Peter Rhodes on climate Armageddon, a hot day in Paris and the fox who thought he'd found sausages

AN elderly lady was bitten by a fox in her own home in Essex. A wildlife expert says the fox may have mistaken her fingers for sausages. That's today's urban fox for you. It can't tell one end of a rabbit from the other but show it anything resembling a plate of chipolatas and it's dinner time.

SPARE a thought for the poor animal involved. It must be a shocking moment when a fox discovers that some sausages are attached to pensioners.

HAS it ever been harder to make sense of the weather forecasts? For years, the Met Office gave us a symbol for rain or shine. Today, we get the same symbols but modified with a percentage chance. Thus, today's symbol may be rain - but only an 11 per cent risk of rain. So the forecast is actually "Rain, but probably no rain." I am not sure this is a great leap forward.

DID you see the Portuguese reacting to near-record heatwave temperatures? They were sitting in fountains, relaxing under umbrellas, drinking ice-cool beer and generally flumping. You know, some people simply don't know how to panic. Confronted by the fiery leading edge of the global-warming catastrophe, they simply chill out. And here's the problem. We humans are a tropical species. We came out of Africa and the race-memory of thousands of years ago is intact. We like being hot. If it's panic you want, tell us an ice age is coming.

THE scenes in Lisbon reminded me of a scorching hot day in Paris in 1973. We must have walked 12 miles around the French capital, pausing for breath at the immaculate fountains of the Tuileries Garden. We sat on the edge and, being young and impulsive, plunged our feet into the cool, reinvigorating waters. A couple nearby followed our example. And another. Before long there were dozens of us happily bathing our feet. At which stage in the far distance a small, stern man in a uniform made his way across the garden and told us all to remove our feet from his fountains. What is the French word for jobsworth?

IF you ever doubted that climate change is the new religion, consider the reaction to the latest shock-horror forecast that global temperatures may suddenly flip into an unstoppable "hot house" state, with seas rising by many feet and cities lost beneath the waves. Yet we may not be doomed. As the BBC puts it: "We can avoid the hothouse scenario but it's going to take a fundamental re-adjustment of our relationship with the planet." In other words, brothers and sisters, there is salvation but only if we confess our sins and change our ways. And, of course, put lots of money in the collection plate. Hallelujah.

A NATO jet flying over Estonia accidentally fired a missile a few days ago. The good news is that the £3 million missile didn't hit anything. The bad news is that the £3 million missile didn't hit anything.