Camera stolen by eagle retrieved, bird's eye view footage recovered (Video)

[Western Australia] Aboriginal rangers had set up the motion-sensor camera at a gorge on the Margaret River in May, to try and capture images of fresh-water crocodiles.
Gooniyandi ranger Roneil Skeen says the camera disappeared not long afterwards.
"Unexpectedly our camera went missing so we thought we had lost it because it fell into the water," he said.
But a few weeks ago, they got a phone call to say a Parks and Wildlife ranger had found the small device at the Mary River, about 110 kilometres away.
They have been able to extract three 30-second clips that reveal the culprit to be a thieving sea eagle.

Beaver got a gun

From Maine:

So here’s Nathan Baron’s tale:
Nathan said Saturday didn’t start off as an extraordinary day. In fact, it was pretty low-key: He was sitting in a chair in the woods, hunting, watching as a doe crossed in front of him.
After the doe left, he ate his lunch. Then nature called.
“I had to go to the bathroom but I had no toilet paper,” he explained.
Luckily, he was hunting right across the road from his family’s St. David home.
“I walked out of the woods and got on my four-wheeler and I went home,” he said.
Another thing he did (which, for the record, we’ve got to advise everyone to avoid): He leaned his Remington .30-06 rifle against the tree, next to the chair he had been sitting in.
“And when I got back, I couldn’t find the gun,” he said.
Nathan said he stood up from his chair and began looking around in the woods. Then things got interesting in a hurry.
Nature had called again … in a different way.
“There was a stream that was running about 100 feet away from me. I look, and there’s a beaver hauling that gun into the water,” he said.
Nathan said he really didn’t know what to do at that point. “I was mad, but I started laughing because it was funny,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it was happening, that I was seeing him take my gun into the water.”
So here’s what Nathan did: Absolutely nothing.
“There was nothing I could do,” he said. “The gun was in the water and the beaver went under. That was it.”
The water was deep, and pursuing the beaver was out of the question. The gun was gone.
Nathan said he figures the beaver’s intentions were more innocent. (So much for my image of a lone rogue beaver arming himself against trappers). Instead, Nathan  just thinks the gun was made of some good-looking wood, and Mr. Beaver decided to haul it home.

Cats receive $250K, house in owner's will (Video)

A couple of contented cats in Memphis, Tennessee:

"Leon Sheppard, Sr., left his 4,270-square-foot house and $250,000 for the care of his cats in his will. His will states the money should be used for the care of Frisco and Jake and the maintenance of this house they live in. Leon Sheppard's daughter said by phone that the family did not want to talk about it. According to the will, when Frisco dies whatever is left of the estate including the house can be passed to Sheppard's human heirs. However, Jake must be cared for. The heirs will be allowed to move Jake out of the house."
WSMV Channel 4

Woman deliberately runs over, kills duck after it refused her offer of candy

Karie Lindgren, 36, of Tarpon Springs, Florida, was arrested on one count of felony animal cruelty. Here's why:

About 5:45 p.m. Saturday, Lindgren tried luring the duck with a piece of candy...but when the duck did not approach, Lindgren drove her vehicle across a lawn and ran over it “at a high rate of speed,” according to an arrest report. One witness said Lindgren had “stalked” the duck, the affidavit says.

Snake, crcodile and dugong abuser fined in Australia again

His name is Beau Daniel Cleland Greaves and on Friday he was fined fined $6000 for hugging and sitting on a dugong in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. This comes after being fined in May for wrestling a crocodile.

The latest incident occurred in August 2011 when Greaves, 23, was working on a crayfish trawler in Princess Charlotte Bay and jumped into the water to pose for photos with the animal. He later posted  images on Facebook and other social media sites that showed him hugging the dugong, swimming with it and sitting on its tail.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority frowns on such things, so after receiving a tip about the photos, launched an investigation which led to last weeks court case and fine.

Last May, Greaves was fined $4500 after he posted photos and a video showing him wrestling a crocodile on Hicks Island near Lockhart River. In that incident, which also took place in 2011, a 21-year-old friend by the name of Theodore Peter Hewish also received a fine, this one for $1000, for filming Greaves wrestling the croc.

Greaves was described to the court as a serial offender, who had also previously been in trouble for taking pythons and sea snakes and posing with them in photos.

Although it seems he has removed, or at least made private, Facebook pictures of himself with the dugong and crocodile, a photo of him with the python remains, as you can see above. It has a caption that reads: "don't play with big snakes they bite harder."

The photo of a naked and bloodied-looking Greaves below appears on the Facebook page of a friend, with a comment from Greaves that explains (?!), "thats the work of our friendly little pet grogsy he loves biting naked drunk people."

Rare albino kangaroo sighted in Australia (Video)

From Down Under:

Lazing in the middle of a kangaroo mob just a half hour drive from city suburbs is a truly incredible tale of survival, rarely seen in the animal kingdom: an albino kangaroo that has survived beyond its perilous childhood.
Its pure, almost dazzling white coat strikes an amazing contrast against the lush greens and bush greys of the valley floor in the ACT’s Namadgi National Park.
The kangaroo, an eastern grey, is believed to be two years old. Experts said this is old for an albino kangaroo, which stands out against the Australian bushland and therefore attracts more predators such as wild foxes and dogs. Albinos are also apparently more susceptible to skin cancer and sunburn and are more likely to have sight and hearing difficulties.
The albino, first captured on film last weekend by a park ranger at the Namadgi national park near Canberra, stands in stark contrast to the family of grey kangaroos with which it roams.
Surrounded by its extended family of grey eastern greys, this young kangaroo looks alert but at ease. It appears to notice the clicking of a camera, and moves with its mob as we near.Since it was first captured on film in a fuzzy shot by a ranger on Sunday, the park has received reports of at least two other albino kangaroos in its vast expanse in the ACT’s south.

Meanwhile, YouTube user Frenzix posted a video on November 5th, with the notation, 'spotted an Albino Kangaroo in Country South Australia.'

The mystery of Scotland's dog suicide bridge (Video)

Studies have shown that since the 1950s or 1960s numerous dogs have have been jumping off a bridge near Overtoun House in south-west Scotland at the rate of about one dog per year -- and no one knows why.

Overtoun House is a 19th-century country house and estate in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It is located on a hill overlooking the River Clyde, in between the village of Milton and the town of Dumbarton. Built between 1860 and 1863 for James Black & White, a retired lawyer and a co-owner of the J&J White Chemical Works, the house and the estate were given by a descendant of his to the people of Dumbarton in 1938. It was then converted into a maternity hospital, and now houses a 'center for hope and healing.'

In a recent article, Ned Donovan wrote, "The area has long been thought to be haunted, and in 1994 a father threw his child off the bridge, claiming the infant to be the Anti-Christ before himself attempting to jump off the bridge. In fact, the sinister background of Overtoun can be traced directly back to Celtic mythology: it is said to inhabit an area of Scotland which is 'thin', i.e. where our world crosses with that of heaven, allowing spirits to cross over into our Earthly domain.

Dogs that leap over the bridge parapet fall 50 feet (15 m) onto the waterfalls below. Some dogs that survived the drop have jumped again. The only linking factors for this unexplained event are that dogs mostly jump from the same side of the bridge, in clear weather, and they are breeds with long snouts.

As to why, Donovan observed, "Over the years it has been argued that dogs are sensitive to supposed paranormal activity and could be naturally drawn towards the spiritual barrier that may exist on the bridge, a barrier we cannot detect.

"The locals in the area believe that the cause lay nearby at Her Majesty’s Naval Base Faslane, where the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent resides. Residents believed that secret naval communications emitted a sound only heard by dogs and caused them to jump off the bridge. Others placed the blame in the sound of the waterfall next to the bridge where the dogs land after their jump.

"The most emotionally charged explanation is that the dogs are simply depressed, and that Overtoun Bridge is for them what the Golden Gate Bridge is to humans."

In 2005 the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sent an animal habitat expert to investigate the causes as to why dogs kill themselves at Overtoun Bridge. Initially Dr David Sands examined sight, smell and sound factors. After eliminating what a dog could potentially see and hear on the bridge, he eventually focused on scent following the discovery of mice and mink in undergrowth on the side of the bridge from which dogs often leaped. In a test, the odors from these animals were spread around an open field. Ten dogs were unleashed - representing the most common breeds that jumped off the bridge. Of the dogs tested, only two showed no interest in any of the scents while nearly all the others made straight for the mink scent. Sands concluded that, although it was not a definitive answer, the potent odor from male mink urine was possibly luring the dogs to their deaths. His theory is that curiosity killed the dogs.

At the time Dr. Sands appeared in a TV documentary about his study of thee phenomenon and he has since updated that report for National Geographic in 2010 and then again for William Shatners 'Weird or What' in 2012. Watch video clips from these below:

Sources: Wikipedia, The Kernel, The Animal Behaviour Clinic, The Herald Scotland and Overtoun House.

Doves Released for Wedding Promptly Captured and Eaten by Residents of Chinese Town

Stomachs win out over sentiments.

A Chinese news site is reporting that on November 13 wedding photographers intending to take pictures of loving couples surrounded by doves had their plans disrupted by some hungry citizens in the town of Hefei. It seems nearly 100 white doves were purchased and released on the ironically named Swan Lake, in order to create a magical background for wedding photograps. However, the majority of the birds were quickly snapped up by locals, leaving only a few to serve as photo props. A resident explained, “This is an edible dove; it can be eaten."

World Wildlife Fund announces sighting in Vietnam of Saola, the ‘Asian Unicorn’

Hanoi, Vietnam – The saola, one of the rarest and most threatened mammals on the planet, has been photographed in Vietnam for the first time in the 21st century. The enigmatic species was caught on film in September by a camera trap set by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Vietnamese government’s Forest Protection Department in the Central Annamite mountains.

“When our team first looked at the photos we couldn’t believe our eyes. Saola are the holy grail for South-east Asian conservationists so there was a lot of excitement,” said Dr. Van Ngoc Thinh, WWF-Vietnam’s Country Director. “This is a breath-taking discovery and renews hope for the recovery of the species.”
A cousin of cattle but recalling an antelope in appearance, the critically endangered saola, dubbed the Asian unicorn because it is so rarely seen, is recognized by two parallel horns with sharp ends which can reach 50 inches in length.
“This is a monumental find and comes at a critical moment in time for saola conservation,” said Dr. Barney Long, Director, Species Conservation Program, WWF. “It’s a huge reward for decades of tireless work by the provincial government who established the saola reserve, community snare removal teams and WWF biologists. Now it’s time to double our efforts to recover this iconic species.”
The last confirmed record of a saola in the wild was in 1999 from camera-trap photos taken in the Laos province of Bolikhamxay. In 2010, villagers in Bolikhamxay captured a saola. The animal subsequently died.
“In Vietnam, the last sighting of a saola in the wild was in 1998,” said Dang Dinh Nguyen, Deputy Head of Quang Nam Forest Protection Department and Director of Quang Nam’s Saola Nature Reserve. “This is an historic moment in Vietnam’s efforts to protect our extraordinary biodiversity, and provides powerful evidence of the effectiveness of conservation efforts in critical saola habitat.”
In the area where the saola was photographed, WWF’s Preservation of Carbon Sinks and Biodiversity Conservation (CarBi) Program has implemented an innovative law enforcement model in which Forest
Guards are recruited from local communities, and co-managed by WWF and Vietnamese government counterparts, to remove snares and tackle illegal hunting, the greatest threat to the saola’s survival.
“Saola are caught in wire snares set by hunters to catch other animals, such as deer and civets, which are largely destined for the lucrative illegal wildlife trade,” said Dr. Van Ngoc. “Since 2011, forest guard patrols in the CarBi area have removed more than 30,000 snares from this critical saola habitat and destroyed more than 600 illegal hunters’ camps. Confirmation of the presence of the saola in this area is a testament to the dedicated and tireless efforts of these forest guards.”
The saola was discovered in 1992 by a joint team from Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and WWF surveying the forests of Vu Quang, near Vietnam's border with Laos. The team found a skull with unusual horns in a hunter's home. Proven to be the first large mammal new to science in more than 50 years, the find was one of the most spectacular species discoveries of the 20th century.
Twenty years on, the animal’s elusive nature has prevented scientists from making a precise population estimate. At best, no more than a few hundred, and maybe only a few tens, survive in the remote, dense forests along the Vietnam-Laos border.
The saola is an icon for biodiversity in the Annamite mountains that run along the border of Vietnam and Laos. The area boasts an incredible diversity of rare species, with many found nowhere else in the world. In addition to the discovery of the saola, two species of deer, the large-antlered muntjac and the Truong Son muntjac, were discovered in the Annamite’s forests in 1994 and 1997 respectively.
The saola sighting confirms the species’ persistence in Vietnam’s Central Annamite mountains and will help WWF and partners in the search for other individuals, and in targeting the essential protection needed. WWF is also providing alternative livelihood options for communities bordering the Saola Nature Reserves to help reduce poaching and provide much needed income to villagers. This work is a critical complement to law enforcement and protection efforts, and will help wildlife across the Central Annamites recover.

Model who believes 'it's every little girl's dream to have a pet monkey,' claims hers died of depression after kidnapping ordeal

A first world trauma-drama from Ireland:

'My monkey Alvin died from depression after he was stolen'

Owner Jennifer Murphy, who models in Dublin, said that Alvin was so devastated after the ordeal, in which he was put in a small cage in the boot of a car for several hours and transferred to several garda stations, that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.
Dubliner Paul Murtagh was charged with the possession of the stolen monkey and sentenced to 80 hours of community service at court yesterday.
He died one month after, got really depressed," she told Independent.ie"He definitely had a version of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Murphys paid €1,800 for Alvin, a South American Marmoset nearly three years ago as well as spending a considerable sum on his maintenace and upkeep.
"I've wanted a monkey since I was a child. I think it's every little girl's dream to have a pet monkey, so when my husband bought me one, I was thrilled.
"Alvin was very playful. He would jump on your shoulder, climb down the sleeve and play with you.
"He had his own aviary, but slept inside at night."

Sad. On more than one level.

Cop fired after macing, shooting at squirrel in dollar store

CBS 5 - KPHO

Church thought grazing sheep would keep graveyard clean - wrong!

This story from England makes the movie title 'I spit on your grave' sound mild:

As a way to save money at a village churchyard, it had seemed like a splendid idea.

But a scheme to let loose a flock of sheep in a graveyard to keep the grass down has backfired, after they grazed on floral tributes and mementoes left for loved ones.

The ten ewes were introduced to Holy Trinity Church in the aptly-named village of Grazeley, Berkshire, because the parochial council said it could no longer afford anyone to mow the lawn.

Vic Jerrom, who has several generations of ancestors buried there, described the damage as 'very disrespectful' to those laid to rest.
"It's a mess, the sheep are grazing on the graves and of course there is sheep droppings everywhere. It's despicable" he said.

Crabby old lady found guilty of pouring dog poo over head of cyclist who rode to close to her

What a crappy bag:

A pensioner tipped a bag of dog excrement over a Cambridge University lecturer as he cycled past her.
Retired civil servant Susan Currall, 75, was fed up with cyclists "hurtling" towards her as she walked her four-year-old lurcher called Rosie near her home, Cambridge Magistrates' Court heard.
She swung the bag of faeces at Michael Ramage, the director of studies for architecture at Sidney Sussex College, as she believed he was cycling too close to her.
She then held up the bag to allow the contents to spill over the American-born lecturer as he tried to pass her on a path on September 12, said prosecutor Paul Brown.
Mr Ramage, 40, later made a complaint to police and Currall was quizzed by officers at her home in Trumpington, Cambridge.
She admitted a charge of assault by beating and was given a one year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £100 costs and £25 compensation to Mr Ramage to cover his dry cleaning bill.
The court heard how the confrontation happened on a dual-use path shared by cyclists and pedestrians alongside the allotments and the guided busway in Trumpington.
She claimed that she was "provoked" by Mr Ramage, who also lives in Trumpington, because he got too close to her.
The court heard how Currall had no previous convictions, but had received two cautions for common assault and criminal damage in 2007 following a dispute with a neighbour.
Currall said after the hearing: "It is ridiculous that this case ended up in court. A lot of people will be applauding me for what I did because cyclists can be such a pain in the neck.

Like I said: a crappy bag.

Turkey Terror: Deputy shoots pet bird that had been terrorizing neighbor family (Video)

A pre-Thanksgiving horror story from Corinne, Utah.  (Scroll down for video.) 

A turkey that chased after children and a dog in Corinne was shot and killed Sunday, and the family said they have received calls and text messages calling them "turkey killers" and saying her kids were tormenting the turkey.

The family who called the Box Elder County Sheriff’s Office to get the aggressive bird out of their yard said it had been antagonizing them for more than an hour, even injuring their dog. And it wasn’t the first time it’s happened, the family said.
Brady Davis said his family has had problems with the turkey for several weeks, but it reached a breaking point Sunday.
“One of my kids said, ‘Dad, the turkey's coming down the alley way.' And so we were just kind of doing our thing, watching it, and it just kept coming closer and closer," Davis said. "Eventually the dog saw it, got a little curious, went over there, and then the turkey started to go after the dog.”
He said the dog backed off and went back in the yard, but the turkey followed it.
"At that point, we were like, 'This is enough,'" Davis said. “I tried pushing it away and stuff with sticks, and it didn't do much. It would back off … and then turn around and come right back."
The turkey didn’t injure the children, but it did injure the dog, Davis said.

“He was bleeding,” Davis’ wife, Amanda, said of the dog. ”He had some lacerations to his face."

The turkey had somehow escaped from its pen in the next-door neighbor’s yard.
The Davises said they weren’t equipped to move the turkey on their own, so they called authorities.
A Box Elder County sheriff's deputy responded to the incident, "walked up to it, and … it looked like it was going to attack him too,” Amanda Davis said.
The deputy shot and killed the bird.
“He had no other choice, or it would have got him,” she said.
Box Elder Sheriff's chief deputy Kevin Potter said the deputy "did what he had to do."

Source: KSL.com

Baby abandoned in Birmingham named Jade after dog that found her (Video)

This video clip of baby Jade was released by the West Midlands Police. Here's the story from the BBC:

Jade, who has been named by hospital staff, was found in a bag wrapped in a towel at a community park in Stechford, Birmingham, on Thursday afternoon. The girl, who weighs about 6lbs (2.7kg), remains in hospital and should make a full recovery over the next two days, West Midlands Police said.

Roger Wilday, whose German shepherd dog found Jade, said he was proud of her. The baby was thought to be about 24 hours old when she was found at about 14:00 GMT on Thursday and believed to have been there for about 30 minutes before being discovered...

Mr Wilday said he had been walking Jade the dog when the animal was attracted to some bushes in the park off Stuarts Road..

"I was just coming back [out of the park] and Jade went to some bushes and she wouldn't come back to me... I went to look and saw a carrier bag in the bushes and it moved," he said.
"I thought, 'what's that?' and heard a cry and so I looked in the bag and it was a baby in there."...

After making the discovery, he contacted a friend who called the police. Mr Wilday was told by them to pick the baby up and he was then met by officers in the park.

Roger Wilday said it very "lucky" his dog found the baby when she did

"If she had been there overnight, I think she might have died... I think my dog saved the baby's life. I'm very proud of her."

He appealed to the mother to come forward and contact police and said he hoped to visit Jade in the coming days.