Offbeat

Deceased voter throws election into runoff

OCILLA, Ga. “”mdash; Every last vote counts ““ even if
it’s the voter’s last vote.

A city council race in south Georgia was thrown into a runoff by
the absentee ballot of a woman who died on election day ““ and
not the night before, as officials first believed.

Election officials initially said Tyrone Smith defeated Allan
Smith 65-64 in Tuesday’s election. But one of the absentee
ballots was rejected because poll workers thought the voter had
died Monday night. They later learned she died after the polls
opened.

“We had marked the ballot “˜rejected,
deceased,'” elections superintendent Frances Bradford
said Wednesday. “The registrar, Mary Denney, had said
something about how it would have been a tie when we were counting.
And then after we went home I started thinking, “˜How does the
code read?'”

Bradford said City Attorney Harry Mixon looked up the Georgia
Election Code after going home. The law specifies that the ballot
is invalid if the absentee voter dies before the polls open.

The ballot was opened Wednesday morning at City Hall, and
officials called for the Nov. 25 runoff.

“I’ve never heard of anything like it, and they
hadn’t in Atlanta either,” said Jo Wingate, executive
director of the Secretary of State’s office in south Georgia.
“It was an odd thing.”

Monk honored for devotion to meteorology

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. “”mdash; At Subiaco Abbey, Brother Anselm Allen
has more than one reason to look skyward.

Anselm is one of the National Weather Service’s top
volunteer weather observers and will be honored next week for his
service to meteorology. For 38 years, his daily readings have
included the Scriptures, thermometers and a rain gauge.

“The superior here pretty much assigned it to me,”
Anselm said Wednesday. “I’ve enjoyed doing
it.”

Each day at 7 a.m. ““ after morning prayer and Mass ““
Anselm notes the maximum and minimum temperature from the previous
24 hours, any rainfall and the average amount of snow on the
ground.

When it’s raining heavily, he must also trudge out at 1
p.m. and 7 p.m.

“They used to have a different person about every
year,” Anselm said. “The weather service asked that we
just pick one person.”

The monks at Subiaco Abbey are Benedictines, a Roman Catholic
order. About 55 men live and work at the abbey, which was founded
in 1878 and is located in an Arkansas River Valley town that shares
its name.

On Nov. 13, the weather service will present Anselm with one of
its 25 yearly John Campanius Holm Awards, which recognize
exceptional service in the network of 11,000 volunteer weather
observers.

Baby giraffe a surprising addition to zoo

MILWAUKEE, Wis. “”mdash; Zookeeper Rich Schweitzer had to count
twice when he went to check on the giraffe barn at the Milwaukee
County Zoo.

He says he was shocked when he saw an extra animal inside, lying
on the ground.

“I said, “˜What the heck is that?'”
Schweitzer recalled.

He called a co-worker, but said, “I couldn’t even
talk.”

The colleague at first thought Schweitzer had placed a stuffed
animal in the enclosure as a prank.

But it was a real giraffe, born about 6 a.m. this past Friday
and weighing 112 pounds. By Wednesday afternoon, baby Mark weighed
122 pounds and stood 5-foot-7.

Zookeepers never knew Mark’s mother, 19-year-old Malindi,
one of three adult giraffes at the zoo, was pregnant through her 15
months of gestation.

“Normally, we do,” Schweitzer said with a laugh.

Mark is Malindi’s seventh baby, and the first giraffe born
at the zoo since 1998. His father, Kio, died in August 2002 at age
8.

In about two years, he will likely be transferred to another
zoo, Schweitzer said. Two calves born in 1998 were sent to the
Sacramento Zoo in California.

Schweitzer said male giraffes can grow to 18 feet tall and can
weigh up to 4,000 pounds.

Reports from Daily Bruin wire services.