section of Hanszen College. Her evidence: “rat turds all over the floor of my room and even on my bed.”
A sticky rat trap was put up in her room to try and catch the rat, but the trap only caught a cockroach which Masciale believes the rat then proceeded to eat, as it was gone the next day. “Housing and Dining has since then upgraded to heavy-duty rat traps – the ones that snap,” Masciale says.
After some holes were patched, Masciale is sleeping in her own room again. But she tells reporter Brooke Bullock
she can still hear the rats scratching in the A/C unit. The girls across the hall have heard it in their room as well, according to Masciale.
“It’s still alive, and it’s trying to escape,” Masciale said.
- Rats, ants infest Hanszen, Wiess [Rice Thresher]
