Summer animals

More active than America's politicians

IT'S been a busy summer so far for our friends in the American animal kingdom. A Labrador retriever called Charlie drove his owner's Chevy into the river. Charlie escaped, and his owner was not too mad. According to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, an elderly capuchin monkey has wandered away from her Missouri home. Her owners expect that she will be able to forage for food, as she recently captured and ate a bumblebee for a snack. But they are worried because she usually does not wander far from her monkey house. Animal-control officers are also concerned. The last time the monkey ran away, she was mistaken for a gorilla and scared some neighborhood dogs. Elwood, an ugly dog from New Jersey, has been named the World's Ugliest Dog. He sure is ugly (see photo).

In sadder news, just look at what has happened to this bear:

HELEN, Ga., June 23 (AP) — When a 300-pound black bear raided a family’s campsite, the father saved his sons from harm by throwing a log at it, killing it with a single blow.

The bear was trying to steal the family's cooler. To be fair to the bear, he was apparently trying for a peaceful pinch. One of the sons provoked an attack by throwing a shovel at the bear. Who takes a shovel on a camping trip?

Another sad story concerns a Bactrian camel who lived in the Alaska Zoo:

Zoo director Pat Lampi said that on the morning of May 10, an employee fed and walked Knobby. He seemed fine.
About an hour later, a visitor found the animal dead...
"Everybody would like definite answers, but there aren't any," said the zoo director.

Knobby was originally from Minnesota and traveled to Alaska via FedEx.

Animals are not taking all the hits. In Florida a woman was knocked out by a flying fish and had to go to the hospital. As bad as that sounds, she escaped with relatively little injury compared to another woman mentioned in the article:

In April, a leaping sturgeon severely injured a 50-year-old woman from St. Petersburg who was riding a personal watercraft on the Suwannee River. She suffered a ruptured spleen and had three fingers reattached by surgeons, but she lost her left pinkie finger and a tooth.

Here's what I would do if attacked by a flying fish:

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