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Nascent Drama

AFP Photo: This handout photo from Prospero Production shows a boab tree being loaded onto the back...
 
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Australian Aboriginals replanted an ancient boab tree on Sunday after it was driven thousands of kilometres with a police escort to save it from destruction.
 
A road widening scheme meant the tree, estimated to be 750 years old, had to be uprooted from its home in Western Australia and moved 3,200 kilometres (1,900 miles) by truck to a park in state capital Perth.
 
"Everyone is hoping that the tree will live for another 750 years," said horticulturalist and project coordinator Patrick Courtney.
 
"We are giving it the best chance it would ever have got."
 
The bottle-shaped tree can can live for up to 2,000 years and is a native of the remote northern Kimberley district of Western Australia state.
 
It weighs 36 tonnes, stands 14 metres (46 feet) high and is 2.5 metres (eight feet) in diameter.
 
The tree played a significant role in the traditions of the local Gija people, who have given it to the Nyoongar people, the traditional owners of Perth's King's Park area.
 
The Gija held a ceremony to see the tree off on its marathon six-day journey to its new home, and on Sunday, a traditional ceremony to welcome the tree and replant it was held in Perth.
 
The move would have cost around 120,000 Australian dollars (117,000 US), but once the tree's plight was known, contractors offered their services for free, Courtney told AFP.
 
As the tree was in its dormant stage in the tropical dry season, few special measures needed to be taken to keep it alive during the journey.
 
It will be in the company of another 14 young boab trees, which seem quite happy in the more temperate climate of the Perth region, Courtney said.
 
Lobster-loving Canadians are trying to persuade a fish market in easternmost New Brunswick province to set free a huge crustacean believed to be more than 100 years old, its owner said Friday.

The 10-kilogram (22-pound) male named Big Dee-Dee was caught earlier this month in the Bay of Fundy and is now on display at the Shediac fish market Big Fish.
 
According the store owner, Denis Breau, it was to be auctioned off in the coming weeks.
 
But a massive campaign to stop it from landing in a pot of boiling water has unexpectedly kicked off, with online petitions and a woman in Vancouver on Canada's Pacific Coast enlisting the help of the Vancouver Humane Society and animal rights group PETA.
 
Laura-Leah Shaw of Vancouver told public broadcaster CBC cooking the lobster would be barbaric.
 
"He's being thrown into a pot of boiling water and it's painful. It hurts," she said, urging Big Dee-Dee's supporters to pool their monies to buy his freedom.
 
More than 1,000 tourists per day have stopped by the shop to see the giant lobster, Breau told AFP. "About half say they want to throw a big party and eat him, the other half want to liberate him," he said.
 
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