Around Ireland: snakes, Chinese community issues and a graffiti nightmare

According to the Leinster Leader newspaper, the snake has taken up residence in an old wall near Captain’s Hill.
“We rang the Guards to ask them where the snake was,” Kildare Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals chairperson Kitty O’Brien told the Leader. “They told us it was probably a hoax call.”
“But we assured them that it was not any such thing, even though we did not know what type of snake it is.”
Escaped snakes in Ireland have caused three incidents this year. This particular snake has been under close watch at the Captain’s Hill location.
“He has stuck his head out once or twice, but we could not catch him,” O’Brien said. “We think he will have to come out at some stage this week to get food.”
With red colorings around its head, the snake has so far not been identified, but should not be approached, O’Brien said.

HOME SWEET HOME
Marie Collins went home to Ireland last week for her birthday — quite an achievement for a 100-year-old emigrant to the U.S.
According to the Sligo Champion, Collins came all the way from Boston with her son Bob, daughter-in-law Dottie, granddaughters Molly and Sara, and Sara’s husband, Demitrius.
Newly elected Senator Geraldine Feeney presented Collins with a letter and bouquet of flowers from President Mary McAleese.
Afterward, she visited her birthplace in Gleneaskey. On arriving at the gate of the house where she was born, the pathway was wet and muddy due to lack of use because the house is unoccupied.
However, Marie’s son Bob pointed out that they had taken his mother thousands of miles to see her birthplace and that a few hundred yards were not going to stop them.
Collins remembered shopping at Culkin’s as a child, and in 1925, it was where she booked her ticket for a White Star Steamer to America from Louis J. Culkin, who was Emigration Officer for the Dromore West area at the time.
On Sept. 25, 1925, she traveled by train to Cobh, then sailed to Boston, arriving a week later.

ROSE MARRIES
This week the Kerryman newspaper reports that one of the most popular Rose of Tralee winners has tied the knot with her long-term boyfriend.
Luzveminda O’Sullivan, from Mayo, married Patrick Flannelly at a glamorous wedding on Saturday.
Known as Mindy to many, she won the contest in 1998, representing Galway.
The newspaper tells its readers: “Her father, Sean, is originally from the Farranfore area and her late mother, Florita, from whom she inherited her exotic dark looks, was from the Philippines.”
O’Sullivan’s mother died when she was young, and she helped her father raise the family.
Currently she works as a biochemist at the blood lab at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin.
Among those who attended the wedding were TD Beverley Cooper-Flynn, her father, former EU Commissioner Padraig Flynn, and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny.

CHINESE AIR ISSUES
Derry’s Chinese community helped launch a survey of Chinese residents of Northern Ireland last week, according to the Derry Journal.
The Maiden City’s Sai Pak Chinese Community Project helped start the survey, in which 243 families took part.
Almost half the Cantonese population here is second generation, born in Northern Ireland.
A wide range of problems can confront this community: schools often mistakenly judge a child’s ability by their lack of competency in the English language.
Although racial harassment is a uncommon in the Northwest, an elderly couple found themselves victims of stone-throwing and verbal abuse and eventually reported the incidents to the police.
Despite the couple’s poor command of English, the officer in charge failed to use an available interpretation service. The police told the old couple not to bother repairing the resulting damage as this might only encourage repeat attacks, leaving the elderly couple even more bewildered and frightened.

9/11 COMMEMORATIONS
Ireland remembered last year’s terror attacks in many different ceremonies.
Fermanagh’s Impartial Reporter tells of the Sept. 11 commemoration in Enniskillen last week. As the nine firefighters at Enniskillen Fire Station removed their safety helmets and bowed their heads in silence at 1:46 p.m., a short distance away, the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, was also remembering those killed as she attended a special luncheon hosted by Enniskillen Rotary Club.
At the Rotary Club lunch, McAleese referred to the American disaster, which she described as a “dreadful day when the United States was engulfed with human hatred.”
“We are capable of making a world where we are proud to be human,” she said.
Traffic stopped to acknowledge the moment of silence as well.
“It was a time to think of those left behind, the families and those who lost loved ones as much as those who were lost themselves,” said fire brigade district commander Terry Morrison.
The Northern Irish Fire Brigade has collected more than a quarter of a million pounds for various 9/11 charities in the U.S.

‘CELTIC’ TIGER?
Tiger Woods will be in Ireland next week for the $5 million World Golf Championships American Express event at Mount Juliet.
According to Johnny O’Shea of organizers DSM International, “it is fully anticipated that crowds of more than 100,000” will converge on the course over the six days. Woods has been to Mount Juliet before.
“It was already the strongest field ever to be assembled in Ireland and the confirmation that Tiger will be there is great news for the thousands of spectators who will gather at Mount Juliet for what is sure to be a terrific golfing spectacle,” tournament director Peter Adams said.

GRAFFITI NIGHTMARE
Ballybrack in Dublin has succumbed to a “graffiti nightmare,” according to the Southside People newspaper.
“My house faces the back walls of 12 council houses and they have been covered with graffiti,” said resident Denis Cuddy. “The road is full of graffiti too and it is obscene and offensive.”
The 66-year-old said that he had contacted the council, whose members were concerned and sympathetic but told him there was nothing they could do.
“They told me that they don’t have the money to clean it up,” he said. “It is very frustrating, I have a grand house, and it is a good area, but this anarchy is happening around me.”
A spokesman for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council said that they were not aware of the problem but would be looking into it.