Goings-on in the animal world

by David Grand
June 2, 2005

Animals never cease to amaze me with their behavior and antics, albeit nowhere near as much as the human specie does. Some recent examples:

• Black bear takes refreshing deep in LA pool. And she was able to get in a few laps before being tranquilized by wildlife officials and returned to the wild. Though she should be grateful she doesn't live in Maryland, where she could end up as a bear rug in Garrett County.
• Polar Bear with bad breath gets surgery. A 16-year-old bear has undergone a procedure that veterinarians at the Seneca Park Zoo in NY are hoping will eliminate the foul odor emitting from his mouth, after extracting an infected tooth with a hammer and chisel. In hindsight, if they'd cleaned his teeth regularly, it might've been saved.
•  Hostile grackles attack people in Houston. Like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's horror movie "The Birds," black grackles (with 2-foot wingspans) launched kamikaze-like attacks on people's heads, hair and backs, with bald men suffering the worst cuts. It appears they did so to protect their offspring, after a young grackle had fallen out of its nest and adult birds attacked people who got too close.
• Exploding toads puzzle German scientists. Resembling a science-fiction movie, more than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond, with scientists unable to find a virus or bacteria that would've caused them to swell up like balloons and pop. Mark Twain, who wrote "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," would roll over in his grave laughing at that.
• Heroic doggie. A dog from Missouri has won the National Hero Dog award (for non-trained rescue dogs), for alerting her owner that her husband was pinned underneath a tractor. For her heroic act, she was treated to an airplane flight to LA for the award ceremony, got to sit in the cabin instead of being stowed in cargo and stayed at a beachside hotel. But I'm sure she appreciated the "goodie bag" filled with treats more than the plaque she got.
• Interpreting dogs barks from cell phones. A South Korean mobile phone company will begin offering a service that will enable dog owners to know whether their pets are happy or sad. The service will record the dog's bark, and the owner will then receive text messages telling them how their pet is feeling. I wouldn't have any trouble interpreting my dogs barks: Get home and feed us and then let us out, or we'll pee on the carpet.
• Austria lawmaker wants to ID doggie pooh. A local Vienna politician wants to use DNA technology to track down owners of dogs that leave their mess on streets and sidewalks. To accomplish it, he wants the city to register all dog's DNA, so the droppings can be tested, and with the owners of the guilty dogs then being required to pay for the tests and fined up to $284. Sounds like a s----y idea to me as well as unworkable, what with 50,000 registered dogs in that city, and an unknown number of owned but unregistered dogs, not to mention the impossible task of collecting DNA samples from stray dogs, who drop a load whenever and wherever they please.
• Line for the toilet is about to get longer. At least in Australia, where a woman fed up with the mess created by kitty litter and inspired by the cat "Mr. Jinks" in the Hollywood film "Meet the Fockers" has invented a toilet training system for cats called the "Litter-Kwitter." She's taught her cat to use the toilet by a three-step process (which I won't bother to describe here). But unlike Mr. Jinks, teaching it to flush the toilet before her marketing the Litter-Kwitter could be a lot harder.