Ivan Rogers works as an animal control officer for Bay County, Florida. Two months ago, someone dropped off a one-year-old pet pig, named Fluffy. Although two people had expressed interest in adopting Fluffy, Officer Rogers decided to adopt Fluffy himself - for dinner. He took the pig home, butchered it and ate it. Rogers acknowledged, in a written statement, he "failed to practice proper procedure"; he didn’t check the adoption log before he took the pig home and "deeply regrets" his misstep.
Hollywood is making a movie about Oscar the cat, who is able to predict the impending death of terminally ill patients in the nursing center where he lives. Oscar, now 5 years old, arrived at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, as a kitten. A year later, staff starting noticing that the tabby would curl up with patients a few hours before their death. Oscar's track record was so impeccable that he became an early warning signal for doctors and nurses. Whenever he began a vigil, staff notified family members and friends to come to the center.
Officials at the Sunset Zoo in Manhattan say a 56-year-old chimpanzee who gave birth might be the oldest chimp in captivity to have a baby. Sunset Zoo officials announced on Monday that the chimp, Suzie, gave birth to a female on Aug. 18.
Zoo officials say the mother and baby are in good health. The zoo's curator, Mark Ryan, says the zoo hasn't found an older chimpanzee at any zoo who's given birth in the United States.
Suzie is the third oldest chimpanzee among zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums.
Zoo director Scott Shoemaker said Suzie had been taken off birth control because of medical concerns and because zoo officials didn't think she would get pregnant at her age. The zoo is conducting a public competition to name the baby.
A pig wrestling competition at a county fair in northern Montana has been canceled after the porkers eluded fair officials trying to round them up for the event.
Fair office manager Shirley Embleton says the wild pigs spend the year on a 10-mile free-range property along the Marias River and about 30 are captured the Friday of the scheduled event.
But this year, fair officials were only able to locate one boar, despite flying the river. The event was postponed until Saturday, but neither the landowner nor fair officials could locate the absent pigs. Embleton says next year, organizers will devise a new plan to locate and capture the animals earlier in the week.
An alleged marijuana grow-op in B.C.'s Kootenays turned out to be a real-life Animal Farm, complete with a security detail of 10 black bears, according to police.
Mounties dismantling an outdoor operation near Christina Lake were surprised to find six large bears hanging out near one plot of marijuana and another four animals near the second.
"The officers were a little nervous to say the least, and cautiously went about making the seizure," RCMP Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said in a press release.
"It became quite evident that the bears were habituated to humans and were very docile, sitting around unconcerned with the officers' presence."
The bears weren't the only animal inhabitants of the farm, though.
"When a search of the house was conducted our officers came upon a pig roaming around the house and disrupted a raccoon from his afternoon nap in one of the bedrooms. The pig was a little frantic at the sight of police, but the raccoon was pretty laidback about the bust and took it all in stride," Moskaluk said.
Police say that conservation officers are now determining what to do about the bears, and euthanasia is a possibility.
"These 10 bears could very well face a not-so-happy outcome if they are deemed too habituated, because of the property owner, who either simply liked having the bears around, or was in fact using them to protect the grow-op," Moskaluk said.
Officers believe that the bears were being fed dog food. Under the B.C. Wildlife Act, anyone caught intentionally feeding dangerous wildlife could be subject to as much as a year in prison or a fine as high as $100,000 on the first conviction.
