everyone loves animals! Well okay, not everyone, and hardly anyone loves every type of animal. But that aside, everyone loves animals!

This page collects news item entries featuring odd animal stories, many of them including personal stories, as is my habit. More recent additions are on top.

January 22, 2004

LONDON (AFP) - The inner thoughts of Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill live on, thanks to the foul mouth of his 104-year-old parrot who lives at a garden centre in southeast England.

"Fuck Hitler! Fuck the Nazis!" says Charlie, a female blue and gold macaw which Churchill bought in 1937, two years before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

"Parrots are remarkably adept at mimicking sounds and voices," says an article about Charlie in the February issue of Jack, a British men's magazine, which hits the newsstands on Thursday. "So when Charlie gives her opinion of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, it is rendered with a Churchillian inflection," it said.

Following Churchill's death in 1965, Charlie was sold to pet shop owner Peter Oram, who keeps her at the garden centre in Reigate, Surrey, where she wanders around the grounds in summer but stays indoors in the winter.

Another article says that though the bird is 104 years old, they've been known to make it past 110, so it might have plenty of time yet.  Bit mangy at this point, but hey in 70 or 80 years we'll see just how beau-e-ful is your plu'meech. Now that's a live parrot.

January 8, 2004

So that world's longest snake, the one that was said to be an incredible 49 feet, dwarfing the previous largest snake in history at 33 feet... is actually just a rather pedestrian 21 feet long.

When a recreation park in Indonesia put a huge reticulated python on show last week, keepers insisted to reporters it was 49 feet long. That made it the longest ever caught.

But amid growing skepticism of the claim, a photographer working for Reuters returned to the Curugsewu park in the small central Java town of Kendal Wednesday with a measuring tape. The snake's true length -- around 21 feet

"I have no idea why the snake has shrunk," said one keeper when asked about the discrepancy, as the snake lounged on a tree branch inside its cage.

According to the Guinness World Records, the longest discovered snake was also a reticulated python from Indonesia. It was 33 feet long when found in Sulawesi island in 1912.

Okay, I could believe that it was say 35 feet, and they exaggerated it upwards a ways; it's hard to estimate snake length when they're all curled around and such.  But 21 vs. 49?  6.5m vs. 15m? You seldom see measurement inaccuracies of that scale that don't involve a man and his penis.

I didn't think the snake looked nearly 50 feet long in the photos, but figured I wasn't seeing the whole creature in the photos; that some coils were out of the frame off to the side.  Here are a few more pics of the creature though, and while this is a very thick snake, it's clearly not anywhere near even 30 feet, compared to the human who is probably just 5 feet or so.

On the bright side, since this one is just 21 feet and seems to be in good health, it's capable of growing a great deal longer.  It's just unlikely it'll ever get more than 26 or 28 feet at most.

Here's a picture I took at the SD zoo over Xmas holiday that features a good sized albino Burmese Python, and while there I saw and photographed an even larger python.  That one was mostly curled up in the water tank though, making the size hard to estimate.  This one is all stretched out and it's probably 15-16 feet.  You can go buy one in the store tomorrow and grow your own to this size, though it'll take a decade or two.

I'm not really recommending that you own a constricting serpent in excess of 8 or 10 feet, but if you want to and you have an entire room to convert into a snake cage, don't mind regularly scooping up sofa cushion-sized piles of watery shit that smells worse than anything you can imagine, and have a ready supply of small rabbits, cats, or dogs to keep it fed when it gets this large, go for it.

And send me some pictures.

January 5, 2003

This sort of thing is why I love the Internet.  In the old days, when some peasants in a god forsaken village in the middle of the jungle found a 50 foot snake, word would have taken years, if ever, to filter out. Now it's on the Internet within a week.

KENDAL, Indonesia (Reuters) - A recreation park in Indonesia is displaying a 49-foot python -- making it the longest ever captured -- that was revered as a tribal ruler and has a huge appetite for dogs.

The huge, dark-colored male snake has a diameter of 2.8 feet, weighs 984 pounds and is 48 feet, 7 inches long, according to keepers of an animal exhibition at the Curugsewu park in the small Central Java town of Kendal.

According to the Guinness World Records, the longest discovered snake was also a reticulated python from Indonesia. It was 33 feet long when found in Sulawesi island in 1912.

Last year, Samantha, a snake measuring eight meters and which was dubbed the largest in captivity, died in the Bronx Zoo in New York. Samantha came from Indonesia's side of Borneo island.

Now that is a big snake.  I've long liked snakes and had a couple for pets, and therefore have paid attention to the size range.  Anacondas get the most publicity for being large, probably since they have a cooler name, but reticulated pythons are actually larger, though lighter than an anaconda of the same length. Of course this one is so much longer than any known anaconda that it's taking the overall size and weight title by over 25%.  I find it amazing that a snake this much longer than any other ever found could be out there, but since they live in remote jungles and are secretive animals, I guess it's not a huge surprise.  There are doubtless hundreds of snakes from 33 to 48 feet out there, and probably some even longer than this one, yet to be found.

January 3, 2003

Crocodile Hunter nutcase Steve Irwin has successfully procreated, and he's starting the baby off where he's gone himself.

BRISBANE, Australia - "Crocodile hunter" Steve Irwin's latest stunt — hand feeding a large crocodile while holding his infant son — drew fire from viewers Saturday, a visit by police and the promise of a state investigation.

Before a crowd of onlookers at his reptile park in Beerwah, north of Brisbane, Irwin on Friday cradled his month-old son, Robert, under one arm and dangled a piece of chicken from the other hand in front of a 13-foot crocodile.

The croc quickly snapped up the meat.

"Good boy, Bob," Irwin said once the crocodile's jaws snapped shut.

The moment was captured by Channel 7 and Channel 10, with viewers later jamming phone lines to express outrage at Irwin's actions, media reports said.

The stunt drew comparisons with singer Michael Jackson handling of his infant son in Berlin in November 2002.

If you've ever seen this guy on TV, there's nothing about this story that you find surprising.  He has no regard whatsoever for his own life and is constantly leaping into waist deep water with man-eating animals, tackling crocodiles that outweigh him by a factor of 3 or 4, grabbing poisonous snakes by the tails, and so on.  He was parodied on a South Park episode by a crazy man who liked to catch animals and really piss them off by jamming his thumbs up their assholes.  Literally.

I don't think the real Steve Irwin has actually done that, at least not on purpose, but it's not real far from what he does do in real life.

So while he didn't think what he was doing was endangering his kid, and while I'm sure he's fed crocs hunks of raw meat hundreds of times without incident (he's still got all his hands and fingers, after all) you've got to exercise a bit more judgment than this.  If nothing else, him leaping up and down and banging the baby around can't be good for the little grub's neck and spine.

December 15, 2003

A wolf was killed Wednesday at the Brookfield Zoo after biting a woman's arm in a restricted area of the zoo, officials said.

The woman was visiting the near west suburban zoo when she went off the public walkway, crossed a barrier and put her hand through a chain-link fence guarding a northern gray wolf, according to zoo officials. The wolf, the only one on exhibit at the zoo, grabbed the woman's arm and would not release her.

The zoo's police responded immediately and an officer killed the wolf at the scene when it was clear the animal wouldn't let the woman go. The woman was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. Her condition was not immediately known late Thursday.

October 6, 2003

Roy, the brunette half of the famous, unambiguously-gay tiger boys Sigfried and Roy, was mauled by a big damn white tiger during a show over the weekend, and has been in the hospital in critical but stable condition ever since.

The seven-year-old male tiger grabbed the performer's forearm about halfway into the Friday night show at the Mirage hotel-casino, witnesses said. When Horn tried to fend the tiger off with his microphone -- hitting the animal in the face and saying "no, no" -- it lunged and bit him on the neck and dragged him offstage, causing massive bleeding, they said.

Handlers sprayed the tiger with a fire extinguisher to separate the animal from Roy, who was conscious when he was rushed from the hotel to undergo about two hours of surgery.

"The doctors are encouraged that he will recover, but it will be several days until the full extent of his injury is known," Kirvin said in an interview on Saturday.

There are dozens of articles about this and most of them give some history of the flamboyant duo. Or you can check out their timeline on Rotten.com.  I had no idea they'd been working together for so long, since the damn 50's, and that they'd never had any animal-related injuries.

The first reports about the mauling said that it was the first time they'd had that tiger on stage, so I was thinking, "Nice training, guys."  Later articles made clear that that was just a performance piece, and that they'd been working with the tiger for years.  So there's really no telling why it got pissed off that night.  Bad tuna?

I would say more, but I don't have any real opinion about this. It's a shame that wild animals like tigers have to live in captivity, but then again, people are so busy encroaching on their territory and killing them off in the wild that it's captivity or extinction. And if they're going to be in captivity, they might as well learn to do some entertaining tricks for our amusement to earn their keep.

Sigfried and Roy treated them well, giving them good food and gentle treatment and nice yards to roam around in, when they weren't humiliating them on stage.  Sleeping in the beds of the gayest Las Vegasite since Liberace beats being stuck in a chain link fence pen in some Joe Bob's backyard zoo, or living in a damn bedroom in the projects.

September 18, 2003

Just a really weird story about some asshole in Canada who wanted a bear cub for a pet. Read the whole thing to be amazed. Here's my quick recap.

He grabbed a cub in the water with his jet ski, dragged it down river, dunking it all the time to tire it out, tied it by a paw, dunked it again, half drowned it, and so on.  He finally got to the boat dock where the bears gets away again and swims for shore while he is floating away due to his jet ski running out of gas. Meanwhile he's yelling for someone to get a photographer to take some pictures so he can be in the paper with a bear on his jet ski.  He has to tackle the cub on land as it gets away again, and finally drives home with it before police show up and make him let the bear go.  Eventually wild life rangers arrive and take it out into the woods and release it, but far from where its mother and sibling were last seen.

Even if you overlook the obvious animal abuse and idiocy of the whole thing, check out the guy's logic. After people reported him for animal cruelty his reply:

"I could see their point of view, but from my point of view, it's one less bear in town where there are kids at school. That's not called being mean to the bear. That's called being nice to the children," he said.

So why did he want the bear in the first place?

The woodsman, who makes his living cutting and planting trees, said he intended to keep the cub on a leash at home to see if he could tame it before releasing it back into the wilderness with the hope it would return for visits.

So he wants to keep it away from children by... taming it so it will regularly return to the area. And as most people know, animals are never more dangerous than when they are half tame, since they lose their fear of humans. Good thinking, Skeeter.

After the whole thing, Dr. Red Neck is not exactly apologetic.

Mr. Ryan says if he sees more bears heading into town, he'll try to abduct them too.

"If I get a chance, I'll do it again. I think a bear would make a good pet."

Is there anyone alive who can read this and not pray to god that jackass gets mauled and partially eaten in the immediate future?  Or maybe some nut from E.L.F. could take a break from incinerating Hummers long enough to just go and Glock him.  Either way...

July 7, 2003

Here's a cute picture I saw on Yahoo, and clicked on mostly since it looks a lot like Malaya's our kitty.  Plus I like big cats.  It was the caption that got me to post it here though.

Orson, a Brazilian jaguar at the San Diego Zoo, investigates a special red-white-and-blue enrichment item in his exhibit, July 4 as part of the Zoo's 'Close Encounters of the Zoo Kind.' The San Diego Zoo's animal care staff distributed the icy-treat, filled with elephant dung for Orson to engage in foraging, playful and problem-solving behavior.

Yes, elephant shit.

If I were cool I'd have just left the last sentence, and maybe even deleted the intro paragraph.  It really says all that needs to be said.

But since saying far more than needs to be said is sort of a trademark of mine... what's up with the PC-esque terminology?  It stands out like a green penguin. "Enrichment item."  Who the hell talks like that?  And that's followed up by "engage in foraging, playful and problem-solving behavior."  Sheesh, is that cloying or what?

It just sounds so ridiculously pompous and self-important.  Kitty can't just play with a frozen lump of ice with elephant shit inside of it, kitty must be enriched and engage in foraging behavior!

So at what point does a Brazilian black jaguar encounter frozen boluses of elephant shit in nature?  I mean even if there were every any ice anywhere near Brazil, there certainly aren't any elephants.  And why the hell do you give a big kitty frozen elephant shit to play with?  I mean is there some primal attraction to it?  Why not please deliver some Meow Mix, or a pork chop?  Poor kitty; goes to all the trouble to paw at an inexplicably-red, white, and blue ice cube, and comes away with elephant crap for his trouble.

Now admittedly, the SD Zoo is just about knee deep in elephant shit, most of which seems to be dropped during the elephant show. So I can understand their desire to dispose of it in creative ways.  But still... eww.

May 14, 2003

This article about a rampaging badger in the UK is getting a lot of play.  Apparently it was partially domesticated, got out or was released somehow, and then became super vicious and territorial and started attacking people, and just tore them up.

An angry domesticated badger has savaged five people, leaving one man so seriously injured he needed skin grafts, and chased away pursuing police officers during a 48-hour rampage through a quiet town.

The officers themselves had been chased onto the bonnet of their car as they tried to round up Boris, who was later put down.

One-year old Boris launched what experts described as unprecedented attacks after finding himself hungry, alone and frightened after being stolen or released from a wildlife visitor centre where he had been hand-reared and hand-fed.

Well there's a proud moment in law enforcement, eh?  Chased up on top of your car by a frickin' striped mole. They are potentially quite vicious animals, capable of fighting off coyotes and other larger creatures, and are similar to wolverines, which are really nasty critters, ones that wolves won't even try to kill.

But nevertheless, how does it maul five people?  Doesn't anyone own a gun?  Or a pitchfork?  Or even a shovel?

Humans are inexplicably forgiving of animal attacks, these days.  I can see if it's your own pet biting you, but if some strange/wild animal comes after you, especially if you aren't out in the wild scaring its babies, you have to take action, and generally put it out of its misery. And if it bites you, you have a responsibility to kill it, if you can't trap it.  The next person to come along might be a little kid, and the vicious animal would probably kill or maim them.

I'm not sure of the legality of things, though I'm sure a lawsuit could result, but if someone's little yapping dog bites you, I recommend you punt the little fucker.  Stomp it to death, whatever.  Bigger ones you might need a weapon to avoid taking collateral damage, but I'm not real forgiving of animals attacking my person.

I remember when I was 12 or 13 and living in Arlington, Texas, some neighbors in the suburbs had two medium sized dogs that were forever running loose in front of their home, in defiance of the city leash laws. They'd run after kids on bikes and bark and bark, and rumor had it they'd occasionally give someone a nip.  I found it funny when they'd do it to me, and I'd laugh and occasionally kick a back tire sideways whacking one, if it got too close.  Eventually and inevitably someone got bitten, and there was a legal wrangle about putting the mutt to sleep.  During that time, the other dog ran after a motorcycle and got flattened somehow.  I don't remember what happened to the biting dog, but I always hoped they would gas it.

I have no problem with people owning dogs, but if they can't control the animals, then they have no right to complain if someone takes offense to the animal and puts it down.  You're out in public and some potentially rabid and dangerous animal runs at you, you can't be blamed for assuming the worst and taking appropriate self-defense measures.

Another story that always cracks me up:

When my grandparents used to live out in the country in Missouri, after they were retired, they'd go for walks in the early morning (the only time of day it's less than about 93º there in the spring/summer/fall) to get some exercise.  Lots of the farmers (and assorted white trash) in the area had big hound dogs, most of whom were friendly, and many of whom were running around loose all the time.  Not uncommon to see packs of 15 or 20 dogs running around the countryside all day there.

Anyway, one particular property had 4 or 5 big barking hound/watch dogs, who would throw themselves at a fence chain link fence alongside of the road anytime any human or vehicle came along it.  My grandparents carried stun guns on their morning walks, or sometimes chemical mace, since there were some wild dogs out there as well as the mostly friendly pet ones.  One day when they came up to the barking dog fence, two of the dogs had somehow gotten out, and were lying beside the road, while their comrades still inside the fence were doing their usual running and pacing and barking. The two loose ones leaped to their feet and began snarling and barking and looking very aggressive.  My grandparents know how to deal with that sort of problem though, and once the dogs got too close, they tazer'ed them, then hit them again once they were down, and while they were still stunned my granddad picked them up one at a time and literally threw them back over the 8" chain link fence.

I never fail to laugh myself into a coughing fit when I think of that scene.

Given that both my grandparents have been hunters for 40 or 50 years, and own dozens of hunting rifles and several handguns, I'd say the dogs got off pretty lightly.

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