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PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. – Officials say a Florida Panhandle Fish and Wildlife officer lost a 5-foot alligator after bringing it to his daughter's school for show and tell. Searchers scoured a wooded area surrounding the school Friday afternoon. The alligator jumped out of the man's vehicle Friday morning. The animal's mouth was taped.

The singer died on the way to the hospital from her wounds. The coyotes had bitten her many times and the paramedics said she was in critical condition when they found her and she had lost a lot of blood.

Penobscot, ME) -- There is one ticked off moose in Hancock County, Maine who wasn't about to share the road with a car. Sheriff's deputies say a car driven by a woman was traveling on Western County Road just after dark last week. According to deputies, the moose was standing in the road, so the woman stopped and waited for it to finish crossing. Apparently it was having a bad day because just as it passed the car it kicked the headlight hard with a hoof and destroyed it. The moose also did some damage to the front fender and...

A PROMISING young Canadian musician has been attacked and killed by coyotes while on a tour promoting her new album. Taylor Mitchell, 19, was considered a rising star of the folk music scene, having just earned a Canadian Folk Music Awards nomination. She was hiking alone on the Syline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park when a pair of coyotes attacked her. Tourists rushed to her aid when they heard her screams and found Mitchell bleeding heavily from mulitple wounds "all over her body", according to The Canadian Press. "She was losing a considerable amount of blood from her...

TORONTO – Two coyotes attacked a promising young musician as she was hiking alone in a national park in eastern Canada, and authorities said she died Wednesday of her injuries. The victim was identified as Taylor Mitchell, 19, a singer-songwriter from Toronto who was touring her new album on the East Coast.

Taylor Mitchell, a 19-year-old Toronto singer whose debut album was released in March, has died in a Nova Scotia hospital after being mauled by coyotes in a Cape Breton park. Mitchell was hiking Tuesday on the Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park when she was attacked by two coyotes. Another hiker, who was walking nearby, heard her cries for help and called 911. Officers arrived about 3:15 p.m., and one of the coyotes fled into the bush. The other coyote was shot and limped away. Mitchell was airlifted to a hospital in Halifax, where she died early Wednesday....

Overall Winner "The Storybook Wolf" This nighttime shot of a wolf leaping into a farm in northern Spain has been named overall winner of the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 competition. The picture, by Spanish photographer Josi Luis Rodrmguez, was selected from more than 43,000 entries. Iberian wolves--a subspecies of the gray wolf--are extremely wary of humans after centuries of persecution. Rodrmguez captured the photograph using motion sensors and an infrared barrier to operate the camera. "This wolf jumping over the farmer's enclosure with the supposed intent of killing his livestock speaks for itself--thousands of years of...

Frogs are suffering from a fatal fungal infection.Vance T. Vredenburg/SFSU A fungal infection that is killing amphibians around the world acts by disrupting the flow of electrolytes across their skin, ultimately causing heart failure. The discovery is helping to raise hopes that a treatment for the infection could one day be given to amphibians in the wild.Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a kind of chytrid fungus that causes the skin disease chytridiomycosis in amphibians, was likely spread around the world by the South African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) in the 1930s and 1940s, when the frog was widely used as a pregnancy test....

A picture of a hunting wolf has won the prestigious Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award. Jose Luis Rodriguez captured the imaginations of the judges with a picture that he had planned for years, and even sketched out on a piece of paper. "I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting - or predation - but without blood," he told BBC News. "I didn't want a cruel image." With a great deal of patience and careful observation of the wolves' movements, he succeeded in taking the award-winning...

The Dillon ranchers who lost more than 120 buck sheep in an August wolf attack last week lost 23 lambs from the same area when wolves struck again. Kathy Konen said this week that despite the presence of a herder and guard dogs, wolves struck the herd sometime in the early morning hours Oct. 17. She and husband Jon Konen lost 23 weaned lambs. "They're in the area, and they've killed once," she said of wolves. "We knew they would come back and kill again." The Konens in August lost 122 sheep to wolves in the same pasture in the...

HAYWARD, Wis. – Shoppers in a Wisconsin grocery store got an unexpected surprise when a 125-pound black bear wandered inside and headed straight for the beer cooler. The bear stopped Friday night at Marketplace Foods in Hayward,.. It calmly climbed up 12 feet onto a shelf in the beer cooler where it sat for about an hour while employees helped evacuate customers and summoned wildlife officials.

A 77-year-old man lost his arm below the elbow Thursday when he was attacked by an alligator while playing golf on Fripp Island. The man, the father of a Fripp Island property owner, was playing the 11th hole of the island's Ocean Creek Golf Course at about 3 p.m. when the attack occurred. The victim was leaning down to pick up his ball when a 10-foot long alligator grabbed his arm, said Kate Hines, general manager of the Fripp Island Property Owners Association. Hines said the alligator dragged the man into a nearby pond and went into a series of...

BATH COUNTY Breathing Cave is the name of a deep, dark hole in the ground off an unmarked mountain road here in western Virginia, a foreboding place mostly because of what lurks within – bats, hundreds of them. Inside the mouth of the cave, the limestone walls are cool and moist. There is no light, only echoing creaks and clops of water drops – and the unnerving knowledge that somewhere down a blind tunnel ahead, creatures associated with blood and folklore and rabies are alive and close by. As the sun goes down, the winged inhabitants silently emerge, the start...

- A raccoon, a possum and a feral cat were trapped overnight in separate cages in the Lakeland neighborhood where a 74-year-old woman was attacked by a pack of raccoons. The animals will be tested for rabies. Traps will remain in the neighborhood "until we feel as though the level of concern has certainly been addressed," Polk County sheriff's spokeswoman Donna Wood said today.....

ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Authorities in northeastern Pennsylvania said a woman was killed by her pet black bear as she cleaned its cage. State police said 37-year-old Kelly Ann Walz was mauled to death Sunday evening by the 350-pound bear. A state Game Commission spokesman said Walz kept the bear inside a steel and concrete cage near her house about 20 miles northeast of Allentown. Officials said Walz threw a shovelful of dog food to one side of the cage to distract the bear while she cleaned the other side. At some point, the bear turned on her and attacked. The...

"Lakeland, Florida-- A Lakeland woman is recovering from serious injuries in the hospital after sheriff's investigators say she was "gang attacked" by five raccoons Saturday afternoon. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd says 74-year-old Gretchen Whitted was trying to shoo the animals away from her front door when they suddenly attacked. "When she fell down, they enveloped her," said Sheriff Judd in a news conference called Sunday to warn the public of the aggressive raccoons.

Polar Bear Spotted Riding On Its Mother's Back [Pic in URL] Polar bear cubs ride 'piggy back' on their mother's back to avoid falling into the freezing waters of the Arctic, according to new scientific evidence. By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 05 Oct 2009 A British holidaymaker visiting Duvefjorden, Nordaustlandet, spotted the mother bear with a seven-month-old cub hitching a ride. Photo: Angela Plumb The behaviour has been observed in the wild before by polar bears emerging from the den for the first time or crossing open water. However there was little research into the phenomenon and no photographic evidence....

Which may explain why a polar bear cub has recently been seen riding on the back of its mother as the bears swim across parts of the Arctic Ocean. The cub then briefly rode her back as she clambered out of the icy water, a unique event photographed by a tourist. Experts have rarely seen the behaviour, and they say the latest find suggests it may be a more common practice than previously thought.

BRIDGEWATER, S.D. (AP) -- Behind the freezer doors at a meat plant mysteriously abandoned by its owner, the 44 tons of bison meat managed to hold its own for months, masked by the brutal chill of two South Dakota winters. Once the power was cut and spring thaw arrived, nature took over. And enough rotting meat to fill a high school gym did exactly what you'd expect: It stank. It stank at the bank. It smelled at the law office. It reeked at the cafe. Even the jewelry store wasn't immune. Everyone in this tiny town could smell it, everywhere...

An excited group of naturalists and wildlife scientists is in Saskatchewan's Grasslands National Park, releasing black-footed ferrets back into the wild. The Friday event was the culmination of several years of work to breed black-footed ferrets in various zoos and condition the animals to survive in the wild. Grasslands National Park, in Saskatchewan's southwest, was selected as the site for introducing 34 animals back to their natural habitat. A recovery plan for the species includes releasing more animals to the park in 2010. The black-footed ferret is the only species of ferret indigenous to North America. Populations fell to near-extinction...

A 74-year-old Lakeland woman was attacked and severely injured Saturday evening by five raccoons, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's office animal control section is investigating. There is no word on the woman's condition.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- A lone llama wandering near the summit of Pikes Peak for a month has been captured and is heading to a new home. Tracy Ducharme and Mike Shealy, both of Black Forest, Colo., trekked up the 14,110-foot mountain Friday to find the little white beast of burden. They took two llamas with them, hoping Homer's herd instincts would lure him to them. The two split up and Ducharme spotted the llama, which bounded after her llama, Dancer. She then slipped a rope around his neck. "I dubbed him 'Homer' because of his little odyssey," she...

I managed to slip through town without getting tarred and feathered by the local democrats, and hung out by the pond for a while. If I time things for high tide there is usually something going on there.

This bird still has yellow up high on the legs, it is one of this years chicks. The feet will stay bright yellow and the legs will turn black.

Moose declining in Minnesota's northwoods, among their few strongholds in lower 48 states Researchers say such sightings of moose, an icon in Minnesota's northwoods, are likely to become more rare. A special advisory committee warned last month that climate change threatens moose. ... Minnesota has an estimated 7,600 moose, nearly all in the forests of northeastern Minnesota, where plentiful swamps, lakes and streams provide good habitat. Yet they're beleaguered by increasingly warm weather and parasites such as brainworms, ticks and liver flukes. "Almost without exception all of the indicators are that the population is declining," said Mark Lenarz, a moose...

ROCK HILL Part of the walking trail at Rock Hill's Cherry Park was closed Friday after an owl attacked two people in the park earlier this week, according to city officials. "There is an owl and it has been acting aggressively," said John Taylor, a supervisor with the city's Parks, Recreation and Tourism department. Earl White, 71, said he was attacked Tuesday morning on his daily walk about 6:45 a.m. "I saw something flying opposite me, and then I was attacked," White said. "It got me by the head." White reported the attack to park officials. "It scared the daylights...

A 13-year-old boy was attacked by a fox on Monday afternoon in a wooded area in the Twin Creeks community in Wake Forest. Jesse Frutiger said he was in the woods when the animal approached him and immediately started hissing. He said he threw a rock at the fox and that’s when the animal lunged at him

Jarvis Migratory Sanctuary is a bird sanctuary located in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago. It sits between Belmont and Sheridan right on the lake shore. It's a scenic area home to more than 100 species of birds which often use Chicago to rest and refuel on the way North or South, depending on the season. Here's how the view and activities are described. Although a fence prohibits visitors from entering the sanctuary itself, a viewing platform and peripheral wood chipped path provide ample viewing opportunities for bird watching. Additionally, during the summer months, visitors can see purple martins flying...

PICKENS COUNTY — A 21-year-old Pickens woman was taken to a hospital Thursday night after a pet bear attacked her. Lt. Robert McCullough, spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said the woman was at a relative’s home in Pumpkin Town near when one of two pet black bears attacked her right hand when she reached inside the bear’s cage. Independent Mail coverage partner WSPA News Channel 7 reports that the woman has been identified as Melody Hankle. McCullough said the woman suffered severe injuries including deep cuts and possibly broken bones. She was taken to Greenville Memorial...

Pit bull takes down 150-pound doe By Erin McClary C & G Staff Writer MACOMB TOWNSHIP — Deputies were shocked to find the scene of what a frantic 911 caller described as a pit bull attacking a deer the morning of Sept. 24. Responding officers couldn’t believe their eyes, said Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel. A 50-60 pound dog had a 150-pound doe pinned to the ground in a Macomb Township neighborhood near North Avenue and Hall Road (M-59). When one of the officers called the dog, he came. He even sat on command. Unfortunately, the officers, after realizing the...

San Diego, California, has a problem with spiders. These aren’t the cute David Bowie kind or the useful silk-making kind, these are the invasive, super-poisonous kind. Originally from South Africa, the brown widow spider, also called the gray widow, brown button spider, or the geometric button spider has spread like wildfire throughout the United States and has recently found the city of San Diego to their liking. Not only are they running the local spider population out of town, they’re also pretty much running everything and everyone out of town as their population swells out of control. While the brown...

A bear injured nine people at highway rest stop in central Japan before being shot dead in a souvenir shop, a firefighter said Sunday.

I recently received e-mails from friends showing mother cows with their rectums and female organs torn from their bodies by the wolves. These cows were lying down and the blood and raw meat trailed down on their legs. You could tell they were in awful pain. I am sure hundreds of our deer and elk are suffering the same way. All you wolf lovers should take a good look at these pictures and share them with your families and your children, show them what these savage animals are really all about. Anyone that supports these evil acts are evil themselves....

Killer rabbits attack snakes Sean Muir, TablelanderTuesday, September 15, 2009© The Cairns Post  A PAIR of rabid rabbits has been caught killing a series of snakes near Cairns.For three weeks Armando Del Manso believed his dog was responsible for the dead snakes showing up with teeth marks all over them on his East Barron property’s lawn each morning.But it turns out it was a pair of rampaging rabbits killing the snakes.Pictures: Cairns snakesThe 42-year-old boilermaker first made the discovery Tuesday night when he spotted the two wild rabbits attacking a king brown snake.“The snake was raised up in the air in...

In an case of real life imitating Hollywood, the US scientific community is increasingly concerned that two nonnative python breeds currently slithering free in south Florida could morph into a giant man-eating swamp coil. The capture of five African rock pythons recently near an Everglades already teeming with the gentler Burmese pythons has scientists worried about so-called "hybrid vigor" – a phenomenon that occurs when interbreeding uncorks volatile recessive genes, passing traits such as aggression onto the offspring. Think Africanized bees. The two species have interbred in captivity. While Burmese pythons aren't known to eat people in their native habitat,...

Story Updated: Sep 14, 2009 at 5:23 PM CDT It's been confirmed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources that the animal that attacked a Hermantown man over the weekend was almost certainly a bobcat. Gary Lucia was attacked in his garage by a bobcat while trying to defend his pet ducks and geese. Lucia has set up several traps in the woods around Lucia's house to prevent the animal from returning to do any more damage. Bobcats are fairly common in the Northland but rarely attack people. The nocturnal cats are about two times the size of an average...

A Ballard couple are in shock after they were attacked by a raccoon in their own backyard. Now, they're both undergoing painful rabies treatments as a precaution. Mark Silverstein says he still vividly remembers the sounds of his wife's screams and his dog's agonized yelps on the night of the attack. "I heard her screaming and the dog screaming. It was like blood-curdling, terror, like you've never heard before," he says. The bizarre episode began with a normal backyard potty break for their little dog, Bee. With no warning, a furry bandit went on a rampage, biting and clawing the...

APOPKA — Wildlife officials are putting the squeeze on owners of "monster" Burmese pythons. On Friday, Delilah, an 18-foot-long, 400-plus-pound python who fed on rabbits in an Apopka-area backyard, was seized. Earlier in the week, officials, acting on an anonymous tip, uncovered 11-foot-long male Burmese python, dwarfed by its female companion, a 17-foot behemoth weighing more than 150 pounds, at a Lakeland home. The owner did not have a permit and is being charged with two misdemeanors.

ASPEN, Colo. — A man was attacked by a large black bear in his Aspen home in the latest in a string of violent encounters with the animals this summer in the mountain community. Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said the man had gone to the first floor of his home to check on his three barking dogs when the bear struck him in the head.

Wildlife officers with the Colorado Division of Wildlife are searching for a bear involved in an attack Thursday night in Aspen. A man ...was attacked in his home by a bear shortly after 8 p.m. the homeowner's three dogs began barking loudly in the ground floor of the house... When the homeowner went downstairs to check on the dogs, he was confronted by a large, black bear. The victim of this attack is being treated at an area hospital.

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- It's nearly 2 a.m. and authorities have found the suspect in a string of break-ins into multimillion-dollar homes. His nose led him right to their trap - a cage filled with barbecue-scented cantaloupe and peaches. It's a 550-pound black bear....

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials shot and killed two wolves today that were linked to five attacks on livestock in the Keating Valley area of Baker County. The wolves were shot after nonlethal efforts failed to keep them from killing livestock again. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife then authorized Agriculture's Wildlife Services to kill the animals, one of which was wearing a tracking collar, from a fixed-wing aircraft. "It's unfortunate that we got to this step," Russ Morgan, wolf coordinator for Fish and Wildlife, said in a news release, "but these wolves continued to kill livestock despite our...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Scientists have discovered a new species of giant rat in a remote rainforest in Papua New Guinea. Measuring 82 centimeters (32.2 inches) from nose to tail and weighing around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds), the species is thought to be one of the largest rats ever to be found. The discovery was made by a team from the BBC Natural History Unit inside the crater of Mount Bosavi -- an extinct volcano in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea. "This is one of the world's largest rats. It's a true rat, the same kind you...

A lost world populated by fanged frogs, grunting fish and tiny bear-like creatures has been discovered in a remote volcanic crater on the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea. A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never...

A new species of giant rat has been discovered deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea. The rat, which has no fear of humans, measures 82cm long, placing it among the largest species of rat known anywhere in the world.

Frank Gwozdz says coyotes have made a meal out of his livestock so often in the past several months that the farmer is thinking of leaving agriculture. “They are wiping me out,’’ Gwozdz said ...from his 110-acre farm in Dartmouth in Southeastern Massachusetts. In the past several months, Gwozdz said, coyotes have killed two cows, four calves, 14 goats, two lambs, two sheep, and numerous geese, ducks, and chickens. “They are getting bolder and bolder,’’ Gwozdz said of the coyotes... Gwozdz said he and his family have tried to deter the animals, sometimes by standing guard into the early morning...

State Fish and Wildlife officials say a 5-year-old Canadian boy was hurt when a cougar pounced on him while he and his family were hiking a remote trail in northeastern Washington. Department spokeswoman Madonna Luers says the big cat jumped the boy while he was hiking Wednesday with his parents and sister on the Abercrombie Mountain trail in the Colville National Forest. She says his mother began beating the cougar with a water bottle and the cat ran off.

Fishy looking albino otter savours his breakfast in the Scottish sun By JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK 02nd September 2009 The first time she spotted him, Karen Jack didn't have enough time to fish out her camera before he slipped off into the sea. But then, very obligingly, the rare albino otter came back and stayed for lunch. Miss Jack managed to take this snap and a few others while the creature enjoyed his morning meal on the rocky coastline of Moray in north-east Scotland. [Pic in URL] A rare albino otter enjoys a fish meal in a photo snapped in Moray by...

This attempt by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to control the booming Burmese python population in south Florida is amusing. If you haven’t heard, the commission began a permit program that allows reptile experts to capture and kill Burmese pythons in state-managed lands around the Everglades. There are likely more than 100,000 pythons in the Everglades, some possibly more than 20 feet long. ASSOCIATED PRESS Pythons have become a big nuisance in Florida, but that’s not the only place they have been found. This 11-foot Burmese python was captured by the Riverside County Department of Animal Services on...

Kathy Konen has lost guard dogs to wolves in the past, but nothing prepared the Dillon rancher for the killing of 120 buck sheep last week. "They were in the sagebrush, on the creek bottom - just all over the pasture," Konen said Thursday. "It's a terrible loss to our livestock program." Konen said they discovered the attack Aug. 16 while checking their sheep in the Rock Creek drainage of the Blacktail Mountains south of Dillon, where they pasture buck sheep in summer. She said they check their sheep every two or three days, so the attack was recent. She...