We've all heard about the tales of gay penguins (in Manhattan's Central Park Zoo, in Coney Island's New York Aquarium, in Germany's Bremerhaven Zoo) and, while we've never heard about two male rhinos getting their swerve on, there is news about a phenomenon across the animal kingdom: two sets of queer storks taking up parenting.

Holland's Overloon Zoo is home to a lesbian pair of storks who were given two eggs to look after and a gay male duo given one egg. All the eggs have since hatched and, wouldn't you know it, both gay couples are raising their adopted offspring just as well as any of the hetero storks.

Cue the religious zeolots, lobbying against "animal cruelty."

Gay storks make great parents [Gay.com]

• The queer animal kingdom was doing so well, what with gay pink flamingos and pink penguins making the news this month. That is until those gay Israeli vultures ran back into the closet. [Haaretz Daily]

• Playing gay has been so good for Heath Ledger's career, he might just give it another go. [Post Chronicle]

• After her performance at the Grammys last week, Madonna had a surgeon perform on her. Bitch had a hernia. That's what you get for wearing nothing but constricting leotards. [NY Post]

• Traditionally leftist Canada has gays worried that their new Bush clone of a leader might take away their same-sex marriage rights. We adore our neighbors to the North for their progressive stance, so let's hope not. [USA Today]

• Once the current uproar over that controversial Mohammad cartoon dies down, some traditional Muslims are going to have another thing to protest: a documentary about Islamic gays. [Variety]

We’ve been here before. Two queer penguins causing a stir in their NYC zoo by shacking up with one another only to be broken up by some harlot. Was one of them only in his Sean Cody experimental stage? We may never know.

What we do know is that it’s happening all over again, this time in a German zoo with 11 male on male penguin couplings. But this time even a visit by the female Swedish bikini team of Penguins couldn’t tear the queer penguins apart. But what were those zoo folks thinking when sending a woman in to do a man’s job. Yhou wouldn’t send Angelina Jolie to London to break up Elton John and David Furnish, would you?

But this is certainly turning out to be a great week for the gay animal kingdom. What would be even more of a breakthrough would be an interspecies coupling. Some male flamingo on male penguin action is just what the American Family Association to get all wound up over. And you know how much we love to see them get their panties in a bunch.

Female penguins fail to seduce males [The Age]

File under: Adorable news out of England. Carlos and Fernando, strapping young chaps from the town of Gloucestershire, have been together five years and have a few adopted children of their own. Fabulous? Yes, and all the more so since these guys are pink through and through.

Britain's only gay flamingos Carlos and Fernando, are celebrating their fifth anniversary together with their adopted children at Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Gloucestershire.

The pair surprised staff at the wildlife park after they came out five years ago and began to engage in a series of complex mating rituals. The pink birds have been inseparable ever since and have even raised chicks together after they stole eggs from neighbouring straight couples.

The article goes on to say how Carlos and Fernando are a model couple, lasting a whopping five years (longer than Brad and Jen!) and are the envy of the straight flamingo world. We do have one quarrel, though. The article says they are “Britain’s only gay flamingos,” a fact we find hard to believe. C’mon, just look at what they’re wearing. The whole lot of ‘em is gay as can be.

Gay flamingos celebrate fifth anniversary with their children [Pink News UK]