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CARROLLTON - If cats have nine lives, one local feline's life span was reduced by at least a third on Monday. Curiosity almost killed the critter when it wandered into the electrical substation serving the city of Carrollton and tripped a fuse that caused power to crash for some 1,500 customers. The event was "cat"-astrophic enough - but it wasn't fatal. "The cat lived through it," Ameren spokeswoman Victoria Busch said. When workers responded to their first call at 1:45 a.m. Monday, they discovered the animal still on the ground, where it had been blown several feet after coming into...

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A Real Bale Out! Free will contribution (not through taxing of you and your future grandchildren). No profits for unions or politicians. Real stimulus to the economy through purchase of goods and services made in the USA such as hay, grain, jobs for farmers, US owned animal food companies employees and retailers. Workers are not on union pay scale nor receive bonuses, as a matter a fact every worker is a 100% volunteer. Your Bale Out contribution will go directly to purchase the following: Round bale of hay $40 Square bale of hay $4 Bag of dog food $18 Bag...

To Louise Bowling, it was the fulfilment of a life-long dream. Having bought some land, surrounded by beautiful countryside, she now had space to rear her beloved horses. But. just a few months after purchasing the 1.1 acre plot, Mrs Bowling's dream is in tatters.

A Bridgeville man told police he killed his girlfriend's puppy yesterday afternoon because the animal would not behave before the Steelers football game broadcast. William Woodson, 22, is being held on $25,000 bail in the Allegheny County Jail, pending a preliminary hearing on animal cruelty at 1 p.m. next Monday before District Judge Elaine McGraw in Bridgeville. The puppy, a 13-week-old pit bull named Flip, had been the focal point of recent arguments between Mr. Woodson and his girlfriend, Christine Gielarowski, 21, with whom Mr. Woodson lives on Jane Way. Ms. Gielarowski still may face charges after she gave police...

ZAGREB (AFP) - The Croatian first division match between Sibenik and Medjimurje Cakovec will be remembered for a cat which earned the visiting team's goalkeeper a yellow card, press reports said on Monday. Ivan Banovic was taken by surprise in the 20th minute of Saturday's match, played in the coastal town of Sibenik, when the cat walked on to the pitch near his goals, the Jutarnji List daily reported on its Internet site.

ZAGREB (AFP) - The Croatian first division match between Sibenik and Medjimurje Cakovec will be remembered for a cat which earned the visiting team's goalkeeper a yellow card, press reports said on Monday. Ivan Banovic was taken by surprise in the 20th minute of Saturday's match, played in the coastal town of Sibenik, when the cat walked on to the pitch near his goals, the Jutarnji List daily reported on its Internet site.

A VICTORIAN man was almost drowned by a kangaroo after he dived into his farm dam to save his pet dog. Chris Rickard, 49, of Arthurs Creek, is being assessed by Austin Hospital surgeons after being mauled by the 1.5m roo at 9am (AEDT). He only managed to end the attack when he elbowed the kangaroo in the throat as it tried to hold him under water, The Herald Sun reported. By then he had already suffered a deep gash across his abdomen as the kangaroo tried to disembowel him with its hind legs, as well as a deep gash...

Title and link only: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch/3080895/Shylas-a-purr-fect-little-mum

Pharoah the cat has survived after stowing away in a container on a merchant ship that arrived at the British port of Felixstowe after a 3,000 mile journey from Egypt.

A man was left seriously wounded after climbing into a bear enclosure in a Swiss zoo yesterday. The 25-year-man climbed onto a wall surrounding the BärenPark (Bear Park) in the city of Bern, Switzerland, before falling 13ft into the enclosure, police said. The unnamed man, who had learning difficulties, was then attacked by four-year-old bear Finn, who caused severe injuries to the man's head and one of his legs, before a nearby policeman shot the creature - injuring it and forcing it to retreat into a cave.

SCOTLAND. It’s a long way from anywhere to this particular spot on the steep flank of the Hill of Bohuntine, gazing east across the great green heathery abyss of Glen Roy to where it admits the mouth of the more gently scooped-out Glen Glaster. Certainly if you’re coming from the States—from Petersburg, Kentucky, say, or Dayton, Tennessee, or any other of the thousand places where you would be safer lighting a Marlboro off a burning American flag than being caught with a copy of On the Origin of Species—you’re going to find it quite a hike. But you’ll be glad...

BOSTON -- An English mastiff that was ordered to be euthanized after it bit a 23-year-old woman and, separately, the wife of Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, was spared by a Hingham court official this week who ruled to reverse the dog’s death sentence. Gabriella, the 8-year-old mastiff, had been a fixture at the South Street art gallery owned by Megan and Rob Ullman, the Hingham Square Gallery, for about five years. Police took notice of Gabriella in June 2008, however, when the 37-year-old wife of knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, Stacey Wakefield, was bitten by the dog. Stacey Wakefield, who lives...

The Las Vegas city council passed a new ordinance this past week requiring most cats and dogs to be spay or neutered by four months of age, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. The ordinance, which passed the city council by a vote of 5 to 2, is an effort to help curb pet overpopulation. The ordinance takes effect April 1 and will be reviewed annually. It is in response to Southern Nevada’s pet overpopulation problem and had support from local veterinarians and animal rescue groups, according to the Review-Journal. It's noted that the Lied Animal Shelter, which services Las Vegas,...

November 20, 2009 (DURANGO, Colo.) -- A person in a chicken costume ruffled the feathers of Durango's city council as its members discussed rules for backyard fowl. At a council meeting Tuesday, someone in a chicken costume quietly entered the council chambers just as the mayor was discussing a recently-passed backyard hen ordinance. The costumed chicken took a few turns, flapped its arms, then took a seat in the nearly empty gallery. Several minutes later, the big bird left -- without identifying itself -- after laying an egg on the floor. [snip]

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Posted on November 20, 2009 at 10:39 AM HOUSTON—A woman was severely injured Thursday night when she was attacked by her pit bull. It happened around 8 p.m. at a home at Park York and Mason Road in west Harris County. Precinct 5 constables said the woman’s husband heard a commotion in another room, and when he went to investigate, he found his wife on the floor. The family’s pit bull was on top of her. Constables said the man moved the dog and called 911. The woman was taken via Life Flight to Memorial Hermann. Constables said she suffered...

POLICE are hunting a man whose dog attack another before the owner went on to shout obscenities and threaten a woman. The incident occurred at Freedom Park in Greenbank on September 29 at around 10.40am. The suspect's pitbull dog attacked a woman's dog, causing it to bleed. When the woman remonstrated with the suspect he began to swear at her, threatening to set his pitbull on her dog again and "rip your dog to pieces". The suspect was white, 6ft tall with blue eyes and short mousey brown hair. He is of slim build, with broad shoulders and was wearing...

Buddy Lou, a 10-year old tabby cat, has become the first feline death from H1N1 in the United States. It appears the cat acquired the H1N1 virus from the owner’s niece who had been sick with an influenza-like illness the previous week. H1N1 in cats: Buddy Lou’s illness The cat was brought to the Animal Clinic in Lebanon, Oregon, on November 4, with labored breathing and was initially diagnosed with pneumonia. His breathing worsened by the next day and the cat was admitted to the veterinary clinic for treatment with antibiotics and oxygen. Buddy Lou did not respond to treatment...

We all know dogs like to smell just about everything, including other animals' poo. Now scientists have figured out how to put the canines' odd pastimes to work to help sniff out the dung of endangered rhinos in Vietnam. The collected dung will help scientists to figure out how many Javan rhinos, also called Rhinoceros sondaicus, remain in the wild. The rhinos were considered extinct on mainland Southeast Asia until hunters in Vietnam killed one in 1988. Now two remaining populations exist, with an estimated 10 individuals in the forests of Vietnam and between 28 and 56 such rhinos on...

Sorry, kids—scientists have not discovered the first known bubblegum-blowing sea creature. But they have found the only known corals to eat adult jellyfish, a new study says. Opening wide--yes, that's a mouth--a mushroom coral ingests a roughly 4-and-a-half-inch-wide (12-centimeter) moon jellyfish (pictured) in the Red Sea in March 2009. And this coral wasn't alone. The study, led by scientists from Israel's Bar-Ilan University and Tel Aviv University, witnessed other corals dining on the jellyfish. Marine ecologist Jennifer Smith, who wasn't part of the study, agreed the find was unique, though she's "not entirely surprised." Mushroom corals, which have soft bodies,...

ATHENS -- To the Bulldog Nation, the Uga mascot is royalty, the lineage anointed to represent the University of Georgia. But to the Seiler family, the English bulldogs are family pets. That is sadly evident at times such as these. In only his second season as Georgia's mascot, Uga VII has passed away. Uga VII passed away suddenly Thursday morning at his home in Savannah. At 4 years old, he was practically a pup and had served as Georgia's mascot for not even two full football seasons when he unexpectedly succumbed to heart problems.

A company in the United Kingdom is about to lift the lid on a device that zaps lobster with electricity to kill them, and the inventor said Wednesday his humane alternative to boiling is about to give the entire industry a jolt. British entrepreneur Simon Buckhaven said the CrustaStun system, developed over the past decade by his company Studham Technologies Limited, near London, kills the lobster with an electric charge, so the crustacean feels no "pain or distress." "I am entirely aware this product will be greeted at first with some skepticism among people in the lobster industry in Eastern...

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult...

Police in the Lithuanian town of Kaunas arrested 22-year-old Svajunas Beniukas on animal cruelty charges after internet users helped police identify him and the bridge from which the small brown dog was thrown. The video shows a man holding the dog, called Pipiras, Lithuanian for pepper, and laughing as his friend records the event on his mobile phone. Checking that the coast is clear, he makes a joke about dogs flying and then drops the animal off the bridge. Crashing onto a farm track below, Pipiras yelps in pain, and lies twitching on the ground. But despite falling over 20...

This is the shocking video of a Labrador guide dog being savagely attacked by a pitbull-cross dog in a railway station subway. A 57-year-old blind woman was walking through Cricklewood station when her guide dog, Neela, a brown Labrador, was attacked by another dog. Transport police today issued the images in a bid to trace the violent dog's owner. Detective Constable Gerry Griffin said: “This dog was not muzzled and was dangerously out of control. “The woman was extremely distressed and feared for own safety. What made this awful incident even more harrowing was the fact that the man made...

HE has always been five miles from Gundagai [Australia] but now the nation's most famous dog and his tuckerbox are to be relocated to lure tourists to the town. Historians are outraged at the idea of moving the iconic statue from its spot of 77 years, just off the Hume Highway, to the far end of town to drag tourists through it. The town is split between those who want tourist dollars funnelled into their drought-stricken tills and those outraged at the changing of history. A consultant has been paid $20,000 by the Gundagai Shire Council to survey the community...

Kenton Rowe's fortune as a wildlife photographer would change in less than one second; the amount of time it takes for a shutter to open and close, the light burning a digital image onto a disk. And in that second, the mountain lion and her cub were forever captured, their likenesses then downloaded to a computer, printed to paper and presented to a panel of judges who would sift through 70,000 photographs at this year's National Wildlife Federation photo contest.

What a cat-astrophe! A ferocious feline turned her owners into a pair of scaredy cats in their Midtown apartment yesterday, holding them hostage at claw-point until the cops came to their rescue. Rosa Davila and her son, Victor Marte, 27, cowered behind a bedroom door at their pad on West 42nd Street about a half an hour while the raging Russian blue held them at bay.

Eight British tourists are suing a South African safari park after they became trapped by a pride of wild lions when their tour vehicle overturned. The group are claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds for injuries and post-traumatic stress allegedly suffered when they were exposed to the “threatening conduct of the lions” at Sanbona Wildlife Reserve northeast of Cape Town. One of the animals also stole a boot from the tourists, they say. Papers lodged at Cape Town High Court claim that the injuries were due to the irresponsible actions of Natasha Van der Merwe, a park employee. According to...

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Spokane County sheriff's deputies used a stun gun on an attacking pit bull dog. It didn't stop, so they shot it with a .45-caliber handgun, and it still kept coming. They finally killed it with a blast from a 12-gauge shotgun.

People Say Animals Are Preying On Larger Livestock. People living in major Valley neighborhoods... that coyotes have all but overtaken their neighborhoods. Don Hoopes and his 7-year-old son Jordan have a new ritual every night. They need to make sure all their animals are tucked safely inside, now that they know what can happen if they don't. Neighbor Richard Tate said, "I saw one yesterday morning trying to attack dogs in broad daylight." Tate's had a couple sheep slaughtered by coyotes already. He said they even tried to go after his ram. Tate said , "My concern is that if...

Archers will take to tree stands in Colvin Run Mill Park and Colvin Run Stream Valley in coming weeks to reduce the area’s burgeoning deer population, which poses a threat to motorists, hikers, flora and fauna, Fairfax County officials said. The Fairfax County Police Department’s Animal Control Division, working in conjunction with the Fairfax County Park Authority, began allowing select hunting groups into the wooded park areas on Nov. 16. Archery hunts also will be held at Laurel Hill Park in Lorton. Officials estimate the county is home to about 25,000 deer, or 60 per square mile, which is roughly...

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev., Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Homeowners and authorities in Incline Village, Nev., say they're on the lookout for a marauding, 700-pound black bear . The bear, they say, has caused as much as $70,000 in damage so far this year, including havoc wrought inside a home it has broken into several times, the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal reported Wednesday. "The deputies up there all say he's the biggest bear they've ever seen," Carl Lackey, a biologist and bear expert with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, told the newspaper. "He'll walk right by a trap. He won't go in them....

Mountain goats are no exception to the general rule among mammals that larger males sire more and healthier offspring. But University of Alberta researcher David Coltman has found a genetic quirk that might make female mountain goats think twice about their romantic partners. Big, heavy males mountain goats shove lightweight Romeos aside taking the eligible females for themselves. The larger males pass their physical attributes and mating success to their male heirs. But Coltman's data shows the daughters of the big, bruisers are routinely smaller and less fit than females produced by physically more modest fathers. Nature can be cruel...

Since being crowned "World's Tallest Dog," on Thursday by Guinness World Records, Titan, a 4 year-old Great Dane, has appeared on the Today Show and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. "It's been awesome," the dog's owner, Diana Taylor, tells Pet News Examiner. "I've been amazed at the response he's gotten from people." His website, Titan & Friends, received so many hits that it exceeded the bandwidth and was temporarily shut down. Taylor hopes to use Titan's newfound fame to help the public learn more about Great Danes and especially those that are all white. "Unscrupulous breeders will sell these...

WASILLA -- The story of Yukon Don Tanner and the four bears has a happy ending -- for Tanner, at least. A judge last week dismissed all wildlife charges filed against the well-known 59-year-old Talkeetna man who tells a wild story about the family of marauding grizzlies that visited his remote cabin north of Talkeetna last July. State prosecutors agreed to the dismissal, even though the wildlife authorities involved say they still don't quite believe Tanner's story. Here's the short version: Tanner shot a sow and her three male cubs in the space of a few minutes around 4 a.m....

SELDEN, N.Y. — A mother of seven is accused of running a house of horrors for pets at her suburban Long Island home, forcing her children to help torture them and burying at least 20 dogs in her backyard — animals neighbors now fear were beloved pets that mysteriously disappeared over the years.LINK

CLEVELAND — Slow and worry-free, it’s doubtful Mary came unglued after finding out she is actually a “he.” After all, Mary doesn’t have many stressors in her, uh, his life. “She’s very deliberate … she keeps a careful pace,” Cleveland Metroparks Zoo spokesman Tom O’Konowitz said Tuesday after word went out that zoo officials and handlers had mistakenly believed for 50-plus years that the massive land tortoise was a female. A routine physical exam earlier in the month revealed the tortoise was in fact a male. “This is definitely a first for us,” O’Konowitz said. “It came as something of...

Hilarious dashcam video from Taylor, TX. :^)

A hard road to recovery lies ahead for one little girl after she's attacked by a pit bull inside a neighbor's home. It happened in Bowling Green at Lee Pointe Apartments. The girl spent the entire Tuesday morning in surgery at Kosair Children's Hospital. The little girl is six-year-old Elisa Fannin. Her grandmother says she's now in stable condition after undergoing extensive surgery to her face. The family says Elisa was playing at a friends house when things went terribly wrong. "She looked at me with those eyes, and I just couldn't take it," said Elisa Skaggs, the grandmother of...

With all the unsettling animal news that crosses our desks, we're always pleased to be able to share a bit of good news. Our colleague Jim Tankersley reports from New Orleans on the progress that's been made on behalf of the no-longer-endangered brown pelican. Here's an excerpt: Federal officials announced today that they are removing the brown pelican from the endangered species list, capping a century-long recovery that started under President Theodore Roosevelt. The brown pelican is an avian fixture in Southern California and along the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida, where Roosevelt established the first national wildlife...

Here’s a video that’s going viral on YouTube. National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen traveled to Antarctica to photograph leopard seals in the water. After arriving, they came across one of the largest leopard seals his experienced guide had ever seen. What happened next you’ll have to see to believe: VIDEO LINK For more on this event, you can read this interview with Paul Nicklen, and check out the photographs that resulted in this gallery.

November 17, 2009 Caught On Camera: Hippos Kill Crocodile In Rare Clash [Pics in URL: 4 Images] Faced with the angry hippos, the crocodile decides to run across their backs Jonathan Clayton, Africa Correspondent Bathing hippos usually have a tolerant attitude towards their fellow creatures — until something snaps. And then, as this crocodile discovered the hard way, they are the most dangerous wild animals in Africa Vaclav Silha, a Czech wildlife photographer, had set up his camera on the banks of the Grumeti in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, to take pictures of a group of 50 placid hippos...

A Moving Video Showing An Excited Dog Welcoming A Soldier Home From Afghanistan Has Become A YouTube Hit. Six-year-old Gracie, a golden retriever, is seen jumping into the lap of her beloved master Lieutenant Andrew Schmidt, rolling over and wriggling in joy after he returned safely to his home in Springfield, Virginia, USA. The video was shot by his wife Jen, who opens the door of their house to let out a barking Gracie for the emotional homecoming.

A PYGMY hippopotamus has been shot dead during a pig hunting expedition in the Northern Territory. The hippo is normally native to the swamps of west Africa, in particular Liberia. The Northern Territory News reports, Nico Courtney, 27, was out spotlighting for pigs with his mate Rusty on a station in the Douglas Daly district 200km south of Darwin on Saturday night. "It was about 1am and running away from us - from the tail end it just looked like a big pig," Mr Courtney said. "We got out, had a look at it, and thought 'that's not a pig,...

Last Modified: Friday, November 13, 2009 at 11:49 a.m. THIBODAUX – A pit bull whose life was spared by a Lafourche judge after the dog attacked a woman in Larose last month mauled an animal-control officer Thursday at the Lafourche Parish Animal Shelter. The dog was put down shortly after the incident. Joe Lamartina, 63, the officer who was injured, said he owes his life to the efforts of a fellow officer, Kamie Burgos, who got between him and the 95-pound dog and helped him fight off the attack, during which he grappled with the animal on a concrete floor...

OTTAWA — Canada’s newly armed border guards have claimed their first victim: a hapless moose. The creature was felled by the duty sidearm of a border officer in late August, newly disclosed documents show. The incident — marking the first time a border-guard sidearm has been discharged on duty — occurred about 25 kilometres west of Creston, B.C., as an unidentified intelligence officer with the Canada Border Services Agency was driving on official business to Nelson, B.C. The officer was behind an RCMP vehicle when both drivers spotted an injured moose struggling in the westbound lane of Highway 3. The...