Beasts behaving badly
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Since the start of the new century I have noticed a world-wide trend in animals behaving badly. Here are a few instances.
"Wobbly" mouse leaves woman with bubonic plague
Debra Welsh is feeling better, thank you, considering her brush with bubonic plague.
And she has learned a lesson: do not touch wobbly mice.
"Those little drunken wobbly mice would get into the house and you could get right up to them and pick them up by their tails and drop them in the toilet," she said recently.
"And they would die real fast. We found six of them over the past six months," Ms Walsh said from her hospital bed, where a tube trickled antibiotics into her body to fight the plague. Ms Welsh, 43, who lives just north of Albuquerque, was confirmed as the first human plague case of the year in New Mexico.
"She's in fine condition," said David Keller, chief of the infectious disease epidemiology programme run by the state's health department.
Dr Keller said the department was trying to find out how Ms Welsh got the plague, but she had an idea. She found the last wobbly mouse about Christmas.
"I actually saw it and it ran behind a cabinet. Then one of the dogs was scratching at something, and the mouse had died at the foot of the pedestal table," she said.
Ms Welsh used a paper towel to pick up the mouse and tossed it in the garbage, then washed her hands with antibacterial soap.
She became ill in January.
"I noticed that I had a swollen lymph node, then it quickly went downhill from there. The chills. Lower back pain like you can get with the flu," she said.
She went to a doctor, who immediately ordered her admitted to hospital.
Plague is typically a summer disease, but can strike year-round. The last plague death in the state was in 1994 - an 8-year-old boy.
Bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe between 1346 and 1351, wiping out nearly one-third of the population. It is a bacterial disease, generally transmitted to humans from the bites of fleas infected by dead or dying rodents. Most people become ill within seven days of exposure.
Symptoms include chills and fever, swollen lymph nodes, and sometimes headache, vomiting and diarrhoea. - AP
A ram on the ram-page and a new high-jump record
It started with a castrated Havelock North, a quiet village in rural New Zealand, ram outsprinting a Hastings policewoman on her daily jog along a country lane.
It ended less than an hour later with her neighbour's house looking like Jack-the-Ripper's place with blood-smeared walls, smashed windows and all the hallmarks of murder most foul.
In between was the bizarre case of the wether that broke the high-jump record when he smashed through a ranchslider window and charged around inside, causing $3000 damage to a Tukituki valley house belonging to Hastings designer and builder Andy Bell.
He told the "baalieve it or not" story recently. It went like this:
His Raratu Rd neighbour, the policewoman, was coming back from her jog when a couple of sheep grazing the grass alongside the road ran ahead of her and up the Bells' driveway. Thinking the sheep belonged to another neighbour, she telephoned to say that the sheep were in the Bells' place.
The policewoman and neighbour, doing the country neighbourly thing, went to round them up. But the sheep, which in fact belonged to nearby Morea Farm, were not having a baa of it - one of them in particular. This sheep, according to Mr Bell, was a hurdles champion who did not like the reflection in the ranchslider of the fellow looking back at him.
Sailing nearly a metre into the air he burst through the four-millimetre thick glass cutting his nose.
By the time the ranchslider was unlocked, the house looked like a murder scene, Mr Bell said. "I was supposed to be going hunting but I told my mate our house had been broken and entered by a sheep."
There was blood sprayed through the family room, the snug and the master bedroom. There, the sheep failed to find the en-suite and dropped some pellets while checking himself out in the mirror.
An insurance company is looking for someone to pay a $3000 clean-up account.
And the sheep? "Last seen running down the road heading for another house, but looking as good as gold."
The following one was contributed by Asteroid Lil
Startled elephant tramples woman to death
This happened recently in west central Florida.
Theresa Roberts, a member of a long-established circus
family, was walking past a tree, unaware that an elephant was
tethered to that tree. The 18-year-old elephant, who has been
with the circus for 15 years, startled by the woman, threw
Theresa to the ground with its trunk and trampled her to death.
The Sarasota area on the Gulf coast of Florida has been a
summer retreat for circus personnel and their chattels for
over a century. The community of Gibsonton, for example,
is a home to sideshow performers, and provides refuge for
siamese twins, tattooed geeks, bearded ladies and other
oddities. So a rural trailer compound with elephants in the
back garden is not an eyebrow raiser. The Wildlife and
Fisheries Commission say that the family has all the proper
paperwork for keeping an elephant on the premises.
The mental health of the murderer may, however, raise
other issues. Shots taken from a helicopter spotted the elephant,
named Kenya, standing free in a paddock, among oak trees.
As she ate, her head was bobbing continually, a nervous tic.
Was she traumatized by the trampling? More likely she was
displaying captivity neurosis, not unlike the way some
horses weave their heads back and forth or chained dogs
pace. The family say they will observe the animal carefully
to see whether Kenya engages in any further violence, and
then decide what to do.
As tragic as the event is, the question remains, how did Theresa Roberts fail to notice the elephant?
Another one from Loonytunes
Prodigal pigeon flies home after seven years
A homing pigeon has returned to its loft in Mosgiel, near Dunedin, NZ, almost seven years after it was lost.
Emmet Dee, 75, said he was sitting in his backyard on December 29 when he saw a bird fly overhead.
"When it came across, I had no birds out and I thought 'what the hell is this?' Then it came back, and I knew her right away."
Bird 502 is a grey-pied hen. Its distinctive markings made it easily recognisable. Mr Dee checked his records and found he had lost the bird on March 13, 1993, during a 252-kilometre race from Ashburton.
The bird was only five or six months old when it was lost, and Mr Dee said having a bird that young return after such a long time was highly unusual.
The bird was in good condition and was quite settled when it returned. That suggested it had stayed some time in another fancier's loft, and one in Gore had reported it staying there a month or so last year.
Mr Dee has welcomed the bird back to his loft of 50 birds.
"I think it has earned the right to a perch." - NZPA
Foul play in case of ferret v constable
Brisbane, Australia
A Brisbane Australia, policeman is nursing a painful injury after being bitten on the penis by a ferret during a bizarre arrest recently.
The ferret was being driven to a wildlife refuge by a young constable when it bit him on the genitals, police said. It had escaped from a cardboard box on the back seat and climbed on to the officer's lap before sinking its teeth into his groin.
The incident almost caused a traffic accident in inner city Brisbane as the startled officer tried to restrain the animal and pulled on the handbrake, sending the car into a spin.
He was forced to use his baton to knock the ferret down after chasing it around the car, where it defecated on the seats and grew more vicious.
Describing the animal as an "illegal alien", police spokesman Brian Swift said it was an unfortunate incident for the officer.
"The ferret got itself out of the box and latched itself to a place of undesirable intent on the police officer's person in the front seat," Mr Swift said. "It caused him a certain amount of reaction and he is getting a tot of sympathy, but also a lot of ribbing from his mates at this stage."
The half-grown male ferret was confiscated from its owner in Fortitude Valley Mall, in Brisbane, just minutes earlier.
The owner was charged with keeping prohibited wildlife without a permit. The ferret, since dubbed "Richard", is now on death row in a wildlife hospital.
The fate of Richard was placed in the hands of the courts, but it is likely to face death by lethal injection shortly. - AAP
