DOES THE WORLD NEED A CAGE FULL OF WOOLLY MAMMOTHS?

If something happens that gets Paul Harvey excited, you know the rest of America will be excited too. And the radio newsman was dancing in front of the microphone recently when he announced some 27,000 birds plunged beak first into an Illinois field. Then there was the story about the woolly mammoth found frozen in the tundra of Siberia.

The dead birds are likely victims of a farmer whose remedy for marauding flocks is a pile of poison-laced grain.

Scientists aren't too interested in a field of poisoned birds. But they are extremely interested in a woolly mammoth -- so interested that they want to try to clone it.

Why? Will the world really be a better place if there's a herd of mammoths running around? And where would they run around? In a cage somewhere? Is this progress?