Archive for the 'Animals' Category

Maggie, where she was used by boys who tied her up and used her for target practice.

Here is the story.

Nearly three years ago when British dog behaviorist Kasey Carlin arrived at Heathrow Airport to meet a rescue dog flown in from Lebanon, she thought the airport staff brought her the wrong dog. She knew the mixed-breed dog had been horribly abused and expected to see signs of trauma.

“There’s this little blond dog kicking her feet up high,” Carlin, 27, told TODAY. “The first thing she does when she meets anybody is she runs into them and rubs her body on them like a cat does. My brain couldn’t even process it. She’s just so friendly.”

It’s a remarkable personality trait considering all Maggie endured before her rescue.

“They used a BB gun and used her as target practice. They had tied her up and shot her. She has about 200 pellets from her nose to her chest and some in her shoulders, but they’re all concentrated in her face,” Carlin said. “Then they pulled her eyes out. She had a broken jaw. They started cutting off her ears before somebody intervened. And she was heavily pregnant at the time.” (The puppies Maggie was carrying did not survive.)

She’s now a therapy dog.

I think I’ve told the story of when my son was in Fallujah, he happened upon an outcast dog, took the dog in, medicated the dog, washed him up, and slept with him and took him on patrols.

Be careful around Muslims with your dogs.  They see them as trash to be abused.

In the planned departure of American troops from Kabul, not only did they leave Americans behind, they left dogs as well.  I say planned because this was all carefully orchestrated to turn over weapons to the Taliban and AQ and demoralize American troops.  It covers their tracks, you see, from weapons trafficking, opium trade and other nefarious activities.

Trained dogs used by #US #Forces have also been left at #Kabul airport pic.twitter.com/iSVtbFDqHB

— Sumaira Khan (@sumrkhan1) August 31, 2021

Maybe not.  WiscoDave leaves this comment to the initial report.

It sounded far-fetched from the very beginning.

An Alaskan miner, cornered in the brutal wilderness to stand-off against a hungry brown bear for four days before being rescued by a Coast Guard’s helicopter that happened to be passing by, without a scratch on him.

But that’s what Richard Jessee, a gold hunter who was rescued last week in Nome, Alaska, said happened to him.

The unlikely story gathered attention from the national press and Jessee told proudly about hiding from the animal after it crushed his ATV and tossed his phone in a river.

Now, however, locals are questioning his version of events after going to the cabin where he was rescued but finding no evidence of the days-long battle he described.

Other local miners who were interviewed by The Nome Nugget went to the cabin where Jessee was rescued but found no bear tracks.

They did however find the ATV and attached trailer that Jessee said the bear pushed into the water.

On top of it was a packet of bacon in a cooler that was untouched.

‘There’s just no way it was a bear!’ one anonymous source said.

They think he simply crashed the ATV into the river and waterlogged it, but was too embarrassed to admit it, so made up the story after being rescued.

‘We went out there to the cabin, but we couldn’t find a bear track within 500 feet of the place, but it should have been all torn up, according to his story.

‘There’s no hair, no tracks, no scat, nothing.

‘He made a fool of us. We found out that his story didn’t match what we found.’

The lack of prints were especially odd given that the region had gone through heavy rainfall when the incident supposedly took place, which would leave the ground muddy and perfect for leaving prints.

The owner of the cabin added that he has never had issues with bears near his property.

The group also found Jessee’s ATV without a single claw mark despite Jessee’s claim that the bear attacked the vehicle and pushed it into a waterhole.

I don’t see what’s so embarrassing about telling people you crashed your ATV.  At least it’s honest – if that’s what happened.

Dean Weingarten.

On the evening of 22 September 2005, a hunting guide and his hunter, who was from Ohio, were attacked without provocation, by a grizzly bear in the Shoshone National Forest in the northwest corner of Wyoming. The details of the attack were found in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response to AmmoLand. This correspondent has not found any other published account of this attack.

[ … ]

The guide attempted to draw his .44 magnum revolver, but the pistol hung up on the trigger guard. The bear was very close, so the guide dodged behind an eight-inch birch tree, to avoid the bear. The guide estimated he spent 40 seconds dodging the bear around the tree, until the bear grabbed him by the right side, and threw him to the ground.

With the guide on the ground, the bear worried him for a short period, then left him and ran at the hunter, who was armed with a crossbow. At ten yards, the hunter shot the bear in the chest with his bow. At the impact of the bolt, the bear stood up, and started back toward the guide, then lay down.

The hunter shouted to the guide, “She’s dead, I’m all right!” The guide got up and asked where the bear went. The hunter said “She is right next to you, about 6-8 feet away.” The guide determined the bear was still breathing, so he shot her in the back of he head with the .44 magnum.

This is impressive skills at composure under pressure.  Still, I’d rather have successfully deployed the .44 magnum handgun.

BBC.

The man told them he had been attacked by a bear and hadn’t slept for days after it kept coming back to his camp.

He was found with chest bruising and an injured leg he had taped up.

The helicopter crew had been on their way to fly a team of scientists on a wildlife research mission when they were diverted off-course by weather and spotted the distress message.

According to the New York Times, the man had almost run out of ammunition for his gun and the door of the shack where he was staying had been ripped off.

“At some point, a bear had dragged him down to the river,” Lieutenant Commander Jared Carbajal told the newspaper. “He had a pistol. He said that the bear kept coming back every night and he hadn’t slept in a few days.”

The pilots found the man stumbling out the shack waving a white flag.

The man has not been named but officials said he is in his late 50s or early 60s and had been reported overdue home from the trip by friends.

The US Coast Guard flew him to hospital in order to get medical attention, but say his injuries are not life-threatening.

From Colorado.

“How does any dog survive in the White River National Forest for a month, much less an eight-pound, ten-month-old, little Cockapoo?” the Chaffins wrote.

“There was plenty of water between the creek and the rains. Was she eating grasses, cow pies, an occasional varmint? This is a drainage populated by coyotes, fox, mountain lion and bear — how did she manage to hide? What stories Bella could tell but will never be told.”

To a dog guy like me, this is heartwarming.

But the owners were irresponsible.  Get your dog chipped.

He’s sitting on the front porch the whole time.

News from Montana.

Early Tuesday morning (July 6), a bear attacked and killed a woman while she was camping in western Montana. Local authorities are still searching for the animal.

The attack took place near Ovando, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) northwest of the state capital Helena, according to KGVO News. A statement from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) noted that, prior to the attack, a video camera at a local business caught footage of the animal, which appeared to be a grizzly bear. Grizzlies are common to Ovando and the surrounding Blackfoot Valley, according to the statement.

[ … ]

The bear initially passed by their campsite about a half-hour earlier, waking the campers and prompting them to secure their food before going back to bed.

“The bear basically came back into the campsite. It wandered into a campsite a couple different times,” Powell County Sheriff Gavin Roselles told The Associated Press.

[ … ]

It’s not clear why the bear sought out the campsite or attacked Lokan, but Tuesday’s attack does not represent “normal bear behavior,” Lemon said. “Usually, human and bear conflicts stem from bears protecting food, female bears protecting cubs or surprise encounters that result in the bear feeling threatened and attacking the person. … Going into a campground and attacking a person is not a natural instinct.”

I think he needs to update his psychological profile of bear behavior.  This video was a juvenile bear attack in California.

News from the West.

The vacation rental in South Lake Tahoe had been empty for most of the night; the man and the people with him in Tahoe had all gone out to dinner. While they were out, a large female black bear entered the house through a sliding glass door, looking for food to eat in the kitchen upstairs.

Wildlife officials say the bear weighed as much as 400 to 500 pounds. The man, who has not been identified, told law enforcement officials that the bear charged at him, trying to swiping at him with her arm, huffing and growling. He said that, within a moment, the bear was on top of him. He said the bear had her mouth on his arm, said Capt. Patrick Foy of California Fish and Wildlife’s Law Enforcement Division.

“He had a pistol in his other hand,” Foy said, “and shot [the bear] in the head at point blank range.”

[ … ]

Foy said the shooter did not sustain any injuries that warranted immediate medical treatment.

The bear, however, was bleeding profusely from the gunshot wound in her head and immediately retreated.

Dang it.  Dean Weingarten needs the caliber of the handgun for cataloging purposes.  Why do news reporters write on bear attacks and not give the gun type and caliber?

Note.  He shot the bear at point blank range, and the bear was still able to retreat

Field & Stream.

A backcountry camper in Idaho killed an aggressive bull moose in self-defense in Northern Idaho last week. The bull had charged the man and his dog at a Harrison Lake, a popular hiking and backpacking destination near Sandpoint, Idaho.

The camper, whose identity has not been released, tried to hide behind a tree when the moose charged. But the bull didn’t let up, and he shot it with a .45 caliber handgun at point blank range, stopping the bull in its tracks. Idaho Fish and Game (IDFG) officials responded to the event and located the downed moose before temporarily closing the Harrison Lake trailhead to prevent conflict between hikers and scavenging bears and wolves.

An article on the incident published in The Spokesman-Review notes that there have been male moose sightings at the lake for several years. Last fall, the U.S. Forest Service posted an advisory warning of an “aggressive moose” at the campground. Ben Read, a local hiker who is familiar with a moose in the Harrison Lake area that fits the description of the downed bull, told the Review: “I can’t say there’s never been an issue, because I know people generally run into him around the camp and obviously the two don’t mix,” he said. “However, I’ve never heard of a charging or trampling issue that someone was never able to avoid or get away from.”

Well I’ve heard of it.  Preparing for my trek through the Weminuche Wilderness I talked with someone who cut and cleared trails in that area.

He told me that bears had not been a problem in the area (this surprised me), but that Moose have been known to come into camp, and they were a danger due to stomping.

Chalk another one up for the power of the .45.  Carry self protection in the bush.