Speaking of Wesley Clark, today has been quite a day for odd animal news.
An unusual breed of rats is inflicting damage on Kyrgyzstan's Dzhalal-Abad region. The rats "are killing numerous farm birds, are damaging grape and corn crops, and have destroyed 14 hectares of grain in one of the districts. These rats can climb trees and are destroying apples, pears and other fruit. The rat invasion may also give rise to different epidemics," parliament member Dooronbek Sadyrbayev told Interfax.Posted by Alan at September 23, 2003 12:23 AMvia Interfax.
A bull moose charged at a hunter, clobbering him with his antlers and tossing him through the air two days before the start of the Maine's split, two-week moose hunt. Jim Osgood was tossed through the air when the moose came charging on Saturday, a game warden said. The attack left him him with a broken collarbone and broken cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut.
A kangaroo has been hailed a hero after he helped rescue a farmer knocked unconscious by a tree branch during weekend storms in north-eastern Victoria. The kangaroo kept banging on the door of the family's house in Morwell in Gippsland after discovering the farmer lying unconscious in a paddock... In a story reminiscent of an episode of Skippy, the kangaroo led the farmer's wife to where her husband lay with serious head injuries.
via News Interactive
Some 7,000 mink were released Sunday night from a fur farm in northwest Finland, with no group yet claiming responsibility, officials said Monday. Police said they had no suspects in what fur farmers have called the biggest attack on a Finnish mink farm. Leif Finne, head of the fur farming organization in the region, told Reuters over telephone from Kokkola that the attack was the biggest in Finland. "This is a farm with seven to eight thousand animals and all of the cages had been opened. This was a well planned attack with many perpetrators," Finne said.
via Reuters
Interstate 40, the main east-west highway in Oklahoma, was closed for several hours on Thursday when about 800 baby pigs spilled on to the road after the truck transporting them overturned, police said on Friday. Several pigs were killed when their vented livestock truck overturned just east of Oklahoma City. And the pigs, all of which were under a year old, had little idea what to do with their first taste of freedom. Some of the pigs plunged to their deaths when they jumped off a highway bridge near the wreckage as law enforcement officials were closing in for their capture.
via Reuters