ODDLY ENOUGH | This Valentine’s Day gift might bug your sweetheart

ODDLY ENOUGH

This Valentine’s Day gift might bug your sweetheart

NEW YORK

If lingerie is too intimate and dinner out is too expensive, the Bronx Zoo suggests another Valentine’s Day gift: a Madagascar hissing cockroach.

Spokesman John Calvelli says, “Nothing says forever like a cockroach.”

The Wildlife Conservation Society runs the New York City zoo and is raising funds by offering the public the chance to name the huge roaches.

In return for each name, it’s asking for a $10 donation.

Calvelli says about 1,700 cockroach names were bought in the first two days of the promotion.

Recipients get a certificate.

The zoo says naming a roach will honor a sweetheart’s resourcefulness and resiliency.

As the zoo puts it: “Flowers wilt. Chocolates melt. Roaches are forever.”

UK Scouts’ royal kidnap game raises eyebrows, angers some

LONDON

A British scout troop’s outdoor exercise depicting the mock kidnapping of Prince William’s bride-to-be has raised some eyebrows.

The Scouts’ annual “quest” in the small English town of Amersham, west of London, recently involved watching an actress playing Kate Middleton being kidnapped by a team of balaclava-clad men, according to a local newspaper.

An actor playing Prince William then appealed to the 300 Scouts, aged 11 to 13, to help him find his princess.

Most of the Scouts spent about eight hours hiking around the area looking for clues to the location of the missing Middleton, according to the Buckinghamshire Advertiser.

The paper quoted event organizer Brian Shelley as saying he did not see anything inappropriate in the rescue-the-princess-themed outing.

“I don’t think it was inappropriate,” Shelley was quoted as saying. “The Scouts loved it and found it very amusing. Nobody raised any concerns on the day, so I’m surprised to hear if there were any.”

News of the game angered some local councilors and led to national media coverage.

Messages seeking comment from the 2nd Amersham Common Scouts were not immediately returned Saturday.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the topic of the mock kidnapping.

William and Middleton are being married April 29 at London’s Westminster Abbey.

The government is expected to deploy a major security presence for the event.

Associated Press