EVER SINCE I FOUND out that the U.S. Navy was training pigeons as kamikaze pilots for its nuclear missiles, I have tended to view science rather less as a Holy Grail for mankind's salvation and rather more as a poisoned chalice or at least as a cat food bowl badly in need of cleaning.

Admittedly, it takes some kind of genius to land an amateur golfer where he can launch a tee shot a quarter of a mile across the moon, build new sheep without all that birds and bees hanky-panky, and produce toilet paper that doesn't sandpaper one's poop deck to a gleaming finish.

But when scientists aren't busily splitting atoms or splicing genes, their tiny brains seem to go walkabout. Their ingenuity and inventiveness turn to Thalidomide-dosed super-gloop and churn out lawnmowers powered by rabbits, coughing ashtrays, edible confetti and lengthy papers proving you can freeze to death in the Antarctic.

Scientific boffins should rarely be let out of their cages, and then only when accompanied by a keeper. Otherwise, they get loose and the next thing you know, gerbils are being recruited as drug sniffers, your car gets huffy because it finds you've been drinking too much, and the military has its eye on the local pigeon population.

It was in the late 1950s, during a stint at Cape Canaveral, that I discovered the pigeon plan. The Navy was having trouble developing a working gyroscope to control its missiles, and some bright spark came up with a solution that was for the birds.

The idea was this: Install three pigeons in the nose cone in front of three control buttons linked to the three axes - pitch, roll and yaw - that controlled the missile's flight. If the rocket veered out of control in pitch, a nut would roll down onto the appropriate button and the pigeon would peck at it, tripping a switch that would "goose" the rocket back on course. Ditto for roll and yaw, until rocket, pigeons, nuts and all landed on target.

The Navy spent something over 200,000 bucks on this one, until someone caught them at it, or maybe the terrified pigeons were spending too much time worrying about their feathered carcasses to overly concern themselves with what's for dinner. The edible nuts were canceled, but the rest were on a roll.

Australian scientists, for example, were not to be outdone in the animal power race and developed a lawnmower propelled by a pair of large male rabbits named Flotsam and Jetsam. The rabbits were installed inside a wire cylinder to nibble their way across the greensward. As an added feature, their digestive tracts swung into action and - presto! - instant fertilizer.

You probably didn't hear much more about the rabbit mower. Nor, I daresay, about Canada's sniffer gerbils. This was a gimmick dreamed up by that country's airport operators who were short on funds for proper sniffer dogs like everyone else has, and not all that long on alternative ideas that might actually work.

Someone convinced the Canadians that gerbils were more efficient, not to mention cheaper to operate (i.e., to feed). They were supposed to crouch in their cages, snarling - or whimpering or making frantic signs or whatever it is that the little critters do - if they sniffed grass or charlie or horse on unwary travelers.

Whether it worked, I have no idea - but neither have I heard that there were any underworld contracts out on Canadian gerbils.

(As any reader of this column knows quite well by now, I've no great faith in the mental agility of most animals, save cats. Horses, for instance, are merely cat food on the hoof, and my pal Vic Vanzi in Manila pegs it for dogs: "When's the last time you saw eight panting cats pulling half a ton of sled through three feet of snow?")

This dissertation wouldn't be complete without the Japanese, whose scientists for some reason sent their kamikaze pilots off to war wearing crash helmets. In a more peaceful pursuit, they celebrated the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death by inventing a bra that played a clip of his music, to the accompaniment of flashing lights, through a loudspeaker in the wearer's armpit.

Another company developed a car with a voice-activated ignition system that stubbornly refused to start if its driver was slurring his or her words and was adjudged by their auto to be quite evidently pickled. And a few miles down the Pacific road, the Taiwan Chinese came up with an ashtray that emitted an irritating smoker's cough every time its owner reached for a light.

The pros have a corner on the wacky works market, but they don't own it all. At least not as long as amateurs like an English chauffeur named Judith Tilley are around. Judith got tired of all that confetti littering church doorsteps after weddings, so she invented an eco-friendly variety made of rice paper that pigeons and other birds could safely consume.

When they aren't toiling away at the inventor's bench, they devote months and years to research that often owes less to Einstein and Edison than to the "who's buried in Grant's Tomb?" school of knowledge. At the University of Pittsburgh, for instance, four years of hard work examining the body fat and cholesterol levels of 500 volunteers produced the conclusion that they could lose weight by a better diet and more exercise.

In 1911, British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition to the Antarctic failed in their race to beat Roald Amundsen and his Norwegians to the South Pole, and weeks later froze to death on their way back across the frozen continent.

Three-quarters of a century later, academics spent 15 years recording temperatures around the South Pole. Their work was the basis for a detailed scientific paper that concluded that Captain Scott, Captain Oates and the rest had probably died because it was very cold.

Archimedes, an early-day Greek scientist, was sloshing around in his bathtub when he made some sort of scientific discovery, whereupon he promptly celebrated the occasion by running through the streets yelling "Eureka!" That was 2,200 years ago, and I would say not a lot has changed since.

Thought for the Week: So what is the speed of dark?

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