Author: LATimes

For the newest residents of the Bronx Zoo, New York is a long way from home. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the zoo, recently took in four bear cubs — three brown bears, all siblings, and one grizzly — whose mothers were killed by humans in Alaska and Montana.

The three brown bear cubs (two of them are shown above) were rescued by Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials and housed temporarily at a bear rescue facility in the Alaskan town of Sitka. (In honor of their short-term home, one of the cubs, a female, was given the name Sitka. The other cubs, both males, are named Kootz and Denali.) The grizzly cub, a male, was rescued in Montana and is named Glacier after his birthplace, Glacier National Park.

All four are housed together and are "healthy and adjusting well to their new surroundings," according to zoo director Jim Breheny.

— Lindsay Barnett

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Photo credit: Julie Larsen Maher / Associated Press

BILLINGS, Mont. — A new tally of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies shows the population held steady across the region in 2009, ending more than a decade of expansion by the predators but also underscoring their resilience in the face of new hunting seasons in Montana and Idaho.

Biologists said the region’s total wolf population has remained stable and will be similar to 2008’s minimum of 1,650 wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

The number of breeding packs increased slightly, from 95 to 111. That’s despite more than 500 wolves killed last year, primarily by hunters and government wildlife agents responding to livestock attacks.

If the preliminary figures hold, it could bolster the federal government’s assertion that wolves are doing fine since losing Endangered Species Act protections last year.

The exception is Wyoming, where state law is considered hostile to the species’ survival and federal protections remain in force. The state has challenged the decision to keep wolves under federal protection in Wyoming, and a federal court hearing in that case is set for Friday in Cheyenne.

The latest population data was released Thursday in court documents filed by Montana wildlife officials in a separate case brought by environmentalists. They are seeking to overturn the loss of protections for wolves in Montana and Idaho.

The environmentalists suggest current population figures are not a fair indicator of the animal’s long-term survival, because the states could drive down their numbers over time with no ramifications.

The 2009 results show Montana’s wolf population dipped slightly, from 497 in 2008 to 493. In comparison, Wyoming’s population grew from 302 to at least 319.

A precise estimate for Idaho was not made available, but the state said it expects a figure "comparable" to 2008’s population of 846 wolves. Idaho reported its number of breeding packs of wolves increased from 39 in 2008 to 50 last year.

"This puts a few things to rest, first and foremost that hunting was going to hurt the population," said Montana’s lead gray wolf biologist, Carolyn Sime.

Sime added that by maintaining the status quo for wolves in Montana, wildlife officials demonstrated hunting is an effective way to manage the population and keep it in check.

Ranchers across the Northern Rockies have complained in recent years that the wolf population had grown out of control, causing widespread harm to their cattle and sheep herds.

Some have recommended bringing back poisoning as a way to drastically reduce the population. Last used in the early 1900s, poison helped wipe out wolves across most of the Lower 48 states by the 1930s.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that a handful of wolves from Canada began to take up residence in northern Montana. Their numbers exploded following the reintroduction of 66 wolves by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service into central Idaho and Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park.

Until 2009, the population had been on a sharp upward trend, at times increasing 30 percent in a single year. Whether it starts to dip as hunting continues remains to be seen.

Under pressure from the ranching industry, Montana wildlife officials already have floated a possible hunting quota increase for the 2010 season. Last year’s quota was 75 wolves.

Idaho’s season was recently extended to give hunters more time to fill its quota of 220.

Whether future hunts can occur hinges on U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, who is hearing the environmentalists’ suit. Molloy’s ruling is not expected for several months.

— Associated Press

Photo: A gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park in 2003. Credit: William Campbell / Associated Press

Ric O’Barry has devoted nearly 40 years to keeping marine mammals out of captivity. Animal lovers will recognize O’Barry from last year’s much-heralded documentary "The Cove," which tells the story of an annual Japanese event at which dolphins are systematically slaughtered. Recently, he returned to Japan; we’re honored that he’s chosen to share his observations with Unleashed.

I’ve been here in Taiji, the small coastal town in Japan with the big secret, since last week. I wanted to get a good idea of what is happening in the Cove, made infamous by the award-winning documentary "The Cove" (now out on DVD). It is imperative that I and my colleagues from Save Japan Dolphins Coalition are here on the ground regularly to judge what is happening and to document the truth that the Taiji dolphin-killers and the Japanese government want to hide from the Japanese people and the world.

Originally, the Taiji dolphin-killers were not catching any bottlenose dolphins for meat, and in September actually released around 100 they had caught after choosing 10 to 15 for captivity. But obviously, this was largely a PR effort on the part of the fishermen to deny the truth shown in the film. They could say they were not killing "Flipper," but they are butchering many of his dolphin cousins — as many as they can get.

And the dolphin-killers are angry, too. They have physically assaulted several of us, although fortunately there have been no injuries. I was assaulted recently, but I got the assault on video. I brought a copy to the police station and filed a complaint against the dolphin killers. They will not intimidate me or our Save Japan Dolphins team that is here on site.

As depicted in "The Cove," Japan issues 23,000 permits annually to slaughter dolphins. Here in Taiji, boats go out to sea and herd dolphin pods into a local cove, where nets are arrayed across the entrance to keep them captive. The dolphin-killers work with aquariums from all over the world to pick out the best “show quality” dolphins for captivity. The rest are killed in the most horrible way imaginable, caught on hidden cameras in the film. Roughly two to three thousand dolphins are killed here during the dolphin-hunting season, which runs from September to March.

Sadly, in the cove itself, I have found it is business as usual, despite the worldwide publicity against the dolphin slaughter. On a recent Sunday, several false killer whales (a large dolphin) were captured and a few were taken by boat around the corner of the bay to the notorious Taiji Whale Museum’s floating holding cages on the other side. These whales will be trained and then sold for extremely high prices (as much as $150,000 US dollars each or more) to other aquariums for their captive dolphin shows. The rest of the pod, their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers, would be slaughtered the next day at dawn. There were also Risso’s dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins in the cove as well, and they died too. My son Lincoln and I were on hand to record it. My son and I are working on a new TV project, so we will have a way to show the world the reality here in Taiji.

We will continue to show our presence here, and we will continue to record the brutal dolphin slaughters. By showing "The Cove" around Japan, we will spread the truth that the government has tried so long to cover up.

One of my goals is to change some hearts and minds here in Taiji. It seems to me that this is ground zero for the fight to change the hearts and minds of all Japan. We know there are people here in town who object to the dolphin slaughter, and recently, I had a chance to meet them. We have a Japanese version of "The Cove" DVD with us, and we plan to screen it discreetly for as many local people as we can find who want to know the truth. DVD copies of "The Cove" will also be given to decision-makers in the Japanese government.

"The Cove" was recently honored as Best Documentary by the Critics Choice Awards. It is on the short list of documentaries up for an Oscar in March.

I want to thank all our supporters for their efforts to contact President Obama and other opinion leaders throughout the world, to contact the Japanese Embassies, and to give donations to our cause to help us with our expenses here in Japan. Your support means a lot to me and the Save Japan Dolphins Coalition.

For further information about the Campaign to Save Japan Dolphins and to take action, go to SaveJapanDolphins.org.

— Ric O’Barry

Ric O’Barry has worked with dolphins for more than 45 years — the first 10 of them capturing and training dolphins, including the five dolphins that played the role of Flipper in the popular TV series of the same name.  After Kathy, the dolphin who played Flipper most of the time, died in his arms, O’Barry decided to devote his life to freeing captive dolphins.  On the first Earth Day in 1970, he founded the Dolphin Project, and he has spent the past 38 years working against the captive dolphin industry.  In 1991, O’Barry received the Environmental Achievement Award, presented by the United States Committee for the United Nations Environmental Program (US/UNEP).  He is a Fellow National in The Explorers Club and has served as the marine mammal specialist for Earth Island Institute and director of Save Japan Dolphins since 2007. He is the author of two books, "Behind the Dolphin Smile" and "To Free A Dolphin."

Photos: Oceanic Preservation Society

NEW YORK — New York City’s transit agency is investigating a video posted online that shows a man kissing and snuggling a live chicken aboard a subway.

The subway rider who took the video said Thursday that it was one of those New York moments she felt compelled to record.

Kylie Kaiser, a 27-year-old architect from Brooklyn, and two friends boarded the uptown No. 6 train at the 33rd Street station at around 7 p.m. Tuesday.

"He was on his back, rolling from side to side, kissing, hugging and lifting the chicken up in the air," she said.

She said the man was oblivious to everything around him and didn’t respond to onlookers.

"It was definitely an only-in-New-York situation," said Kaiser, who moved to the city about three years ago from Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Kaiser said the man looked like he was homeless because he had a shopping cart next to him full of cans and was wearing a shirt with an MTA patch that "looked like he had found it somewhere."

NYC Transit spokesman Charles Seaton said no passengers reported the incident. He said only service animals and those in containers are permitted in the subway system.

Kaiser took the video and photos with her BlackBerry and posted them on her blog. The post was picked up by Gothamist, a local blog network, and others.

"I knew it would be a story people would want to hear," she said.

— Associated Press

Vernon the mystery dog is mysterious no longer: The German shepherd mix, whose dramatic rescue last week from the flooded L.A. River was carried live on many TV news stations, has been reclaimed by his owner.

The dog had been taken to the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority shelter in Downey after his rescue, and animal control officers had been unable to locate his owner because he wasn’t wearing ID tags and hadn’t been microchipped. Officers called him Vernon after the city in which he was rescued.

Turns out, Vernon’s name is really Spikey, and he’s owned by an elderly woman who lives in Maywood. According to the family friend who went to claim him Tuesday, the dog’s owner speaks only Spanish and, since the rescue didn’t receive as much attention on Spanish-language TV, she wasn’t aware that her dog had become a media sensation until a friend alerted her several days later.

Animal control officers visited Spikey’s home and talked with both his owner and some of her neighbors. They discovered that the woman’s other dog, a yellow Labrador retriever named Polo, had been found wandering on the street the day after Spikey was rescued from the river.

Polo was impounded by animal control but will be released back to the owner after her backyard is cleaned up, our sister blog L.A. Now reports. As for how the dogs came to be wandering loose in the first place, the woman suspects that her grandchildren inadvertently left a gate open.

When a familiar person arrived at the SEAACA shelter, "Vernon just went crazy, his tail flapping," the organization’s director of operations, Aaron Reyes, told L.A. Now. "We see it all the time: Gosh, he really knows this guy."

Because Spikey bit the firefighter who pulled him from the river, he will remain under quarantine until next Tuesday. But the firefighter, Joe St. Georges, says he has no hard feelings toward the dog. "He’s cold, he’s wet, he’s scared, and then here’s this stranger jumping on his back for all intents and purposes, and he did what dogs do," he told the Associated Press after his release from County USC Medical Center, where he was taken for treatment for a bite wound to his thumb.

— Lindsay Barnett

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Senior animal care technician Stephanie Webster takes care of Vernon/Spikey in his quarantine cage at SEAACA on Jan. 25.  Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

INDIANAPOLIS — A House committee unanimously endorsed a bill Wednesday that would require retail pet stores to give buyers information about a pet’s background and medical history before selling a dog or cat.

Supporters said the legislation was critical to protect consumers looking for a family pet. The bill would require pet stores to put information about the dog or cat on its cage in the store — including the animal’s medical history, the name of the breeder and any congenital disorders. Customers could get other information, including the address and size of the breeding operation, upon request or when they buy a dog or cat.

Sarah Hayes, president of the Indiana Alliance of Animal Control and Welfare Organizations, said pet stores often spin the truth about where they get their dogs. Instead of saying animals come from large-scale breeding operations, a pet store may tell a customer that the dog simply came from a "local" breeder, she said.

"Local can be a puppy mill also," she said. "If pet stores are telling the truth that their animals do not come from puppy mills, they should have nothing to hide and shouldn’t have a problem with simply posting this information."

Supporters said they’ve heard from many people who bought dogs and cats at pet stores and were then stuck with huge vet bills — or faced with euthanizing the animal — when serious health problems were found.

But opponents — including Indiana pet stores — said the rules were unfair and would be a hardship on their businesses. Craig Curry, special projects manager for Uncle Bill’s Pet Centers, said the company’s five stores in Indiana already gave pet information to customers when they bought a dog or cat. And the stores guaranteed the health of the animals, he said.

But Curry said it wasn’t a good idea to release information about breeders before a customer bought a dog or cat because some animal-rights extremists could use that information to harass or hurt breeders.

"We are so terrified that we are going to get people hurt," Curry said.

Other opponents said giving the name of the breeder could provide a shortcut for the customer, who could then go to the breeder to buy a dog rather than purchase from the pet store.

The original proposal included a $25 fee for every dog and cat sold at a pet store, but that provision was removed after stores called it a tax that would cut into their profits and hurt business.

The bill also would increase the penalty for attending a dog fight in Indiana from a misdemeanor to a felony.

The House Courts and Criminal Code Committee voted 11-0 for the bill, which now moves to the full House for consideration.

— Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: A puppy in a cage at a pet store in California. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

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SHEBOYGAN FALLS, Wis. — A year after a "morbidly obese" dog froze to a Wisconsin sidewalk, the border collie mix has lost 40 pounds and is slowly returning to an active lifestyle. Jiffy is still portly, but his owner said he’s finally moving "like a regular dog." The dog weighed about 120 pounds when he froze to the sidewalk in December 2008 in single-digit temperatures. His dense layers of fat probably helped him survive.

Afterward a court ordered Jiffy’s owner to give him up.

Patty and Peter Geise of Sheboygan Falls said that when they adopted Jiffy, he could barely step over a 4-inch-high pipe. Even then he had to rest afterward.

The Sheboygan Press reported that now he walks a mile at a normal pace.

Patty Geise said it’s rewarding to see how much Jiffy has improved.

— Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

If there’s one organization that loves animatronic technology more than Disney, it’s definitely People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The controversial animal-rights group — which just a few months back asked the University of Georgia to replace its recently deceased bulldog mascot with a robotic one over concerns for a real dog’s welfare — is at it again. This time around, PETA’s target is a seemingly innocuous band of revelers: The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.

Yup — PETA wants to take Punxsutawney Phil away from Gobbler’s Knob and give the little guy a dignified retirement at an animal sanctuary. In his place, you guessed it: A robot groundhog.

Gemma Vaughan, PETA’s animals in entertainment specialist, fired off a letter to groundhog club president William Deeley this week, asking for his promise that the group will forgo the use of real rodents in future Groundhog Day celebrations. Little Phil, Vaughan wrote, is a pretty unhappy fellow, "forced to be on display year round at the local library and is denied the ability to prepare for and enter yearly hibernation." Groundhogs are typically shy creatures, Vaughan goes on to explain, and they can become easily upset when confronted by throngs of people, loud noises and camera flashes. 

Interestingly, Phil made several attempts to escape his home at the Punxsutawney Library last year, perhaps yearning for the greener pastures of rodent retirement. His fellow prognosticating groundhog, a resident of the Staten Island Zoo named Charles G. Hogg ("Staten Island Chuck" to his friends), seemed similarly displeased with his career as a weatherman when he bit New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg during a 2009 Groundhog Day celebration. (Bloomberg wasn’t badly injured, but he did appear to bear Chuck some ill will, referring to him at a news conference later as a "terrorist rodent that might very well have been trained by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.")

So maybe PETA’s onto something when it suggests that Phil isn’t exactly living the high life?  Deeley scoffs at that notion; he told the Associated Press that the famous groundhog is "being treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania" and, further, is inspected every year by the state’s agriculture department.

According to PETA executive vice president Tracy Reiman, an animatronic Phil "would attract new and curious tourists" to Punxsutawney’s annual event. We’re not sure about all that, but we’d like to take this opportunity to propose an alternate plan: Phil (who, if you believe his press, has been making predictions for more than 120 years and could probably use a rest) can retire to a sanctuary and simply alert his fans to the coming of spring via text message. 

He’s planning on doing that anyway, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club announced this year. And a text-messaging groundhog, strange as it may seem, is still far preferable to a creepy, robotic one. Are we right, or are we right?

RELATED:

No money for a bronze Col. Sanders statue? No problem, says PETA: Make it out of chicken feces

PETA to Pope Benedict XVI: Veganize the Vatican

— Lindsay Barnett

Keep track of all the latest PETA gossip: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Handler John Griffiths holds Phil after removing him from his stump at Gobbler’s Knob on Groundhog Day 2009.  Credit: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press

New York Gov. David Paterson is taking on the 200-year-old tradition of horse-drawn carriage rides in Manhattan’s Central Park, saying the horses need to be treated better or the popular tourist rides should be banned.

His comment drew a top "purr" in the "Purrs & Grrs" column of Animal Times, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals magazine. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office gave it more of a growl, saying reforms in the works for more than a year could soon address long-standing concerns about the familiar attraction.

Marissa Shorenstein, a Paterson spokeswoman, says the horses have often suffered under difficult work and stable conditions. She notes that although the carriages are important to tourism and the "fabric of New York City’s culture," horses must be treated well.

— Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Horse-drawn carriages roll through New York’s Central Park on Wednesday.  Credit: Mary Altaffer / Associated Press

Singapore’s Jurong Bird Park is the world’s largest exhibit of its kind, home to about 8,000 birds from 600 distinct species. No doubt many of those birds are fancier and more exotic than this humble young barn owl, but we still think it’s pretty cute (even if it isn’t terribly glamorous).

Barn owls are the world’s most widely distributed owl species; they’re found on every continent except Antarctica and can live in just about every type of landscape, save deserts and polar regions.

RELATED:

The Year in Cute: 2009’s 20 most adorable animals

Great horned owl makes Home Depot a home

— Lindsay Barnett

Photo: How Hwee Young / European Pressphoto Agency

Former Los Angeles County assistant fire chief Glynn Johnson, 55, was found guilty of felony animal cruelty and using a deadly weapon in Riverside County Superior Court today in the 2008 beating of his neighbor’s puppy.

The animal, a 6-month-old German shepherd mix named Karley, sustained injuries so severe that she had to be euthanized after the beating. Johnson hit her repeatedly with a 12-pound rock in what he described as an act of self-defense; according to his version of events, Karley viciously attacked him before the beating occurred. Our colleagues at KTLA report on the defense’s strategy:

During his opening statements last Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney Will Robinson said [Johnson] put dog feces in his neighbors’ mailbox with a letter warning them to keep their dogs off his property.

The Tooles are the "neighbors from hell" who routinely take in stray animals and then don’t take care of them, giving them the run of the community, defense attorneys argued. And the Tooles tried to domesticate a stray named Karley, unsuccessfully, the defense added.

Prosecutors disputed that account, saying that Johnson’s attack on the dog was unprovoked.  A sentencing is scheduled for March 8; Johnson could face up to four years in prison.

— Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Animal rights activists demonstrate outside the Riverside County Courthouse in December 2008, in response to the beating of Karley. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Vernon, the lucky dog rescued from the raging L.A. River last week, continues to captivate.  The shepherd-type dog remains at the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority shelter in Downey today, where he’s being monitored for signs of rabies after biting his rescuer, Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter Joe St. Georges. 

St. Georges, who told reporters last week that he bore no ill will toward the dog for biting him, suffered a fractured thumb and lost a fingernail during the daring rescue that was broadcast live on Friday.  "He’s cold, he’s wet, he’s scared, and then here’s this stranger jumping on his back for all intents and purposes, and he did what dogs do," he told the Associated Press after his release from County USC Medical Center.

Since Vernon was not microchipped and wasn’t wearing an ID tag, animal control officers have been unable to locate his owner. If he hasn’t been reclaimed by the end of the 10-day quarantine period, he’ll be placed up for adoption at SEAACA.  Shelter staff already have "a mile-long list of people who want him," Aaron Reyes, SEAACA’s director of operations, told the Associated Press. 

In the meantime, the dog, who’s believed to be about 4 years old, is receiving excellent care and seems far more relaxed than he did during his harrowing experience in the river. "He’s really lovable," animal control officer Justin Guzman told our sister blog, L.A. Now. "He’s appreciating all the attention he’s getting here."

Meanwhile, the LAFD is defending itself from some who argue that its valuable resources were wasted by rescuing a dog.  Although at least 50 firefighters responded to the scene, the action was necessary, St. Georges said, in part because the agency worried that a civilian would attempt to rescue the dog if the fire department didn’t. And the rescue would have been even more dangerous for an untrained person, who could easily have been injured far more severely than St. Georges was. 

"You’re not going to please everybody. There’s always 10 percent, they either don’t like animals or think we are wasting taxpayer money," Capt. Steve Ruda told the Associated Press.

— Lindsay Barnett

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Vernon before he was rescued by St. Georges on Jan. 22.  Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

We can’t decide which we find more endearing: The look of sheer relaxation on Zipper the cat’s face, or the expression of resignation on the face of her canine "couch." Submitter DrDoLittleAsPossible (bonus points for that chuckle-inducing name) shares this photo that, we suspect, speaks volumes about the relationship between these two pets. (This dog might even rival a certain duckling babysitter in the patience department.)

If you think your animal photo should be our reader photo of the day, show us! Just head to the Pets & Animals category of Your Scene, The Times’ photo-sharing site, and select the appropriate album (for instance, we found DrDoLittleAsPossible’s photo in the Four-Legged Friends album). Once you’ve chosen your album, just click the "submit" link at the top of the page, pick your photo (.jpg format) and include a caption that tells us a little about your subject matter. It’s as simple as that!

— Lindsay Barnett

Photo: DrDoLittleAsPossible/ Your Scene

A Connecticut zoo says an Andean condor believed to be the oldest one living in captivity has died at nearly 80 years old.

Thaao (TAY’-oh) arrived at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport in 1993 after living most of his life at the Pittsburgh Zoo. He was the only endangered animal at the zoo to be born in the wild.

A necropsy proved inconclusive.

The zoo says an Andean condor lives to about 50. The zoo believes Thaao was one of the original animals to have been tracked using a breed registry, a list of the known individual animals in a breed.

Biologists estimate that there are only a few thousand Andean condors in the wild.

Zoo director Gregg Dancho says Thaao was an ambassador for conservation and the zoo.

— Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Thaao in a 2009 photo. Credit: Shannon Calvert / Associated Press

— Not an April Fool’s Day joke, we swear: The BBC has announced that it will air the first-ever movie shot entirely by chimpanzees this week. Primatologist Betsy Herrelko came up with the idea to turn apes into mini-Tarantinos; she spent a year and a half teaching 11 chimps from the Edinburgh Zoo how to use a specially-constructed piece of equipment called the Chimpcam (above). They used the Chimpcam to film what they saw in their enclosure; they were also given a video touch screen, with which they could select videos to watch. (The videos, if you’re wondering, included footage of the room where their food is prepared at the zoo, as well as footage of their enclosure.) Chimps making movies — that’s all well and good, but can they write "Hamlet"?  (BBC)

— A team of Italian scientists hopes to use modern technology to recreate an extinct species called the auroch, which resembled a giant cow weighing more than 2,000 pounds and standing more than 6 feet high at the withers. "We were able to [analyze] auroch DNA from preserved bone material and create a rough map of its genome that should allow us to breed animals nearly identical to aurochs," said Donato Matassino, the group’s leader, who we’re just going to assume has never seen "Jurassic Park." Aurochs were declared extinct in the 1600s, although German zoologists Heinz and Lutz Heck, working with the support of the Nazi regime, managed to create a smaller version of the huge bovines in the years leading up to World War II.  (Telegraph)

— Everyone’s favorite animal-loving Golden Girl, Betty White, received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild this past weekend. The Times’ chief celebrity-watchers, Christie D’Zurilla and Amy Kaufman, report that the actress (who’s worked extensively on behalf of the L.A. Zoo and the Morris Animal Foundation, among other animal-centric causes) showed up at the SAG Awards in a dress with a provocatively high slit because, as she put it, "You’ve gotta use everything you possibly can." Spoken more like a Blanche than a Rose, don’t you think? (Ministry of Gossip)

— A former employee of a Seacaucus, N.J., PetSmart store says it was wrong of the company to fire him for bringing his dog to work. Eric Favetta, 31, was tapped to work an overnight shift; rather than leave his Belgian Malinois home alone, he brought the dog along with him. Favetta left the dog, Gizmo, at PetSmart’s doggie day care facility. Two weeks later, he was fired for "theft of service," since he didn’t pay for boarding while Gizmo was in the store. "In our eyes, our services business is huge, with our grooming and training and care. Those are viewed as sale items the same way items on the shelf are," PetSmart spokeswoman Jessica White said. "To use the facilities and not pay for it — it falls under the same lines." Later, the company offered Favetta his job back; he decided to accept another position instead. Hmmm, wonder why? (Newark Star-Ledger)

— When the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department responded to a report of vandalism at a Coachella strip club earlier this month, the last thing (well, one of the last things) deputies expected was to learn that the culprit was a wayfaring goat. But that’s just what they discovered when they checked the club’s surveillance video, which showed the animal staring at its own reflection in two glass entry doors for a period of several hours before eventually ramming the doors repeatedly, causing $2,000 worth of damage. Asked for comment, area goat farmer Rachel Ledoux (whose own goats were not involved in the incident) explained that the animals typically only have two things on their minds: "Females and eating." Ladies, insert your own men-are-goats joke here. (The Desert Sun)

— A puppy rescued from a 24-foot-deep well in Gorman on Sunday was described as cooperative (unlike another recently-rescued canine on many Angelenos’ minds this week) by an L.A. County Fire Department spokesperson who commented on the effort to free it. "The dog was in good condition after being rescued and has been turned over to animal control," said Inspector Frederic Stowers. It’s unclear how the puppy came to be trapped in the well or whether a group of famous musicians plans to sing a song in its honor.  (L.A. Now)

— Lindsay Barnett

Photo: A chimpanzee holds a camera at the Edinburgh Zoo.  Credit: Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty Images

Cat lovers and bird lovers have long been at odds, and rarely has the animal-related animosity been more evident than during the recent battle between L.A.-based feral-cat advocacy group FixNation and a coalition of bird enthusiasts. It’s a battle that went to court, ending in a decision that has left feral-cat caregivers fuming. Our colleague Kimi Yoshino has the story; here’s an excerpt:

The line forms even before the doors open at FixNation in Sun Valley. The trappers come, five days a week, back seats and trunks loaded with feral cats. Inside is a highly organized production line: On an average day, about 80 cats will be neutered, then released 24 hours later into the neighborhoods they came from.

This largely volunteer effort seeks to control a problem that vexes cities everywhere: how to manage homeless, free-roaming cats — thought to number at least 1 million in Los Angeles — while trying to avoid euthanizing them.

But the Audubon Society and other bird and wildlife groups say the program violates state environment laws. And what’s more, they contend it isn’t reducing the number of feral cats, which prey on many types of birds.

So the bird people took the city to court, much to the dismay of the cat people. Last month, after a daylong trial, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided with the plaintiffs, and it recently issued an injunction barring the city from subsidizing or promoting the trap-neuter-release program until environmental studies are completed.

In the long-playing Sylvester-vs.-Tweety battles, score a big one for the birds.

THERE’S MORE; READ THE REST.

Photo: Luis Rivera prepares a stray cat for surgery at FixNation. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — More than 100 manatees have been found dead in Florida waters since the beginning of the year, mostly victims of a nearly two-week cold snap.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the preliminary cause of death for 77 of the endangered animals is cold stress. They were found from Jan. 1 through Jan. 23.

The Sunshine State saw unseasonably cold weather starting around the first of the year that killed fish and stunned thousands of sea turtles.

Officials say the numbers of dead manatees from the cold is a record for a single year. The previous record, set last year, was 56 deaths from cold stress. 

— Associated Press

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Photo: A manatee surfaces at Blue Spring State Park in Orange City, Fla., on Jan. 14.  Credit: Red Huber / Associated Press

If there’s anything cuter than a baby raccoon, we’re hard-pressed to think of what it could be — unless it’s two baby raccoons.  Mary Cummins of the L.A.-based wildlife rehabilitation organization Animal Advocates shares this video on her YouTube channel (which, incidentally, is chock-full of adorable baby animals and is well worth a perusal). 

Cummins explains that she placed these two in a bathtub while she cleaned their carrier — well, that was the idea, anyway.  "I thought I’d put them in the tub for easy cleaning, but unfortunately they can climb out," she writes. "I had to put them in another clean carrier while I prepared their cage." 

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— Lindsay Barnett

Video: MaryCummins via YouTube

SYDNEY — When the enemy reached Australia’s largest state last year, the Kimberley Toad Busters knew the battle was on. But they didn’t expect that officialdom might strip them of their most effective weapon.

The enemy? The cane toad. The weapon? Plastic bags full of carbon dioxide — long considered the animal-friendly alternative to whacking the creatures with golf clubs or cricket bats.

But Western Australia’s Department of Environment and Conservation isn’t so sure that euthanizing Bufo marinus with carbon dioxide is the kindest way to go, and says further tests are needed.

Should the tests prove the toads are suffering, the carbon dioxide option could be banned across Western Australia. And that, the Toad Busters fear, would make the war against cane toads virtually unwinnable.

Keep on whacking them instead, says the government. But to many, that makes no sense.

"Oh my lord, what are they saying?" cried Lisa Ahrens, a veteran toad fighter. "That’s going right back to giving people a golf stick and telling them to go forth and conquer!"

This all may sound like a simple matter of bureaucracy and humane pest control, but cane toads are a 75-year-old Australian nightmare, and they amount to a cautionary tale about the difficulties that can crop up when humans try to reverse their environmental blunders.

The toads, native to Central and South America, were deliberately introduced to Queensland, on the other side of the continent from Western Australia, in 1935 in an unsuccessful attempt to control beetles on sugarcane plantations.

The toads bred rapidly, and their millions-strong population now threatens many species across Australia. They spread diseases, such as salmonella, and their skin exudes a venom that can kill would-be predators. They are also voracious eaters, gorging on insects, frogs, small reptiles and mammals, and birds. Cane toads are harmful to humans only if their poison is swallowed.

In recent years, Australians have held festive mass killings of the creatures, complete with sausage sizzles and prizes. Ahrens, of Cairns in Queensland, organizes the state’s annual Toad Day Out, when people gather to collect the creatures and either freeze them or expose them to carbon dioxide.

But the toads are constantly on the hop, and by early 2009 had migrated more than 1,500 miles from their original landing point in Queensland to the Western Australian border.

Lee Scott-Virtue, an archaeologist in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, saw it coming. Five years before the toads reached her state, she founded the Kimberley Toad Busters to mount a preemptive offensive across the border into the Northern Territory.

"We were confronted literally with walls of toads — tens of thousands of them. It was like watching a moving carpet," she said.

Since then, the group’s thousands of volunteers have killed more than 500,000 toads, largely with carbon dioxide, which she says is fast and painless. By the time toads finally crossed into Western Australia, their numbers had been reduced to the point "where we’re only picking up handfuls."

But the state Department of Environment and Conservation says it ran tests in 2008 that showed the toads regained consciousness after initially passing out. That, the department says, might violate the state’s Animal Welfare Act, which requires all killing of vertebrates to be humane.

Pending further tests scheduled for next month, the department advises people to go back to the freezing and clubbing options. "It’s quick, it’s effective," said a spokeswoman who spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with department policy.

That suggestion has outraged the cane-toad-killing community, which believes clubbing is a far more painful way to end a toad’s life.

"For it to suddenly be dropped on us as the toad reaches Western Australia has been quite shattering," Scott-Virtue said. "If you hammer a toad, you’ve got to be very clever and very quick to be able to kill it instantly."

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals agrees that a strike to the head is the best method — provided the toads are first chilled into unconsciousness.

But Shane Knuth, a Queensland state legislator who has suggested placing a 40 Australian cent (37 cents) bounty on cane toads, says freezing them takes too long. Besides, he said: "Mums and dads don’t want toads in their freezers."

"We can go on and spend the next 50 years debating on how to dispose the toads — but in reality, they’re one of the greatest environmental catastrophes Australia has ever seen," he said.

"The do-gooders need to see the painful death our native animals go through after coming in contact with a cane toad."

— Associated Press

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Top photo: A cane toad is weighed at a collection point in Cairns, Australia, during Toad’s Day Out in March 2009.  Credit: Brian Cassey / Associated Press

Middle photo: Some of the thousands of cane toads caught by the residents of Cairns during the Toad’s Day Out 2009.  Credit: Brian Cassey / Associated Press

Bottom photo: A cane toad sits at Kakadu National Park in Australia’s Northern Territory in 2003.  Credit: Mark Baker / Associated Press

We love submitter Janet’s photo of Piper, "a young Bedlington terrier who lives life to the fullest." And with Piper’s energetic lifestyle, Janet explains, comes a strong need to nap! We can’t say the position she’s chosen looks entirely comfortable to us, but hey — who are we to judge a sleepy dog?

Think your animal photo should be our reader photo of the day? We’d love to see it, and showing us is easy. Just head to the Pets & Animals category of Your Scene, The Times’ photo-sharing site, and select the appropriate album (for instance, we found Janet’s photo in one of our very favorite albums, Just Five More Minutes). Once you’ve chosen your album, click the "submit" link at the top of the page, pick your photo (.jpg format) and include a caption that tells us a little about the animal or animals you’ve photographed. 

— Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Janet / Your Scene