Gordon Grice's Blog, page 45

Cougar Attacks Woman in Her Living Room

The woman escaped with mere scratches when  her border collie intervened:



Dog saves woman from cougar attack in living room | British Columbia: 



"Angie Prime, 35, was on her living room couch with her 14-week-old puppies Iver and Otto Sunday night when she saw an emaciated cougar enter the room.



“I happened to catch something in the corner of my eye,” Prime told CTV News. “I’ll always remember that face.”



The cat pounced on Prime, but before she was seriously hurt her 11-year-old collie, Vicious, ran to the rescue."



*



The dog is fine, but authorities killed the cougar. I suspect the puppies were the real target of the attack. Cougars prey on small dogs much more frequently than they do on people. 

Prime Minister and His Cronies Eat Man

Hans Hillewaert/Creative Commons



Crocodiles, led by a large specimen named Prime Minister, killed and ate their 70-year-old keeper during a show for tourists. 



The Nation - Crocodiles devour zookeeper in Cote d'Ivoire: 



"Toke regularly entertained guests, both local and international, by moving around the crocodiles and lifting their tails for memorial photos. 



According to the newspaper, Toke had gone into the lake to feed the crocodiles and alligators at 5pm on Monday, when one of the crocodiles held his long shirt.



``The old man, according to the eyewitnesses, waved the crocodile aside, but the biggest and oldest among the crocodiles, known as ``Prime Minister’’,  opened its mouth and seized him.



``The animal threw him into the water and started tearing him into shreds to the consternation of the many guests by the lake, who were enjoying the end of Ramadan.''"



Thanks to Croconut for the news tip. 

Man Bites Cobra to Death

H. Krisp/Creative Commons



The cobra bit him first. The BBC reported his motive this way:



BBC News - Farmer bites cobra to death in Nepal: 



"A Nepali farmer who was bitten by a cobra in his rice paddy field has killed the snake by repeatedly biting it in return.



"A snake charmer told me that if a snake bites you, bite it until it is dead and nothing will happen to you," Mohammed Salmodin told the BBC."



But a report in Reuters mentions a different motive:







"I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry."



Mohammed Salmodin then went back to work until his family pressured him to get help. Remind me not to make this guy angry.  



Incidentally, I knew a family who had eaten cobra. They said it was good in soup. 



(Thanks to Croconut for the news tip)

Rhino Rolls Woman

Black Rhinoceros (Mistvan/Creative Commons)



In South Africa, a woman helping with conservation efforts ran afoul of a rhinoceros. 



Woman recovering from rhino attack - Times LIVE: 



"She was standing in a holding pen with her daughter, 21, watching farm employees dart the rhino cow and her calf, when another rhino charged at her, and repeatedly "rolled her around," Beeld reported.



The rhino cow stopped when her daughter screamed.



"I was able to actually pull myself upright, holding onto the rhino's horn," Van Heerden said."



There are two species of rhino in South Africa: the white, which is usually grayish, and the black, which is also usually grayish. The misleading names are the result of a bad translation that has stuck. The article doesn't say which species this is, though it includes a photo of a black one. In Asia there are three more species. All five face dwindling numbers. 

Grizzly Bear Kills Photographer

Jean-Pierre Lavoie/Creative Commons





Grizzly bear kills hiker in Denali National Park - latimes.com: 



"Photos recovered from the victim’s camera show that he stopped to take pictures of the animal for at least eight minutes before he was attacked. Park Superintendent Paul Anderson said he believes the victim came within 50 yards of the grizzly before it went on the attack. He said the photos show the bear grazing in the willows and not acting aggressively.





Park service workers were alerted to the attack Friday by three day hikers who saw an abandoned backpack, torn clothing and blood along the river. Rangers found the body late Friday but could not recover it because the sun was fading and they believed multiple bears were nearby. When they returned in a helicopter Saturday afternoon, a grizzly bear was near the body. It was shot and killed by rangers from above."



Other reports are saying the bear had partially eaten the body. The hiker's photos don't show the bear behaving aggressively. 

Monkey Shot in Domestic Dispute (And More)

A couple of monkey attacks. The first involves a macaque. It's the usual story: a couple raises a primate as their own child, and it comes back to bite them in the end. 



JayJay the pet monkey shot dead after vicious attack on his owner in Florida | Mail Online: 



"JayJay the Macaque monkey unleashed his attack after escaping his home in Okeechobee, Florida and evading capture by his owner, Jimmy Schwall, who tried to catch him in a net.



The monkey wriggled free and clamped down on Schwall's buttocks and thigh and tore apart his right hand. A friend grabbed a gun and Schwall told him to shoot, killing the monkey."



The other report involves a wild monkey, but he's clearly familiar enough with humans to guess what's in a backpack. 




Stray monkey attacks four-year-old in Kovai - South India - Tamil Nadu - ibnlive: 



"Four-year-old Arul Raj, along with his grandmother Thangamani, was on his way to meet his father, a life-term convict in the Central Prison, when the monkey pounced on him.



The boy was carrying a snack box and the monkey was trying to snatch it, recalled witnesses.



A visibly shaken Thangamani said, “The monkey was huge and I had to struggle to make it let go off the boy.”"



The report doesn't say what kind of monkey it was. 

Shark Feeding Frenzy Video

This video shows sharks, probably blacktip reef or spinner sharks, attacking a school of menhaden en masse. These species don't eat people, but this is the sort of situation that occasionally gets a person hurt. In water churned by the struggles of predator and prey, visibility is bad. When that happens near the shore, people who are swimming or wading can get bitten. That's what happened to Debbie Salamone, whose story I told in Shark Attacks.










Thanks to Croconut for the tip. 

West Nile Virus in the US

Photo by Thomas Kent



Crop-dusting planes are spraying the city of Dallas with insecticide in an effort to kill mosquitoes. It's been a bumper year for mosquitoes, there and elsewhere in the US, and reports of West Nile virus have risen accordingly. 

West Nile aerial attack creates controversy in virus-stricken Dallas | The Lookout - Yahoo! News: 
"43 states have reported West Nile virus infections in people, birds or mosquitoes this year. Twenty-six people have died and nearly 700 have gotten sick.

"The 693 cases reported thus far in 2012 is the highest number of West Nile virus disease cases reported to CDC through the second week in August since West Nile virus was first detected in the United States in 1999," the CDC said in a statement."

The virus produces two illnesses. The first is a mild form with flu-like symptoms called West Nile fever. The second, West Nile encephalitis, occurs when the virus invades the central nervous system. Encephalitis means inflammation of the brain. It can cause such symptoms as headache, fever, stiff neck, tremors, stupor, disorientation, and paralysis. It is sometimes fatal. 



In the terror-obsessed US of the 21st century, the virus has become notorious out of all proportion to its actual danger. The fever afflicts only about 20 percent of those who contract the virus; of that 20 percent, two-thirds of one percent develop encephalitis. Most of those recover. Deaths occur mostly in the elderly. The reservoir for the virus is birds. In the US, robins and crows are among the most commonly infected birds. The virus is transmitted to people by mosquitoes of the genus Culex, especially Culex pipiens.



Photo: A member of the genus Culex, probably C. pipiens. Note that the mosquito is itself infested with parasites. Virtually any animal can host its own brand of mites, maggots, or wasp larvae. Photographer Thomas Kent's Flickr page features many startling and beautiful macro-discoveries. 

Leopard Mauls Fourth Victim

Leopard attacks woman on outskirts of Chandrapur - The Times of India:





""The woman was sleeping on a cot covered with a mosquito net inside the math. The beast pounced on the cot and clawed her on the face and chest. As others sleeping in the vicinity woke up on hearing her cries, the beast fled from the spot," said an eyewitness. Tarabai was rushed to civil hospital and admitted there for emergency treatment.



In January, a leopardess had attacked Nanebai Virutkar while she was travelling pillion with her husband on a motorcycle. In March, the same leopardess clawed four-year-old Hasari Dhope, while she was travelling with her mother and father on a bike. In April, the leopardess mauled WCL worker Sanjay Upre while he was on his way back home from duty at around midnight. Apart from these attacks, the beast has killed over a dozen cattle in villages Mana, Charwat, Nandgaon and WCL settlement Samruddhi nagar."

Sentimental Journey: An Abandoned House

Chuck Evans/Creative Commons










The house had been bulldozed. Elms, dead of drought, ringed the dusty flat where it should have stood. Boughs had been piled into a wild desiccated pyre. My father stood tracing the floor plan of the farm by the few unburied signs: A round slab of cement lay where the granary had stood. The front walk remained, in rubble. The cattle pens and corral were mostly gone, but the chute remained, as if to convey a steer from the ground into airy nothing. (Or a child, for my sister and I had run up that chute many times.) I wandered the place, amazed. It was a mere toy to the landscape in my memory. That road from farmhouse to granary, the one where I’d seen my first rattlesnake flattened and grinning its crooked dead grin, the one where my grandfather had decapitated a much greater rattlesnake and it had with the weeks dried to rib and spine and become tangled in the grasses of the ditch and somehow become nothing at all—that epic road was now only a few paces.



I wandered. Those
peculiar weeds with the yellow berries jutted from the soil; I broke off a
berry and punctured its eggshell rind. There was no moisture inside, only a
bitter smell. And then I saw the hole, just big enough for a man. In my
childhood dreams the prairie had held, just beyond my wanderings, exactly such
apertures into subterranean depths—the hiding places of ghouls and glistening
snakes, the homes of women who shone like angels in white gowns. But those were
only dreams and the games I elaborated from them. This one was real. I lay on
my belly and looked down six or seven feet. Down there clods of mud had dried
into monstrous shapes. A pipe protruded like a fractured leg bone. A tunnel
stretched away to the west, further than I could see.




“I think I found the
cellar,” I said. Memories of it crowded in—my parents’ wedding album floating
in a flood; a nest of mice blind in one corner; a bull snake, woken from winter
sleep, clunking up the stairs, using the frozen loop of himself as a sort of
foot.




“No,” my father said,
for he had already deduced that the house itself now occupied the cellar. He
pointed out the clues he’d noted on the terrain. The cellar had been over there.
Nor was this hole and its tunnel part of the septic tank, which had lain on the
far side of the house. I wanted it to be the cellar, that humid haven of
memory, but I knew he was right. “It must be an older septic tank,” he said.
One used and then capped before we’d ever known the place, more ancient even
than the memories that had been writhing within me, trying to fit themselves
into these tiny marks on the landscape. Only the bulldozing of the house had
finally revealed this older tank. I drew back at the thought of this tunnel contaminated
with sewage, but that was absurd; the earth had had decades to digest it.




Something an arm’s
length down caught my eye. It was a web. The pattern was more familiar to me
than the floor plan of this little farm. I reached cautiously; in Oklahoma, the
black widows may still be alive in November, depending on the weather’s whims.
My finger plucked a strand, broke it. The sound I wanted to hear didn’t come. It
would have been a confirmation of the spider’s identity, though I should hardly
need that. It would have been more than information, however; it would have
given me some comfort, for I spent my childhood in pursuit of widows. The child
within me would have taken the tearing sound with joy, and the man, long
removed from his natural habitat, felt the same.




The absence of the
characteristic sound might mean the widow’s web was old, had lost its
elasticity. Or it might mean this was not the work of a widow, but of some
similar species, like the American house spider. The answer mattered to me more
than I can perhaps make clear. I was an absurd middle-aged man crawling on his
belly, poking into an old septic tank. But I was also looking into memories,
into childhood dreams, into the very earth I’d come from. I don’t believe in
signs, but I wanted to see one. I writhed forward, pushing my shoulders into
the hole. Under the thick lip of earth, the web hung in ragged elegance like
dirty lace. The strands were too old and loose; I would not hear them tear like
paper; this was the work of an earlier year, and the spider was gone, probably
dead. But I knew she was a widow. She had left the blunt husk of a scarab
hanging there, a beetle too big for any other spider’s web.