This has been a great summer for the bears. Two black bear attacks (one fatality), me seeing black bears, a baby bear with burned feet . . . and now this:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAPuwp2tsIU]
Here’s how my mornings start. I wake up, fall back asleep, wake up again and look out the window for bears. But guess what? I never see them–lame. I would kill to live somewhere where this could happen (like Alaska).
This lady is really lucky. She was attacked by a black bear and survived. See, black bears are very intelligent and they know there is very little to be gained from attacking humans. And if one does get angry enough to attack, they’re pretty easy to reason with. So, whatever she did to rage this bear must have been pretty bad. Once they decide to attack, they usually don’t stop until the job is done.
I guess this is pretty cool. Some guy wasn’t paying attention one day and a grizzly started raging him. He played dead and the bear left (bears aren’t into dead people). I would have tried to communicate with the bear, but I’m more of a man than this guy, so it’s not too surprising he didn’t.
Listen up, everybody, this is important. Polar bears made the list of “threatened” species today. This is a great step forward in recognizing polar bears by our country, but let’s not forget who does the threatening. Polar bears are some of my favorite bears and nobody can hurt them. Probably a better list than “threatened” would be “so sweet they can even rip your head off”. Animals which I would put on that list (polar bears, great white sharks, koala bears, alligators, condors) should be protected and offered extra food to show respect. Threatened my ass.
I guess there’s this baby giraffe in Germany that just started walking. Over-all I have positive feelings about this event. I’m glad when any giraffe learns to walk. Unfortunately the only video is on CNN and, since they’re losers, I can’t embed it. So, until I can get footage of Katja, here’s a sweet ice cream cone being eaten by an even sweeter giraffe!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRwzkxgG8yU]
OK, everybody, it’s time for a break. I’ve been covering relevant animal news now for some time and have been helping all of you to the tune of 3000 hits (that’s enormous in internet terms) since the site’s creation a way back who knows when. Would you believe the only animal news on CNN today is this stupid video featuring a dog and a sheep? That’s BORING. So, on this Sunday evening, I’m going to tell you about my cat, Skittles. Well, our cat. Here’s the story.
My fiancee and I had been itching to get a pet. We already have some fish. The biggest fish is Amadeus. When we got him, we also had three others: Punky Brewster, Lucius Tertius and Jimmy Tango. However, Amadeus systematically killed off his tank mates. First went Lucius, then Punky and finally Jimmy. It turns out that Amadeus had been pregnant, though, and he was just making room for his son, Hush Puppy who’s a happy, healthy fry right now. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is fish don’t make loyal companions.
Another bit of important tid-bit of background is that my apartment building, a high-rise in Crystal City (Arlington, VA) is beginning to fall apart. Knowing this, management sold it to Bainbridge Companies, which is definitely the sorriest property management company ever. Just ask Catherine (who’s in the property management business). Well, we found out that Bainbridge was allowing animals in the building when we heard a dog barking upstairs. A couple days later we were at Petsmart perusing the cats. Here’s a picture of Skittles in her cage.
Some time back we had decided that “Skittles” would be a great name for a cat, especially if it was a really mean cat. We named this cat Skittles but she turned out just to be stupid. A stupid cat? Yes. Skittles is pretty dense. She’s extremely clumsy, more interested in tin foil and Catherine’s hair than very realistic rabbit’s fur mice and she doesn’t bury her treasures in the litter box.
Actually, the litter box situation is pretty funny. See, Skittles LOVES to eat. She eats all the time and throws a fit if her bowl is empty. And with all that food she produces a lot of waste. Cleaning litter boxes doesn’t bother me at all. Even scooping Skittle’s box daily would have been fine, but daily isn’t enough with this cat. Since she doesn’t bury, a fresh box is only fresh until she uses it, which is very, very frequently. It was getting to the point where my entire apartment smelled like her litterbox everyday when I came home from work. We got the Littermaid to clean up after her for each visit to the box just so the apartment would be tolerable.
Here’s Skittles inside her food bag, eating, because she finished off her bowl.
Unusual traits aside, Skittles is a really great cat. I think we’re going to get her a buddy, though, and name him Kringle. Kringle will probably be a Siamese.
So, these two high school kids were driving to school one day (in Oregon) and saw this kangaroo-hamster looking thing in the road. Since they weren’t murderers, the stopped the car to peep it out rather than just running it over like some other Oregonians might. It turns out the beast was a cavy–a large Argentinian rodent. It’s actually really sweet. They want to keep it, but it’s probably somebody’s pet. Also, they don’t know what it eats (have you kids ever heard of google?). Anyways, here’s a link to the video on CNN. As soon as this is available to embed, I will.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2008/04/16/dnt.weird.animal.kgw
This is pretty great and the only thing I don’t like about it is that it didn’t happen to me. Some dude was just blazing down the road (in Texas) when he peeped a sweet alligator on the side of the road. Homeboy then somehow places that alligator in the back seat of his car and sets off to find it a new home. I guess he got pulled over for speeding or something (I really wasn’t paying attention when watching until the alligator showed up) and the cops found the ancient reptile* in the car and filmed it. Pretty nuts hard if you ask me.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TekZjhIKRk]
*This alligator is probably fairly young. I only meant that alligators/crocodiles are pretty old. I mean those puppies were around when dinosaurs ruled the Earth instead of us humans. Sharks are pretty old too. Mosquitoes too (remember Jurassic Park?).
This is self-explanatory
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkYUgYJW7rs&rel=1]
I LOVE this little guy!
