Saturday - July 19, 2014

72 Raisins For That Donkey

The Big Question: Will PETA protest HAMAS using animals as weapons, or will they curse Israel for blowing one up in self defense?

Hamas militants sent a donkey laden with explosives on a suicide mission in one of the most unconventional tactics yet seen in the fighting in Gaza, the Israeli army has said.

Troops said they were forced to open fire on the animal - blowing it up - as it approached their position in the southern city of Rafah, near the Egyptian border.

The Israeli army had received prior intelligence that militants were going to try to use animals to carry out attacks, according to a press release on the Israeli Defence Forces website.

Israeli military officials say Friday night’s incident was a variant of what they say is Hamas’ tactic of using “human shields” to carry out “terrorist” activity.

“They used this donkey as a human shield, or an animal shield, if you like,” said Major Arye Shalicar, an army spokesman. “Anything, an animal or an international building, that can help make use of innocent people or international [citizens], they will use it. We see it time and again.”

For all its unorthodox nature, it is not the first recorded use of donkeys and other animals in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Several attempted donkey-assisted attacks were reported in the West Bank and Gaza during the second Palestinian intifada [uprising] of 2000-2005. Other incidents have been recorded in recent years, including one in 2009 when militants approached the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel with horses carrying mines and explosives.

Soldiers in the field have reported “multiple incidents” of dogs trying to approach with explosives attached to them, according to the army.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/19/2014 at 11:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Israel • War On Terror •  
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   Thursday - July 10, 2014

Enjoying the fruits of my labor

"Scowler” the neighborhood mouser, enjoying the cool shade and a warm clean place to nap by my garden, while keeping an eye out for any tasty little critters that might be about. As long as I don’t get closer than 6 or so feet, we’re pals. Any closer and he gets all hissy. Until he gets hungry and comes to beg at the kitchen door. At which point I get hissy right back at him. No soup for you! I think he’s a blow in; a run away that sort of lives around here now.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/10/2014 at 11:18 AM   
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   Wednesday - July 09, 2014

That’s All Clucked Up

Roosters’ fertility problem affects US chicken supply, increases prices
The world’s largest chicken breeder has discovered that a key breed of rooster has a genetic issue that is reducing its fertility, adding to problems constraining U.S. poultry production and raising prices at a time when beef and pork prices are already at record highs.

The breed, Aviagen Group’s standard Ross male, is sire through its offspring to as much as 25 percent of the nation’s chickens raised for slaughter, said Aviagen spokeswoman Marla Robinson.

Sanderson Farms, the third-largest U.S. poultry producer and one of Aviagen’s largest customers, said it and Aviagen systematically ruled out other possible causes for a decline in fertility before determining a genetic issue was at the root of the problem.

The issue is hitting an industry that is already suffering from a short supply of breeder birds.

The U.S. Agriculture Department last month reduced its U.S. chicken production forecast for 2014, predicting only a 1 percent increase in poundage from 2013, well below the long-run annual average of 4 percent. The agency predicted 2015 production would be up only 2.6 percent.

Aviagen, owned privately by EW Group of Germany, provides breeding stock - hens and roosters - to Sanderson and other chicken producers, which then breed the birds and hatch their eggs to produce meat.
...
Aviagen sent a team of scientists to Sanderson last autumn to study the issue and has acknowledged that an undisclosed change it made to the breed’s genetics made the birds “very sensitive” to being overfed, he said.

“We fed him too much. He got fat. When he got big, he did not breed as much as he was intended to,” Cockrell said about the breed of rooster. “The fertilization went way down, and our hatch has been way down.”

Aviagen regularly tweaks genetics in birds to improve them, Cockrell added.
...
The chicken breeding company has replaced the breed suffering from fertility issues with a new breed, and is mating it with the same type of hens. It is too early to provide accurate projections for their productivity, but “results to date are favorable,” Robinson said.

One day a rooster came into our yard
And caught those little chickens
Right off their guard
They’re laying eggs now just like they used to
Ever since that rooster came into our yard
They’re laying eggs now just like they used to
Ever since that rooster came into our yard

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2014 at 12:13 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Fine-Dining • Humor •  
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   Tuesday - June 17, 2014

awww

Posted by Drew458     on 06/17/2014 at 09:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals •  
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   Thursday - June 12, 2014

Cat Caption Needed

I was going to send this one to Vilmar, who does all that LOLcatz pictures.

But I figured my BMEWS readers could make up captions (cat-ptions?) just as good as LOL’s.

So have at it.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/12/2014 at 03:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Eye-Candy • Fun-Stuff •  
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   Saturday - June 07, 2014

Sunny Saturday

Saturday afternoon, sunny and mild. Looks like a great time for a nap.

My wife is out like a light on the sofa.

Our visiting neighborhood moggy cat, whom I call Scowler, decided that the new Birthday Grill makes the perfect cat-sized bit of shade, just right for a catnap.

He’s a strange little fellow. Comes right up to the sliding doors and stares in, sometimes by the hour. This earned him the title of our Peeping Tomcat. But he won’t come inside! And he doesn’t want food. And if I’m out working on the garden project, or dabbling about on the patio, he’ll come visit. But don’t come any closer, or he’ll hiss! Sometimes I think he’s less a cat than a pushmi-pullyu.  A Great Wild Animal ... in need of a tummy rub.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/07/2014 at 01:06 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Daily Life •  
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   Tuesday - June 03, 2014

Not A Canadian Joke

A Baby Moose Walks Into A Coffee Shop, Eh?

... a Rabbi, a penguin, and a swish hair dresser turn to him and say ...






No, sorry, it’s not like that. Real moose. Real story. No joke. And it’s from Canada, eh, so probably there was no ... penguin.

A northern Ontario man found a baby moose on the side of the highway, picked it up and took it to Tim Hortons.

“She still had the umbilical cord and was still wet when I found her,” Stephan Michel Desgroseillers told Shirley Erkila, who posted a video of her petting the calf outside the coffee shop near Sudbury, Ont., on Monday.

“The wolves would have got to her,” Desgroseillers said.

In a posting on the radio station Q92 Rocks Facebook page, Desgroseillers said he was the one who picked up the small calf and took it to the Wild at Heart Animal Shelter, but not before having to keep it for the night.

On his own Facebook page, he said the moose calf was “the sweetest thing ever except for the crying.”

The male calf is now being cared for by staff at the animal shelter.

Coffee-loving Canadians were surprised Monday when they spotted a baby moose walking alongside a man into their local Tim Hortons coffee shop for a caffeine fix.

The man, Stephane Desgroseillers, told local media he spotted the moose next to a highway near Greater Sudbury in Ontario the day before and picked up the newborn after fearing the moose was in danger.

“The little calf kept coming back out on the road and wanting to go into the traffic,” Desgroseillers said, according to CTV News.

The moose ended up spending the night with its rescuer after Desgroseillers found the area animal shelter was closed.

It would only sleep for half an hour at a time, before waking up and whining for about two hours.

“I had a rough, rough night,”

The next morning, Desgroseillers put the moose back in his car to head back to the animal shelter, but not before stopping for coffee.

“I basically felt blessed to be in a position to have crossed a path with that little animal,” Desgroseillers said, according to CTV.  “I felt I need to share that with other people.”
...
CTV News reports the male moose, which Desgroseillers says was “damp and wobbly” when he found him, weighs 25 pounds and was just 1-day-old when found on the side of the road.

The male calf is now being cared for by staff at the shelter, where a trio of nursemaids are taking turns tending to their new resident.

They have named it Oliver.

“Only three people can be with him right now because he needs to bond,” said Adeline Charpin, an intern at the wildlife rehabilitation facility in Lively. “We’re doing all we can.”

That includes sleeping with the animal, who was just two days old when he arrived at the centre on Monday and requires round-the-clock attention.

“We need to stay with him and feed him every two hours,” said Charpin, one of the surrogates. “If nobody’s with him, he just cries.”

I kind of wonder ... other news sites covering this story say how Desgroseillers found the micro-mooselet while out quadding ... ie, riding raucous loud off-road dirt bikes/cars in the woods. Did that noise scare the mother away nearly the moment she gave birth?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/03/2014 at 10:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals •  
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   Thursday - April 24, 2014

Up, up, and away!!

This may be the last thing that anyone with a touch of ophidiophobia — fear of snakes — would want to hear: flying snakes have surprisingly good aerodynamic qualities.

Scientists studying the amazing gliding proficiency of an Asian species known as the paradise tree snake say it does two things as it goes airborne. It splays its ribs in order to flatten its profile from round into a more triangular form, and it undulates while airborne — sort of swimming through the air.
...
The paradise tree snake is one of the world’s five species of flying snakes, all from the genus Chrysopelea. To be precise, they are gliders, not actual flyers like birds and bats that achieve powered flight.

The mildly venomous snake — green and black with occasional touches of red and orange — has a diameter roughly equal to a human finger and is up to three feet (one meter) long. It lives in rainforests in Southeast Asia and South Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The snake takes to the air from trees, and is capable of gliding about 100 feet (30 meters).

Chrysopelea is also known by its common name “flying snake”. It climbs using ridge scales along its belly, pushing against rough bark surface of tree trunks, allowing it to move vertically up a tree. Upon reaching the end of a tree’s branch, the snake continues moving until its tail dangles from the branch’s end. It then makes a J-shape bend, leans forward to select the level of inclination it wishes to use to control its flight path, as well as selecting a desired landing area. Once it decides on a destination, it propels itself by thrusting its body up and away from the tree, sucking in its abdomen and flaring out its ribs to turn its body into a “pseudo concave wing”, all the while making a continual serpentine motion of lateral undulation parallel to the ground to stabilize its direction in midair in order to land safely.

The combination of sucking in its stomach and making a motion of lateral undulation in the air makes it possible for the snake to glide in the air, where it also manages to save energy compared to travel on the ground and dodge earth-bound predators. The concave wing that a snake creates in sucking in its stomach flattens its body to up to twice its width from the back of the head to the anal vent, which is close to the end of the snake’s tail, causes the cross section of the snake’s body to resemble the cross section of a frisbee or flying disc. When a flying disc spins in the air, the designed cross sectional concavity causes increased air pressure under the center of the disc, causing lift for the disc to fly. A snake continuously moves in lateral undulation to create the same effect of increased air pressure underneath its arched body to glide.[

Wiki says the critters can glide for 100 meters.

Upon lift off, the snake snake stretches out its ribs, instantly flattening the body and taking on an s shape. This action also causes the belly region of the snake to take on a concave shape that acts as a parachute. The snakes plan is to merely enlarge its surface area and increase air resistance, thus slowing its descent. During this period of flattening, the body expands to nearly double normal width. While aloft, the snake undulates and the body contorts to catch air drafts and glide. While the undulations help propel the snake, their true propose is to control the snakes direction. C. paradisi is unique among the flying snake species by the method it uses to change direction. Most species simply bank in the direction they wish to go. C. paradisi on the other hand, turns by moving the anterior portion of the snakes body. The reason as to why the this snake Genus evolved the ability to glide may be twofold; it could be an adaptation to avoid predation or it may have evolved in response to the two Genus’s of lizard and one Genus of frog prey items that also inhabit this area, the Genus Rhacophorus (Flying Frogs), Genus Draco (Flying Dragons or Gliding Lizards, and the Genus Ptychozoon (the Gliding Geckos).

As far as I could tell, the act of flying snakes hunting other flying reptiles while airborne has not yet been observed by Official Science. Could be it’s just a matter of time.

Flying snakes. They’re real. Next thing you know, it’ll turn out that Australia’s infamous Drop Bears are real too. Crivens.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/24/2014 at 12:18 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Fun-Stuff •  
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   Wednesday - March 12, 2014

Pussified In Portland

Somewhere Kim DuToit is downing a big glass of Kllipdrift, yelling “I told you so! I told you so!!”

Unreal, except on the far left coast.

The Oregon owners of a 22-pound house cat who trapped them in their bedroom after attacking their baby say they’re not giving up on their pet and are getting it medical attention and therapy.

Two days after police arrived to subdue the 4-year-old Himalayan cat, owner Lee Palmer of Portland said he’s taking the feline to a veterinarian. A pet psychologist also is due at the house to see the cat, named Lux.

“We’re not getting rid of him right now,” Palmer said. “He’s been part of our family for a long time.”

Palmer says the animal attacked his 7-month-old child after the baby pulled its tail. The child suffered a few scratches on the forehead.

On the 911 call, Palmer tells the dispatcher he kicked the cat “in the rear” to protect his child. Palmer says the animal then “just went off over the edge”—leading Palmer and his girlfriend to barricade themselves, their baby and the family dog in the bedroom for safety.

The cat can be heard screeching in the background of the call as Palmer says in a panicked voice: “He’s charging us. He’s at our bedroom door.” Palmer also tells the dispatcher the cat has been violent in the past.

Holy shiite. HMFS. OMFG. The cat scratched the baby because the baby pulled his tail. Well double duh with a side order of No Shit Sherlock. So Mr. Man swoops in to save teh day, knees the moggy right in the puffs, then runs and hides in teh Safe Room, WITH THE DOG, and CALLS 911. Probably had to have 3 double latte half-caf mochachinos with extra cinnamon and low-fat soy milk whipped cream and a fair trade organic cherry on top after it was all over to regain his composure. And fix his chipped nails.

But it’s the CAT who needs therapy. With a house call.

I hear the dog died from humiliation.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/12/2014 at 10:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Humor •  
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   Tuesday - February 11, 2014

Police Brutality

OMG!! As a postman I’ve had to deal with dogs almost daily. That dog was not a threat. All you had to do was kneel down, coax the dog to you and pet him. If it was going to try to bite, I’d have pepper-sprayed it. But that was not a threatening dog. That was a dog excited about a new person.

Warning: Graphic of police shooting a non-threatening dog. Bet their mailman would back me.

Full story here

This is why mailmen aren’t armed. We find other, non-lethal, ways around your pet dogs. We make friends with them, or pepper-spray them if they are aggressive. If they are aggressive, you may have mail delivery curtailed. Shooting the dog should NOT have been the officer’s first choice. That dog was busy barking, not ready to bite.

Posted by Christopher     on 02/11/2014 at 09:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Government • Jack Booted Thugs • RoPMA • Terrorists •  
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   Sunday - January 26, 2014

just for the heck of it ….

It’s been raining steadily since late yesterday, very hard at times, and quite windy as well.
My pc faces a large front window in what once was a dining room only. And btw in spite of the heat being on, it’s one of those damp chills that passes by in waves.
I actually enjoy misty and rainy weather.  Even the cold isn’t too much of a bother and I find I can think better in this weather than I do when the sun shines.
Don’t care to drive in it though. Or go walking a dog as I have seen some folks do. Even in the worst of weather, I have seen folks out there jogging. But not today.  Anyway it’s a bit on the dismal side and so I thought, just for the heck of it, I’d post this.

Posted by peiper     on 01/26/2014 at 07:24 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals •  
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   Tuesday - January 14, 2014

Wildlife Shout Out

Still sick.

I got nothing today, so here’s a woozle warbling. How often do you get one of those? Never! So yer welcome.

The short-tailed weasel was caught on camera at the British Wildlife Centre in Lingfield, Surrey.

He can be seen opening his jaw as if in mid-song, before stepping down from centre stage and posing on a log.

The small but outgoing animal was captured by Welsh carpenter and joiner Geoffrey Baker, 58.

‘The little stoat was entertaining the crowds and showing off his vocal cords for us,’ said Mr Baker, from Afan Valley, South Wales.

‘He was enjoying the interaction with the public and seemed to love the attention that he was getting as people gathered round to see him perform.

‘I only took a few snapshots of him, but luckily captured this one, where he appears to be entertaining the crowds with opera.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/14/2014 at 04:54 PM   
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   Thursday - December 12, 2013

unintended consequences?

I don’t think they planned it quite this way.  Do you?  But someone snapped the shutter release and someone decided to print and ... Bingo!

Posted by peiper     on 12/12/2013 at 07:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Humor •  
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   Friday - November 15, 2013

Picky picky

I may have the only mouse on the continent who doesn’t like peanut butter.

I put out two different live capture traps last night, both baited with good old Skippy. And ... nothing.

But the day before, he’d gone for the extra dark chocolate for the second night in a row.

Likes chocolate, hates peanut butter. Guess I shouldn’t name him Reese’s.

Unless he got out again? Sure, it’s possible. But it is nice and warm in here, though there’s more food outside I guess. Who knows.

I guess I’ll lay out a couple of Victor snap traps on the floor tonight, baited with chocolate. Or cheese, PB, and chocolate, the mousey tri-fecta.

It’s my last chance to catch him before we leave for vacation, so I’ll do what I’ve got to do.



                           some other chocolate mouse

Posted by Drew458     on 11/15/2013 at 08:13 AM   
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