Well yes, there is a home version of TV's Mole. You'll even see it someday if Cincinnati Mole survivor Kate Pahls has her way. Then again, maybe not.

        Turns out Winton Woods Middle School teacher Jeff Merrill invented one midway through the last school year as a morale builder for teachers.

        “It was really clever,” Pahls said recently at a shady table at the sweltering Tennis Masters Series Cincinnati. “They didn't have to jump out of airplanes or anything. They had puzzles and scavenger hunts, things requiring teamwork. And of course he had a mole assigned.

        “It went over so well that he already has 35 teachers signed up this year. Anyway, I heard about it and called him because I saw a huge potential for schools, churches, civic groups, camps, all sorts of things. I offered to get the game to ABC.

        After the usual corporate maze, she wound up at the production house of Stone Stanley in Los Angeles.

        “I talked to David Dexter, head of legal, and he was excited. He told me to do a business profile and get it to him now.

        “I did, it's a month later and I can't get him to call me back. I've called and called again. Nothing.”

        Don't feel bad. He won't call us back either. So, status is unknown.

        Gone buggy: Meanwhile, off in the world of creepy crawly things, Randy Morgan is back from Peru. Not that he's creepy crawly, but the things he brought back are for sure.

        Morgan, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden curator of entomology (as in bugs), was in the Amazon Basin, teaching at the Educators Rainforest Workshop, an environmental session for 80 teachers. He's been doing it every summer since 1991.

        So anyway, Morgan being a big-time bug lover, he couldn't leave without something to cart home. He came up with two rare numbers.

        • The (really giant) giant water bug, an aquatic job that grows to five inches and is a plenty hungry predator. It eats tadpoles, fish and sometimes small birds. Picture that scampering across your bathroom floor.

        • The spiny lobster katydid, four inches and the largest and heaviest katydid in the basin. It looks like its name: Biiiiig, long reddish-brown body, long antennae, heavily-spined legs.

        And you wonder why people don't like to sit next to Morgan on planes?

        Chips ahoy: So then, anybody catch comedian and former Cincinnatian Chip Chinery — maybe we should say Chineries — on Jay Leno's show last week?

        Chinery left for Hollywood in the late '90s to make a name for himself. He's done well with a recurring guest spot on Third Rock from the Sun and a bunch of commercials, including several for Bud Light.

        And now this Chineries business: Seems Leno's writers wanted to do something on cloning, what with all the stem cell news afoot. So they booked Chinery, sat him in the audience and then used camera trickery to make hundreds of him. Many hundreds.

        It aired last week but repeats at 2:05 a.m. Wednesday.

        E-mail knipenquirer@yahoo.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/knip

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