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A roomful of government biologists reconstructed the 2,800-mile trek of a grizzly bear named Ethyl. “She had some really bizarre travels,” one said.
A man in Georgia got out of his boat and moved a manatee that appeared to be stuck, headfirst, in the mud. “I know manatees breathe air and thought he would suffocate,” the man explained. Wildlife officials, however, insisted the manatee was just “sunbathing,” but decided not to charge the man with manatee harassment because his intentions were clearly good.
This Week in Wild Animals is a public service for human beings compiled by Jon Mooallem, author of the book Wild Ones.
Workers in California rescued hundreds of salmon that were swimming the wrong way, two Scottish garbagemen found a snake wedged between two cushions of a discarded sofa, and deadly spiders were discovered on the set of a reality show in Australia. “Social networking” was making desert tortoises sick. A lame German tortoise was given a wheelchair made of Legos.
In Kenya, a British tourist named Holly Cheese photographed an armadillo-like animal called a pangolin that folded itself into an “armor-plated ball” to resist an attack by five hungry lions. The lions kept biting into the pangolin, and rolling it all around, but the pangolin remained secure and unharmed. “It was like giving a dog a rubber toy stuffed with biscuits,” observed Holly Cheese.
Scientists determined that the mangled body of a “sea monster” recovered by Russian soldiers on an island near Japan in 2006 was just a beluga whale. Another scientist was investigating the mysterious “sturgeon thunder” made by 200-pound sturgeon underwater. Sturgeon thunder is best described as “crisp crackles; sharp knocks or raps…and squeaky whistles.” It is unclear how sturgeons make sturgeon thunder, exactly.
In Louisiana, a hunter shot and killed an albino deer with a bow and arrow. (“I didn’t even get excited, really,” he said.) In Montana, a “confused hunter” apparently shot an albino horse. In Missouri, a man caught a massive albino catfish. In Japan, a dolphin hunter trapped an albino dolphin, then reportedly sold the animal to an aquarium for close to $400,000. And in England, an albino hedgehog was rescued from someone’s garden and an albino reindeer, named Tinsel, was on the lam after quietly escaping from a Christmas tree farm. A major search was underway; Tinsel is only seven months old. “I was going to train her for sleigh rides,” Tinsel’s owner said.
Colombian veterinarians began sterilizing the feral descendants of Pablo Escobar’s hippopotamuses. A Chinese safari park held a “meet-and-greet” withfive generations of koalas. Monkeys were “warming up and relaxing” at a Japanese monkey hot spring.
Three people reported seeing a mystery monkey on the loose in Tampa. One witness explained, “Lo and behold I look really closely and it’s a monkey. I thought holy crap! This is amazing. I can’t believe this is happening.” But world famous Floridian monkey trapper Vernon Yates, cautioned that the monkey might have “a highly contagious disease.”
A Wisconsin teenager slaughtered at least 10 deer in the middle of the night, then lead police on a car chase before getting stuck in a marsh. Elsewhere in the state, a 75-year-old great-grandmother was hailed for shooting a doe. (“I sit still as a statue,” the old lady said, bragging about her technique. I've had chickadees land on my head.”) But in general, people in Wisconsin were killing about 25 percent fewer deer than usual.
A 40-year-old sea turtle named Izzy returned to the ocean in Australia after 15 months of intensive rehab at a turtle hospital. One turtle helper explained, “Pretty much everything that can go wrong with a turtle had happened to poor Lizzy,”---by which he meant, specifically, being slammed into by a boat and being viciously attacked by a crocodile.
A bald eagle electrocuted itself after apparently swooping through high-tension wires in Indiana. (An expert noted how rare eagle electrocutions are, particularly because “eagles have excellent eyesight.”) An exotic falcon, native to Central America, showed up unexpectedly in Virginia; the bird was said to be “hopping around in the rain.” Federal investigators were called in following a “mysterious crow die-off” in Portland. All the dead crows had corn in their systems; the investigators couldn’t help wondering if the corn was poison corn.
A determined coalition of neighbors in western Quebec was trying to save a loon stranded at the center of a partially frozen lake. “We have some leads on boats and people who know about loons,” a spokeswoman said, updating the press.
An Indian court set Raju the Crying Elephant free. Coyotes were howling in Boca Raton.
