Animals Rule !~ All Beloved Creatures

[NoniousTheNonian]

Survivor Cat!

http://www.peoplepets.com...ays-buried-under-rubble/1

Amazing Discovery! Smoka the Cat Survives 26 Days Buried Under Rubble

The last time Sandy LaPierre saw her cat, Smoka, was on Aug. 9 when a fire ripped through the apartment building where she lived in Franklin, Ohio.

"Whenever my neighbor kicked the door in to get me out, she hid under the bed and that was the last I've seen of her," she told the local NBC affiliate.

LaPierre and the community are now stunned that Smoka has been found a whopping 26 days after the disaster. The lucky feline was discovered when a crew came to tear down the three-story building on Sept. 4 and one of the workers spotted the cat's head under a pile of rubble.

"We was digging through it and we found that cat 16 feet underneath the debris pile, in the burnt ashes and wood," Clarence Witte, owner of Stark Wrecking Company tells PEOPLE Pets. "And we had already done run over the top of it a dozen times with the excavator — and that thing weighs about 40,000 pounds. I don’t know how that cat survived underneath all that stuff."

Witte, who says that the 1-year-old feline "looked dead" when she was pulled from the rubble but started moving within minutes of being freed, believes the cat was underneath the rubble for the entire 26-day period, without food or water. The top floor of the building, where LaPierre lived with the cat, was completely lost in the fire.

"It's just a miracle," says Witte. "That cat had willpower, I guess, and just did not want to die."

Smoka was immediately taken to a vet where they found the cat was dehydrated, had a small infection in one eye but was otherwise in good health, Witte says.

Now reunited with her owner, Smoka is "doing great," says Witte, who adds that LaPierre is staying at a nearby apartment but needs to find a new one that accepts pets. "You would never know that cat was laid underneath here that long. But she said it's eating everything, she said it's eating like crazy."

[eagle-rare]

 That is a great story. Thanks.

[corky]

WOW....just amazing ...animals are wonderful .... 

[NoniousTheNonian]

Unicorn in Italy

http://blogs.discovery.co...f.html?smid=TWAPL-DEF-TBG

They found the unicorn! Well, sort of...
09/16/2009

A roe deer in Italy was born with a single, centrally placed horn. The legendary unicorn?
AP Photo/Young Kwak
 
The mystical, mythical unicorn has finally been found! Well, sort of. But perhaps we have found a new possibility for the animal that may have inspired many legends.

A roe deer born at the tiny 2.5-acre Natural Sciences Center of Prato sanctuary in Italy's Tuscan region has a single unicorn-like horn protruding from the center of its skull. Its twin, however, has two normal horns. The animal is now a year old, and over 200 people have flocked to see the deer, who sanctuary director Gilberto Tozzi named “Unicorn.”

Most likely a genetic anomaly caused the single horn and its central location, but another possibility is that the deer had an injury early in life. Other deer sometimes grow a single horn, but usually on one or the other side. The central position of Unicorn’s horn is an oddity. But if it happened with one animal, it can certainly happen with others. Who knows, maybe there’s even an extinct species that had a single horn that hasn’t yet been discovered. At least one mammal has the genes in place to consistently grow a single horn: the narwhal, a toothed whale with a single long spiraling tusk, resembles a unicorn of the sea. Regardless, this true case of a single-horned deer suggests it’s possible that a deer born with a uni-horn inspired legendary stories of the unicorn.

Here’s an interesting fact – the original Bambi in the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods, was a roe deer and the book set in Europe, but it was changed to a white-tailed deer when the book was adapted by Walt Disney as an animated feature.

[NoniousTheNonian]

Oh...my...God.  I hope to hell this is fake

http://english.pravda.ru/...111621-sheep_human_face-0

By Pravda.Ru writer Dmitry Sudakov

A sheep gave birth to a dead lamb with a human-like face. The calf was born in a village not far from the city of Izmir, Turkey.

Erhan Elibol, a vet, performed Cesarean section on the animal to take the calf out, but was horrified to see that the features of the calf’s snout bore a striking resemblance to a human face.

“I’ve seen mutations with cows and sheep before. I’ve seen a one-eyed calf, a two-headed calf, a five-legged calf. But when I saw this youngster I could not believe my eyes. His mother could not deliver him so I had to help the animal,” the 29-year-old veterinary said.

The lamb’s head had human features on – the eyes, the nose and the mouth – only the ears were those of a sheep.

Veterinaries said that the rare mutation most likely occurred as a result of improper nutrition since the fodder for the lamb’s mother was abundant with vitamin A, CNNTurk.com reports.

In Zimbabwe, a goat gave birth to a similar youngster in September 2009. The mutant baby born with a human-like head stayed alive for several hours until the frightened village residents killed him.

The governor of the province where the ugly goat was born said that the little goat was the fruit of unnatural relationship between the female goat and a man.

"This incident is very shocking. It is my first time to see such an evil thing. It is really embarrassing," he reportedly said. "The head belongs to a man while the body is that of a goat. This is evident that an adult human being was responsible. Evil powers caused this person to lose self control. We often hear cases of human beings who commit bestiality but this is the first time for such an act to produce a product with human features," he added.

The mutant creature was hairless. Local residents said that even dogs were afraid to approach the bizarre animal.

The locals burnt the body of the little goat, and biologists had no chance to study the rare mutation.

Ekaterina Bogdanova
Komsomolskaya Pravda

[s18]

Squirrels in my garden 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/i355Zb3AZno" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/i355Zb3AZno</a>


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Gk4fjUCDsGc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Gk4fjUCDsGc</a>
(video+pics)

lots of pics here - picasa web albums http://tinyurl.com/5quirrel


low res


high resolution (1.5MB) pic link -


they are cute little "lol" machine 

[Don]

Yes, I have squirrels too. They like to eat the fruit, especially ripe peaches and plums. Sometimes one of them sits in the tree outside the house and watches me when I am eating in the kitchen. They also love to eat part of the pinecones and throw their leftovers down on my car. With the peach trees, the plum trees ,the apple tree and the pine tree, the squirrels have a year round buffet table.

A long time ago I had a cat called Gemini. Some people asked me to post pictures of her in the past, but I didn't have any in digital form. I now have a very nice new printer/copier/scanner, and I got some pictures out of Mom's photo collection when I visited her at Christmas. So, here is Gemini.

[Don]

Thanks WW! Gemini never had any squirrels to chase, as there weren't any in the area. I don't think she would have caught them, as squirrels are very quick. She did like to chase birds the though.

[Don]

Yawning cat! I'm bored, when's my supper?

[Don]

No, it's the same cat, but a little older in that picture. Note the brown and white coat, which was very fluffy and shed a lot of fur.

[Don]

More Gemini.

[corky]

just lovely Don.... tender thougts to Gemini.... 

[Artemis]

i luv dogs ad cats soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much
but i have never raised them ...

[Don]

The I don't want to know you cat.

[Don]

The Fat Cat.