How does one handle the perennial task of writing an article about the superficiality of news in the month of August? One option is to rerun the same article ad infinitum. Or you could just get meta!

Between them, at least, these items contain the key elements of a silly season story, as indeed does the one you're reading now: an oversized picture of a cute or disabled animal; an amusing if implausible headline; a weasel-worded sentence that restates the headline in more cautious terms (something like: "This year, however, the usual glut of silly season stories appears to have failed to turn up"); a penultimate paragraph that tries to play down the significance of ample evidence to the contrary; and a final sentence that undermines everything that has come before. So you see: the silly season has arrived after all, and right on time, too.

Fair enough. In related news, devotees of Bee Bee, the late Cumbrian hen who became a local celebrity, "will be able to pay their last respects to her next month when a cross is placed at the roadside where she was killed."