Birds and dogs

I found these fantastic pics while searching for images to illustrate today's post about the plentiful birds and dogs that have made the recent weird news. Here's the round-up:

BIRD: Panamanian soccer player Luis Moreno outraged Columbian fans when he kicked their live owl mascot off the field, resulting in its death: "My family is very worried about what happened because an entire country is against me. I believe what happened is regrettable and I apologised to the entire country."

DOG: A puppy at an animal shelter in Oklahoma was euthanized along with his litter-mates, declared dead by a veterinarian who detected no pulse, and placed in a dumpster. When an animal control officer checked the dumpster the next morning, the 3-month-old dog was wandering around. "He needs a really special home because he's really special."

BIRD: Todd Griffith was waiting for a meeting to start at an engineering firm in Fort Myers, Florida, when a large muscovy duck smashed through an outside window and began walking around the conference room: "I heard a loud boom, and I looked to my left and there was a duck sitting next to me. It looked at me like, 'What are you doing here?'"

DOG: A 14-year-old dog in Hebron Kentucky fell from a 60' cliff. "One minute he's here, the next second he's gone and I hear a yelp. He rolled a lot. I could shine the light down and I could see the glow of his eyes and he was barking at me and I was so helpless," said his owner. Dozens of 1st responders helped in the rescue.

BIRD: Guards at a prison in Bucaramanga, Colombia, discovered a pigeon overloaded with an ounce and a half of marijuana and 5 grams of crack cocaine. The bird had failed in its mission to smuggle the drugs into the inmates. "This is a new case of criminal ingenuity," said the police commander.

DOG: Dolphins drew the attention of a couple vacationing in Marco Island, Florida, to a dog that was stranded on a sandbar. "We saw these two dolphins, and they were splashing and making this big commotion...they were just there, in one place, splashing water against the canal wall." It was this wall which prevented the Doberman Pinscher from getting back to shore. It had disappeared from home 12 hours before, and was now shaking and too weak to bark. With the help of the fire department, the couple rescued the dog and returned it to the owners, who were in the process of putting up lost-dog posters.

BIRD: A rooster turned the tables on a spectator at a California cockfight. Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, died of an accidental “sharp force injury” to his right calf 2 hours after being stabbed by a bird with a knife attached to its own limb.

DOG: Irish mother of 3 Mairéad Guerin, 48, was saved from drowning by her son's husky. The ground had given way beneath her while they were on a walk and she fell into a 7' exposed drain. "I nearly drowned. I couldn’t get back up out of the drain. I was completely under the water and couldn’t get my balance....I wasn’t able to get up on my own, and kept slipping back down. It was so mucky I was being suctioned down. His lead fell over the side of the drain, and I grabbed on to it. He pulled away and levered me up.”

BIRD: New York firefighter Robert Meyer - who also happens to be a licensed wildlife rehabilitator specializing in birds of prey - was called upon to rescue a Cooper's hawk: "They had it wrapped in a coat and it couldn't fly. I thought it was a pigeon. I was surprised to find a hawk on Queens Blvd. in Woodside. I'm assuming it had a collision with a building or a window. The good news is that he is beating both wings and that's a good sign."

DOG: Firefighters in Yuma, Arizona, responded to a call to remove a stray dog from inside a family's refrigerator. The terrier had rushed into the apartment, jumped onto the bottom shelf, and refused to come out.

BIRD: All of the stories above appeared in 2011. I can't vouch for the time or location of these geese running down the road, but the video is a scream - and a good note on which to end (be sure to turn up the volume)!