Then consider llamas.

A charity with the slogan "get calmer with a llama" is offering romantic country strolls for the lovelorn, leading a llama together around the picturesque Lake District in northwestern England.

"Chatting over a llama is certainly a novel way to meet people in a relaxed environment, and participants can enjoy a romantic picnic afterwards -- carried by the ever obliging llamas in their backpacks," said owner Mary Walker.

Walker, whose Lakeland Llamas charity helps the disabled, is keen to assure lonely hearts that contrary to their bad press, the South American relatives of the camel do not habitually spit at or bite people but are in fact friendly and docile.

Anyone interested can click on www.lakelandllamatreks.co.uk.

A German Protestant youth group has put together a 2006 calendar with 12 staged photos depicting erotic scenes from the Bible, including a bare-breasted Delilah cutting Samson’s hair and a nude Eve offering an apple.

“There’s a whole range of biblical Scriptures simply bursting with eroticism,” said Stefan Wiest, the 32-year-old photographer who took the titillating pictures.

Anne Rohmer, 21, poses on a doorstep in garters and stockings as the prostitute Rahab, who is mentioned in both New and Old Testaments. “We wanted to represent the Bible in a different way and to interest young people,” she told Reuters. “Anyway, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that you are forbidden to show yourself nude.”

Bernd Grasser, pastor of the church in Nuremberg where the calendar is being sold, was enthusiastic about the project which is explained online at www.bibelkalender.de.

“It’s just wonderful when teenagers commit themselves with their hair and their skin to the Bible,” he said.

It will be officially launched over the weekend.

The patient recovering from a post-surgery infection shrieked for help as the ants attacked her on Sunday night, but nurses told her it was normal to feel pain from the infection.

On Monday, the patient’s family saw a gaping hole with swarming ants in it when they lifted the bandage on her left eye.

Authorities of the Sambhunath Hospital in Kolkata said they were probing the incident.

“It’s not uncommon for ants to attack diabetic patients. We have set up a committee to investigate the unfortunate incident,” hospital superintendent A. Adhikary said.

Scampering rats and stray cats and dogs sharing bed space with patients are not uncommon sights at India’s overcrowded state-run hospitals that are used by millions of poor and middle-class people.