Dead Animals

SAN JOSE LAS FLORES, El Salvador -- For 11 years, An Ayala was a guerrilla fighter for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) during this country's civil war.Now, the war has been over for nearly a year. She has exchanged her M16 for a cooking pot and the other trappings of a housewife in the Latin American mode.And like many of the other women who risked their lives with the FMLN, she has rediscovered a more intransigent enemy."I'm bored of living in the same place all the time without being with lots of people," says the 28-year-old Mrs. Ayala.

Maryland's deputy secretary of agriculture told the Carroll County Farm Bureau last night that members need to advocate for their industry."We need to let the public know that we are the state's largest industry," said Louis Riley, at the Farm Bureau's annual banquet. "No other industry involves more people and touches more people."The meeting at the Pleasant Valley Fire Hall is when Farm Bureau members vote on their resolutions for the year and elect new officers.Mr. Riley, who farms 750 acres in Wicomico County, said that as a farmer he understands why the state Department of Agriculture should resist any proposal to merge it with another state agency.

Carroll County will receive about $121,000 more tha expected from the state to spend on parks and other open space projects in the next fiscal year, the county budget director said yesterday.The governor included an extra $121,490 of Program Open Space money in his budget for Carroll, Budget Director Steven D. Powell said.The money will be added to $410,000 in open space money the county was scheduled to receive in fiscal 1994, which begins July 1.Carroll's towns will split about $28,000 of the additional money, and the county will use about $41,000 for land acquisition and about $53,000 for park development, Mr. Powell said.

Andre Rawlings Sanitation worker D & P Refuse Inc., Glen Burnie Salary --$80 a day Age --38 Years on the job --nine Typical day --Rawlings works Monday through Friday and sometimes Saturday mornings. His hours vary according to which route he is working that day. If he starts a route by 6 a.m., he usually can finish by 12:30 p.m. He rides on the back of the trash truck, as one of two throwers. He collects trash from routes in Howard County, working one route a day. When the truck is full, they drive it to the landfill to unload.

Every year there are more people who believe that ground tiger bone and rhinoceros horn are good for their health or potency, and fewer tigers and rhino to provide it.Leading estimates put the world wild tiger population at 5,000 and rhino population at 10,000. The chances are fairly good that in a decade, whatever the United States has done or failed to do, the only tiger and rhino alive in the world will be in captivity. That is something for people who disapprove of zoos to think about.

More than 100 pigs have vanished from a farm in western Carroll County that is under quarantine because of trichinosis. Officials were concerned that the pigs from the Marston farm of Carroll Schisler Sr. may have been taken to slaughterhouses. "The immediate public health concern - especially with the history of that farm - is that some of his pigs have shown up with trichinosis. ... That's something you don't want in the food chain," said Larry Leitch, the county's health officer. Schisler said he can't find 104 of the 105 pigs that were on the property, according to his attorney, Roland Walker.

Composting might be the most efficient way to dispose of dead livestock, the Carroll County Agricultural Commission was told yesterday.The commission's dead animal disposal committee said in a preliminary report that Thomas Leidy, owner of a now-closed rendering plant in Westminster, would be willing to turn the vacant facility into a composting pit for dead animals and yard waste.Mr. Leidy would sell the composted material for fertilizer, the report said.However, commission members said they are not sure current zoning would allow the proposed plant because the facility, behind the TSC store, has been vacant for more than six months.

Man cited for keeping 40 cars on his propertyCarroll County zoning officials last week cited a Taneytown man for parking 40 cars on his property in the 6200 block of Taneytown Pike.Neighbors complained that Christopher Loveland had parked too many cars on his 5-acre property in the agriculture district, Zoning Administrator Solveig Smith said yesterday.County zoning law allows a person to park a reasonable number of cars on a property in the agricultural zone, depending on what the property is used for, she said.

Sandra's boyfriend Matt is jealous of Sandra's deceased lovers. Not former lovers who are currently deceased. Current lovers who are also currently deceased.You see, Sandra's romantic tastes veer in an unusual direction, specifically, toward the funeral home where she works and, um, dates.Yes, it's true. "Kissed," directed, co-written and co-produced by Lynne Stopkewich, is that rarest of art forms, a necrophilia movie.The genre may not have universal appeal, but "Kissed" should not be dismissed.

Maryland farmers need a bill of rights to continue making a decent living and to protect their property values, Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein told a group of Carroll County farmers last night.Mr. Goldstein, who has been a state Farm Bureau member since 1938, was the featured speaker at the annual Carroll County Farm Bureau meeting, held at the Pleasant Valley fire hall."We have to realize that these rights are necessary, or else the farmer will become an endangered species here in Maryland and throughout America," he said.