Zoliad!

When Beverly and Ernie Fischer gathered up their cattle this fall in Morton County, they rounded up a little more than they expected.

“We were moving some cattle, and we got a moose,” Ernie Fischer said. “He thinks he is a cow,” said his wife.

Ernie Fischer said it was difficult to get the young bull moose away from the cattle, and workers put it in a separate corral until it could be released. The moose also broke fences on the ranch 20 miles south of Mandan.

It’s not the only such incident in south central North Dakota this year. Emmons County rancher Sam Gross recently reported a lone bull moose in his cattle herd, and a moose also was spotted in a cattle herd in McIntosh County.

[via WRAL.com]

The big bird that showed up Tuesday at Oaksridge Golf Course was another matter, at least for Sue McMeekin of Satsop and Les Bell of Montesano.

The flightless bird, second in size among avians to the ostrich, followed the pair for seven of their nine holes, watching each swing and sometimes walking between them or standing directly in front of them. The emu seemed to take special interest in McMeekin’s red fleece jacket.

“It was strange,” McMeekin said. “She’s awful big and she made me nervous.”

Emus, natives of Australia, can grow to more than 5 feet and 100 pounds and are capable of running as fast as 30 mph.

Jeremy Behm, a golf course employee in this town between Olympia and Aberdeen, said he heard a strange sound as he was working in the pro shop around 6:30 a.m.

“I heard a noise and this crazy bird was standing right there,” Behm said.

After hanging around the pro shop for a time, the emu began following McMeekin and Bell while Behm called the Grays Harbor County sheriff’s office.

A deputy was dispatched but couldn’t immediately determine where the emu belonged. Soon afterward, the owner came from his home across the street and rounded up the bird at about 10:30 a.m., Behm said.

[via ESPN]

A Northern Ireland man bit his girlfriend’s pet snake in half during a fight and remarked that it “tasted lovely,” lawyers testified Friday. Shane Cooke, a 33-year-old bricklayer, was arraigned in Belfast High Court on charges of assaulting his girlfriend, Coleen McGleenon, and fatally torturing her royal python Aug. 4.

McGleenon’s lawyers said he headbutted her twice and picked up her pet, put it in his mouth, and threw its severed head at her. “Your snake tasted lovely,” he was quoted as saying.

Cooke’s lawyer, Adrian Higgins, said his client admitted both offenses and had attacked the snake because he knew his girlfriend loved it. He said Cooke, from the border village of Keady, had been consuming alcoholic drinks for several hours before the attack.

[via AP]

Scientists unveiled the discovery Wednesday of a baby mammoth found in the permafrost of north-west Siberia.

The remains of the six-month-old female mammoth were discovered in a remarkable state of preservation on the Yamal peninsula of Russia in May, a Reuters report said. The specimen is believed to be the best of its kind to date.

A reindeer herder found the frozen animal in May near the Yuribei River, in Russia’s Yamal-Nenets autonomous district.

The animal is thought to have died 10,000 years ago and experts say the approximately four foot tall, 50kg Siberian specimen dates to the end of the last Ice Age, when the great beasts were vanishing off the face of the planet.

Scientists hope the animal might yield DNA samples that could be used to clone and effectively resurrect the extinct members of the elephant family.

A delegation of international experts were in Salekhard last week, near where the mammoth was found, to conduct a preliminary examination of the carcass, which will be transferred to Jikei University in Tokyo, Japan, a Reuters report said. Experts are expected to carry out an extensive study of the specimen, including CT scans of its internal organs.

The animal is remarkably well-preserved with it’s trunk and eyes still intact. Some of the infant mammoth’s fur is also still on the body. While the mammoth has not yielded the kind of DNA that could be used in cloning, scientists remain optimistic.

Some believe the right find is bound to emerge from Siberia that will make cloning or resurrecting the animal — by injecting sperm into the egg of a relative such as the Asian elephant — a reality.

Mammoths first appeared in the Pliocene Epoch, 4.8 million years ago. They possessed long, curved tusks along with a coat of long hair.

The cause of their widespread disappearance at the end of the last Ice Age remains unclear; but climate change, overkill by human hunters, or a combination of both could have been to blame.

One population of mammoths lived on in isolation on Russia’s remote Wrangel Island until about 5,000 years ago.

Siberian mammoth specimens were lost to a lucrative trade in ivory, skin, hair and other body parts. Local people are now scouring the Siberian permafrost for remains to sell.

[via Reuters]

A squid as long as a bus and weighing 550 pounds washed up on an Australian beach, officials said Wednesday.

“It is a whopper,” said Genefor Walker-Smith, a zoologist who studies invertebrates at the Tasmanian Museum.

Giant squid live in waters off southern Australia and New Zealand _ where a half-ton colossus, believed to be the world’s largest, was caught in February. They attract the sperm whales that feed on them.

The dead squid, measuring 3 feet across at its widest point and 26 feet from the tip of its body to the end of its tentacles, was found early Wednesday by a beachcomber at Ocean Beach on the island state of Tasmania’s west coast, the museum said.

The squid was expected to be taken to the museum, where DNA and other scientific tests would be carried out before it is preserved and possibly put on public display.

For anyone thinking of a calamari feast, Walker-Smith said giant squid contain high levels of ammonia in their bodies as a buoyancy aid.

“It would not taste very nice at all,” she said.

New Zealand fishermen netted a 1,100-pound, 33-foot-long squid in the Southern Ocean in February. It is widely believed to be the largest specimen of the rare and mysterious deep-water species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, or colossal squid, ever caught.

Experts believe the creatures, which have long been one of the most mysterious denizens of the deep ocean, may grow even bigger _ up to 46-feet long.

[via AP]

A Chinese man bit to death a fierce dog that was savaging his beloved puppy.

Awakened by the puppy’s yelps, a villager named Geng first tried to chase the dog away by hurling watermelons at it, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The farmer then threw himself on the dog, clamping his teeth around its neck and eventually killing it.

“The two were rolling around on the ground and fighting for nearly 10 minutes,” the Yanzhao Cosmopolitan News in the northern province of Hebei said.

Geng suffered deep cuts to his arms and was treated in hospital. The puppy survived. 

[via Reuters]

A 5-year-old boy grabbed a rabid fox by the neck and pinned it to the ground during a family cookout, protecting six other children until his stepfather could kill the animal.

“I wanted to protect my little brother,” said Rayshun McDowell, who battled the fox in the front yard of his home Sunday in Kingstown, a town about 50 miles west of Charlotte.

The fox bit Rayshun in the leg, but the 61-pound-boy held the animal down for more than a minute. Animal control officials said Tuesday that test results confirmed the fox had rabies, which is fatal unless treated before symptoms appear. Rayshun is undergoing treatment.

“I looked out the window and Rayshun had the fox by the neck and was pushing it into the ground,” said his mother, Shinda Linder. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

Rayshun’s stepfather, Ryan Thompson, pulled the boy off the animal and kicked it. A neighbor fired a handgun three times but the fox continued to advance.

Thompson, wearing a cast because of a broken leg, said he used a stick and his crutch to beat the fox to death.

Rayshun, meanwhile, asked only for a Band-Aid and didn’t complain of any pain.

“Rayshun was really calm and wasn’t upset,” his mother said. “I couldn’t believe he would do something like that. He was so brave, and I was a wreck.”

Rabies attacks the nervous system and is transmitted through saliva. It often makes animals aggressive. A 6-year-old girl who was attacked by a fox the same day at her home nearby also is being treated.

[via AP]

Duncan the dog is still registered to vote, and his owner isn’t pleased.

Jane Balogh signed up the dog in protest of a 2005 state voter-registration law she thinks makes it too easy for noncitizens to vote. She used a paw print to mark ballots on Duncan’s behalf.

At first, Balogh said she wouldn’t contest a misdemeanor charge of making false statements on a voter registration form. But on Thursday, she pleaded not guilty to the charge that is punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

She said she changed her mind when election officials claimed her efforts showed the system worked.

“She’s just kind of annoyed because Duncan’s still on the voting rolls,” said her lawyer, Kristen Anderson. “Somebody is clearly not getting the message.”

Laura Lockard, King County’s acting election program manager for voter services, said there is “an arduous process” to have someone, even if it’s a dog, taken off the voter rolls.

Balogh put her phone bill in the Australian shepherd-terrier mix’s full name — Duncan MacDonald — then used it as identification to register him as a voter. She submitted ballots in the dog’s name in the September and November 2006 and May 2007 elections. She wrote “VOID” on the ballots and didn’t cast any votes.

[via AP]

A tanning bed or sunbed is a device emitting ultraviolet radiation (typically 95% UVA and 5% UVB, +/-3%) used to produce a cosmetic tan. There are a few units called “high pressure” beds that generate only UVA, but these are much less common and much more expensive, therefore most tanning beds are those that produce both UVA and UVB.

The word ‘SCUBA’ is an acronym for “Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus”, but it has become acceptable to refer to ‘scuba equipment‘ ‘scuba diving‘ or ’scuba apparatus’. The term SCUBA in common usage usually means open-circuit equipment in which gas (usually air) is breathed from a tank of compressed gas and then exhaled into the water, usually in the line of kit development started by Emile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau.