My home recently came under the attack of two adopted, seven-month-old kittens. Watch these pint-sized entropy enhancers for five minutes and you’ll know why they say cats have nine lives. Climbing the curtains sure seemed like a good idea at the time. Now hanging in space by 10 front claws and slipping, diverting to a Plan B might be in order. Then superior engineering borne of millennia of evolution kicks in, and dropping 15 times their own height ends with a perfect landing and a surprise attack on the lamp cord.
Listening to the somber audio of a recent Cirrus crash in Melborne, Fla., (snipurl.com/22txmze), I find myself wishing it were so easy for pilots. The results aren’t official, but it looks like the pilot confused a clearance to follow a preceding aircraft and land with a clearance to just land. He made a close-in base, ATC realized it might be a conflict and told him to “cut it tight, now,” he did—and the airplane apparently spun in short of the runway. All three aboard died.
