Friday, January 11, 2008

Dog Shoots Hunter




Bird dog steps on gun, kills hunter

Wed Jan 9, 2008 9:10am EST

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Houston-area man was killed in a hunting accident after his dog stepped on a loaded shotgun in the back of a pick-up truck, triggering a blast that pierced the vehicle and the hunter's leg, a local sheriff said.

Perry Price, a 46-year-old math teacher, shot a goose on Saturday then put his gun in the back of the truck where the dog was waiting to retrieve the bird.

"I've been in law enforcement 20 years and this is probably the strangest one I've had," said Chambers County Sheriff Joe LaRive.

Investigators found paw prints and mud from the dog, a chocolate Labrador retriever named Arthur, on the shotgun, LaRive said.

Price was taken to a local hospital, but died from a loss of blood after doctors were unable to revive him.

(Reporting by Anna Driver in Houston, editing by Todd Eastham)

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Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

The Nigerian Puppy Scam





Suspected 'Puppy Scam' ads pulled from newspaper
Bulldogs ad from Daily Press

Circled is the ad for free bulldogs that appeared in Jan. 4, 2008 Daily Press classified ads. (January 4, 2008)

BY MIKE HOLTZCLAW | 757-928-6479
1:03 PM EST, January 4, 2008

"The Nigerian Puppy Scam," one of the latest email hoaxes aimed at unsuspecting consumers, has hit Hampton Roads.

Several readers contacted the Daily Press and said when they responded to a classified ad offering free bulldog puppies, they received an email response asking for personal information and saying that the dog would have to be sent from West Africa, hinting that the reader would have to pay for the international shipping.

Newspapers, TV reports and online sites have given extensive coverage to the "Nigerian Puppy Scam," a new variation on a common online swindle in which a consumer is convinced to send money overseas for goods or rewards that never arrive.

Web sites such as ripoffreport.com and crime-research.org, which serve as watchdogs for online scams, have written extensively about the "Nigerian Puppy Scam," which can use several different breeds of dog and the names of various African nations. In the most common version of the scam, the person offering the dogs writes with great kindness and gratitude to the prospective customer and asks for the person to pay the shipping charge, usually $200 or more.

The classified ad ran in the Daily Press for four days but was pulled from the paper after readers called to identify it as a likely scam.

Copyright © 2008, Newport News, Va., Daily Press

Ewww.....





Wisconsin man convicted of sexually assaulting dead deer gets more jail time

17 hours ago

SUPERIOR, Wis. - A Wisconsin man convicted of having sexual contact with a dead deer has been sentenced to nine more months in jail.

Bryan James Hathaway, 21, of Superior had his probation revoked last month for using alcohol and marijuana, lying to his probation agent, and having unapproved contact with a minor child and sexual relations with another adult.

A judge sentenced Hathaway to nine more months in jail during a hearing on Friday.

Hathaway was sentenced to probation in March. It was to be served at the same time as a nine-month jail sentence he received in February for violating his extended supervision.

He was found guilty in April 2005 of felony mistreatment of an animal after he killed a horse with the intention of having sex with it. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail and two years of extended supervision on that charge as well as six years of probation for taking and driving a vehicle without the owner's consent.

Hathaway had just been released from prison for killing the horse when the deer incident happened. He is appealing his conviction on the deer charge.

Copyright © 2008 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Police Foil Bull Liberation Operation




Stolen Rodeo Bulls Recovered, Rustler Still at Large

Saturday, January 05, 2008

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Police recovered a stolen truck and its cargo of rodeo bulls, but the thief who rustled them remains on the lam.

The truck and a trailer carrying a dozen or so bulls were hijacked in downtown Nashville late Friday.

Police Sgt. Robert Durbin says the animals were being delivered to Municipal Auditorium for a professional bull riding show when the thief jumped into the cab.

Witnesses say a woman who was in the truck managed to escape despite the carjacker's attempts to keep her inside.

Police found the truck and trailer abandoned early Saturday with an empty gas tank.

The bulls, which were valued at about $100,000, were safe.

Pit Bull Causes Cop to Shoot Self




Memphis Officer Recovering After Shooting Himself in Foot

Last Update: 10:36 am
Print Story | Email Story

A Memphis police officer is recovering after accidentally shooting himself in the foot during a raid Friday Night.

Officers say someone let a pitbull loose on them when they knocked on the door of a home in the 44-hundred block of Medley lane, near the airport.

The officer tried to shoot at the dog, but ended up shooting himself.
Memphis police investigators say three people were taken into custody.

No charges have been filed yet.

Two pit bulls were taken away by animal control.
Police tell us the officer was part of a five man team investigating car thefts.

Yummy Jellyfish




Demand for jellyfish aids state shrimpers

Gelatinous species dried for wafers eaten in Asia

By Tony Bridges | The News Herald
January 6, 2008

ST. ANDREWS - Somewhere in China right now, there's a cannonball jellyfish from the waters off Florida's Panhandle about to be eaten.

Shrimpers trying to stay afloat during the off-season have been scooping them out of the Gulf of Mexico by the thousands since September. The gelatinous masses have turned out to be a profitable commodity on the Asian market, once they are processed into crispy protein wafers.

"Cannonball is a whole new business to us," said shrimp boat operator Steve Davis, 68. "We used to run from them when we were shrimping because they would fill up the nets. Now we run to 'em."

Roger Newton, owner of Gulf Jellyfish Inc., based in Panama City, was on the dock at the St. Andrews Marina recently, watching crews unload their cannonball catch. He said he has been in the business about seven years, more of them good than not.

The cannonballs, rounded, non-stinging jellyfish that can grow to almost a foot wide, typically start showing up in September and usually stay about three months, though he never can be certain, Newton said.



Davis, from Apalachicola, said the cannonballs seem to move west along the Gulf in the fall, with the shrimpers following them from Port St. Joe to Panama City. After 40 years of catching shrimp, he still is learning his way around jellyfish, Davis said.

"What we know about them wouldn't fill but about half a page in a one-page book," he said with a wry grin.

But what he does know is they are a good way to make money, especially when Asian imports are keeping wholesale shrimp prices low. A day's work and about $70 in fuel can bring in $1,000 worth of jellyfish, he said.

Two trawlers were busy netting cannonball in the bay within sight of the marina, while another boat was tied up to the dock to unload. A large vacuum hose sucked the jellyfish off the boat's sunken deck and delivered them to a conveyor belt, where a crewman with a shovel scooped them into plastic bins.

They are slimy and their mucus-like covering will cause a burning sensation if it gets in your eyes, Davis said.

"You can't hardly pick them up. We were going to call that man that's got the dirtiest jobs on television," he said, referring to the Discovery Channel's Mike Rowe.

Another worker with a forklift loaded the bins into a pair of tractor-trailers. The jellyfish go to a processing plant in Georgia, where they are dried out, and salt is removed. Then they are packed into 50,000-pound containers for shipping to China and Japan, Newton said. He retrieved a plastic bag from his truck to show to curious visitors. Inside were three yellowish wafers about 5 inches across.

"They're all protein and taste like whatever you put on them," he said.

According to the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the dried jellyfish are popular in Asia as salad toppers or with cooked vegetables. A four-ounce serving contains 30 calories, eight grams of protein and 120 milligrams of sodium.

Researchers think the jellyfish might be useful in fighting certain types of arthritis because of the collagen they contain.

Copyright © 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Everyone Loves a Tiger Attack




Attendance Up at Zoo After Tiger Attack

Jan 5 04:16 PM US/Eastern

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Attendance was up at the San Francisco Zoo following a tiger attack that killed a young man on Christmas Day, a zoo spokesman said Saturday.

Twice as many visitors came to the zoo when the facility reopened Thursday as had visited the same day last year, spokesman Paul Garcia said.

Most of the 782 visitors arrived before heavy rains began falling over the city Thursday afternoon. Just under 400 visitors who came to the zoo the entire day on Jan. 3, 2007, Garcia said.

Severe storms over Northern California forced the zoo to close again Friday, as high wind brought down tree branches and knocked out power at the facility. No animals were hurt in the storm.

Despite the weather, work continued on a 3-foot fence being erected around the zoo's polar bear exhibit after zoo officials said they determined the existing barrier was too low.

The zoo was closed for eight days following the tiger attack, which left 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. dead and two brothers injured. Police were investigating whether the tiger was taunted before attacking the three victims.

Other zoos that have endured mishaps have seen similar spikes in attendance, which zoo officials have attributed to the publicity and morbid curiosity.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Saturday, January 5, 2008



Gorilla's Revenge








Caught on camera, the terrifying moment a gorilla dragged a tourist off into the jungle

Last updated at 21:35pm on 4th January 2008

He weighs more than 30 stone and is nearly 6ft tall. Built like a brick outhouse, he could probably crush your skull in his hand.

So the important thing to remember when you're invited into a silverback gorilla's backyard is just who's the boss. Oh, yes. And don't look him in the eye unless you want to start a fight.

These were the golden rules that a hapless tourist might have forgotten when he encountered the biggest and strongest primate on Earth on its home territory in Rwanda.

One moment he was standing with a video camera as the magnificent creature quietly held court before a group of sightseeers. The next, he was being dragged backwards through the undergrowth to a terrifyingly uncertain fate.

Quite what provoked the normally placid silverback into stamping his authority so forcefully is uncertain.

He has long been the undisputed leader of a family of gorillas in the 39-strong Susa group that inhabits the Virunga mountain forests on the northern border of Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo, and is well used to dealing with troublemakers.

He is even quite chummy with humans, whose money and patronage helps support the planet's desperately dwindling gorilla population.

There are currently fewer than 650 individuals scattered across several hundred square miles of this region and, without help, they could vanish.

So it's clearly a jungle out there – and sometimes homo sapiens can suffer the consequences for taking liberties with our most intelligent mammalian cousins.

The clue probably came when the male started to parade intimidatingly close to the group of tourists, led by local rangers – beating his breast like a drum.

Suddenly, he charged at the crowd. Then he snatched a blue-anoraked man by one ankle and dragged him towards the trees.

Maybe the thrill of seeing gorillas in the wild had caused the tourist to forget the advice the rangers would have given before everyone set off on the trek – no flashguns... no noise... don't point... look away if they make eye contact... and melt into the ground if they charge.

It worked a treat for Sir David Attenborough – but whispering subservience patently wasn't adequate this time. One likely explanation is that the tourist – an American – got between the male gorilla and the true object of its attentions, a young female on the far side of the group.

Or perhaps the gorilla was simply being playful (not that it would have seemed like that to someone being kidnapped by a chest-thumping male like this one, of course).

"Playful" could have involved tossing the man against a tree, or cuffing him jovially around the face. Precisely what happened between man and beast in the few seconds the pair disappeared is difficult to establish.

Rangers stepped in to separate them by whacking the gorilla with sticks and waving bright clothing.

The tourist emerged unscathed, although somewhat shocked, according to onlookers. The gorilla went back to its lunch – and never gave any clue to what happened.

Thus, the encounter remains one of the many fascinations these beautiful and awesomely powerful creatures hold for Man.

But at the very least, it may have provided the answer to that age-old schoolboy riddle: What does a 30-stone gorilla do when he's sitting on your lap?

Answer: Anything he jolly well likes.

Beware the Moose




Collisions with moose killed 5 people in 2007

By BDN Staff
Saturday, January 05, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

AUGUSTA - Moose continue to be Maine’s most dangerous animal, the Maine Department of Public Safety reported Friday.

Collisions with the giant animals during 2007 resulted in five deaths on Maine roads, according to statistics from the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety.

The deadly crashes were in Crawford, Pittsfield, Howland, where two people died, and near Medway. Passenger vehicles were involved in all of the crashes except in Pittsfield, where a motorcycle was involved.

Maine also had five deaths from moose collisions in 1998, the department said. Other bad years for moose collisions were 1992, 2001, 2003 and 2004; four people died in each of those years.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Congratulations Colonel Olav!




Penguin Gets Promotion

August 20, 2005


Nils Olav received a promotion on Wednesday to Colonel in Chief of the Royal Norwegian Guard. Yes, this high rank in the Norwegian military has in fact been bestowed on a penguin.

In 1962 young lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Guard Niels Egelien visited Edinburgh Zoo and was quite taken with the penguins. On a return visit in 1972, he arranged for his regiment to sponsor a king penguin which they adopted and awarded the rank of Lance Corporal. The name was chosen on behalf of the lieutenant who first got excited about the penguins and the then king of Norway, King Olav. Since then, every time the soldiers have come to visit, Nils Olav has received a promotion.

According to Scotland Today:

Major Nils Egelien from the Norwegian Royal Guard Association said: “Colonel in chief because all the reports speak about his very, very good behaviour, and the service in this garden.” … Nils Olav is now back in with the rest of the troops. It is not known when this elite fighting force will be deployed again, but when they are, it is fair to say that the best possible penguin is in charge.