A zedonk, an unusual cross between a donkey and a zebra, is attracting attention at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve in Dahlonega after being born there about a week ago. The animal, which has a zebra father and donkey mother, has black stripes prominently displayed on her legs and face.

C.W. Wathen, the preserve's founder and general manager, said the foal has a zebra's instincts. Wathen said she sits up instead of lying on her side, as if she's staying alert for predators.

Donkeys and zebras don't usually mate, but zedonks turn up occasionally.

Wathen said that in about two weeks, the zedonk will begin roaming the property with the rest of the animals.

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Ben Story will never leave a day-old peanut butter sandwich in his car  again.

"I don't have a car now. I'm stuck in Larkspur," the clearly downtrodden 17-year-old said as he surveyed what remains of his 2008 Toyota Corolla.

Early Friday morning near Larkspur, Colorado a curious and probably somewhat hungry bear opened a door to his car and climbed right in.

Apparently the bear nudged the gear shift, put the car into neutral, and went along for the ride as the car slid 120 feet down a hill.

When the car finally came to a rest next to a patch of scrub oak, the door slammed shut trapping the bewildered bear in the process.

That's when the real damage started.

It took two hours for Douglas County Sheriff's deputies to come up with a way to get the big guy out.

That left a lot of time for the bear to throw a temper tantrum.

"You should see the inside of my car," Story told a somewhat dubious friend over the phone. "It's gone. It's completely trashed."

The stereo is missing.

The dash is thrashed.

The seats are all torn up, and there's apparently a very pungent reminder of what bears normally do in the woods sitting on what remains of the driver's seat.

"Smells delicious," Ben's 15-year-old sister Becky said with a grin.

This all started around 3 a.m. on Friday when a neighbor heard the horn from the Toyota go off repeatedly.

The neighbor thought someone was up to no good so she called 911.

When deputies arrived they expected to find a human inside that car.

So did a somewhat groggy Ben.

"That was my first thought, yeah. I thought my dad's going to kill me, my car is going to be gone and I knew that I hadn't locked it," he said.

He thought someone was trying to steal it.

Now he knows better.

"A bear stole my car," he said.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife got the bear out the car by using a rope to get the door open.

It then left the area in a hurry.

The bear should be fine and the DOW says they will keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't come back.

The insurance company has already agreed to compensate the Story's for the damage.

It was likely totaled.

"We got a great story," Ben's father Ralph said. "We now got something to put in the Christmas letter."

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Tour operator towed creature by boat and forced it to glide 30 metres above the surf on southern Russian beach.

Police in southern Russia have launched an animal cruelty investigation after a tour operator forced a donkey to parasail over the sea.

Video footage showed the beast being catapulted into the air after a group of men on a beach at Golubitskaya, on the Sea of Azoz, strapped it into a harness.

The donkey was then towed by a boat for half an hour, initially flailing its legs and then hanging forlornly under a multi-coloured parachute at least 30 metres above the surf.

Stunned beachgoers said the animal had brayed in fear as it whistled through the air, causing children to burst into tears. Others calmly filmed the event on their mobile phones.

"This is a little town and we all know that donkey well," one local woman told reporters. "He worked for several years on the beach, being photographed with tourists. As soon as his ordeal was over, a lot of the people on the beach ran forward to soothe him." Witnesses say the animal was hauled through the sea and on to the sand as it landed.

The animal's owners, who arranged the stunt to attract tourists to pay for parasailing – a popular pastime at Russian resorts – claimed it had not suffered during the flight.

But police said organisers of the "unusual attraction" were to be questioned over a potential animal cruelty charge, which carries a heavy fine or a maximum two-year jail sentence.

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While the rest of us swelter in the bizarrely non-British summer temperatures, dogs can relax safe in the knowledge that there is now an ice-cream van dedicated solely to them.

The van will be serving an ice cream created exclusively for dogs - named, naturally, the K99.

It's makers say that the dog ice cream contains 'gammon and chicken ice cream, a traditional wafer cone and the ultimate finishing touch - a crunchy canine biscuit bone.' Mmmm, gammon and chicken ice cream.

This mixture is supposedly the right combination of temperature, texture and taste to suit dogs, although we're not sure exactly how this has been established.

The dog ice-cream van is scheduled to tour the UK's parks throughout the summer, starting with the Boomerang Pets Party in Regent's Park on July 24th (which is a party for people and pets, apparently).

Meanwhile, there are currently no reports of anybody operating an ice cream van specifically for journalists working in sweltering offices who are being taunted with pictures of dog ice cream vans.

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A brazen black bear with a late-night hankering for supreme pizza surprised a Montana resident last week, and it's not the first time the animal has eluded capture.

The bear is believed responsible for about 21 break-ins in the Red Lodge area in south-central Montana over the past few weeks.

In the most recent heist, Marek Rosin said he awoke at about 1:30 a.m. on July 29 to find the bear had pushed open the door to his back porch and was raiding his chest freezer.

"He was about four feet from me with his head in the freezer munching on a pizza," Rosin said. "It was almost comical if it wouldn't have been that close."

Rosin scared the bear off before it could eat anything more.

Most of the break-ins involve the bear climbing through a screened window or breaking through a screen door to access refrigerators or freezers, said Shawn Stewart, a Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist.

Stewart said he thinks a single adult black bear is causing most of the problems. Two culvert traps were set up, but the bear has avoided them. Another bear was captured and relocated.

Over the past four days, no new reports of bear break-ins have come in. It's unknown if the bear might have left the area.

Bear incidents are also being reported south of Bozeman, east of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and around Jackson Hole, Wyo.

"It's fairly widespread," Stewart said.

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A restaurant for dogs has opened in Australia, which serves up tasty fare for hungry hounds.

It may sound like a barking mad scheme to some, but Chew Chew, in Sydney, is proving a massive hit with its mouth-watering range of meals for mutts.

The menu features dishes such as beef steak with mushrooms and chicken wings, fish soup and chicken wings and lamb bones.

If owners’ pooches fancy a coffee, no problem, but Chew Chew serves its ‘doggie-cinos’ with a sprinkling of dried liver treats.

Pet lovers who live too far away to visit Chew Chew are catered for, as well, because they can order products online.

The unusual restaurant, which opened in June, is run by pet nutritionist Naoko Okamoto, who told The Sydney Morning Herald that a lot of owners had been waiting for a place they can bring their dog.

She said: ‘I started with organic dog biscuits and supplements and selling them at the markets and spent three years finding out the customers' needs.’

We assume that doggy bags are available for hounds with eyes bigger than their stomachs.

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A runway at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport was shut down on Wednesday morning, after at least 78 turtles invaded the tarmac.

Ground crews eventually rounded up the wayward reptiles, which had crawled from a nearby bay, and deposited them back in the water farther from airport.

But that wasn't enough to stop the turtle incursion disrupting JFK's flight schedule, and contributed to delays that reached nearly 1 1/2 hours.

'Apparently this is something the tower has experienced before,' said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. 'I guess it's the season for spawning.'

The invasion began unfolding, slowly, at around 8:30 a.m., when an American Eagle flight crew reported seeing three turtles while taxiing for departure.

Before long, a chorus of pilots was radioing the tower to report turtles either on the end of a runway that juts out into the water, or approaching on the grass.

The FAA halted flights for about 12 minutes shortly before 9 a.m. while some of the turtles were cleared away, then quit using the runway entirely after getting new reports of 'massive numbers' of turtles on the tarmac, Peters said.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman John Kelly said airport crews gathered up the turtles in about 35 minutes.

He identified the turtles as Diamondback terrapins, a species common to Jamaica Bay, which surrounds the airport. The turtles appeared to be about 8 inches long and weigh between 2 and 3 pounds each.

Jets hit turtles a few times each year at JFK, usually in the final days of June or earliest days in July, according to the FAA's wildlife strike database. There have been no recent reports of turtle strikes causing any damage to an airplane.

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It may not have exactly been the target market when it was launched, but a particular brand of moisturiser is going down a storm with the elephants in Belfast Zoo - particularly to keep their bottoms smooth.

The zoo is home to four female elephants, in what is effectively a retirement home for older elephants, and they've been having a problem of dry skin, particularly around their feet and lower legs - and their rears.

Elephant curator Alyn Cairns said: 'Our herd of four older females is now complete and we want to provide them with the best care in their old age. That includes looking after their skin.'

Under veterinary advice the elephant team tried many different creams to soften the skin of the elephants, but with limited effect, he said.

Female keeper Aisling McMahon came to the rescue suggesting the moisturising cream she used from a supermarket.

'I found it difficult to find a good moisturiser for my own skin and when I realised this particular one worked for me, I suggested it to the team.

'The elephants now get moisturised regularly. Cream is applied to the elephant's feet, bum and body.'

And the old ladies are not making extravagant demands, a supermarket own-brand fits the bill perfectly.

Caoimhe Mannion, marketing manager of Tesco in Northern Ireland, spotting a good opportunity for a plug, said: 'It is essential that people protect their skins in hot weather - but I didn't realise elephants were such big fans of our products.'

For the original article, go here.

School placed on lockdown after fight involving 20 adults; 2 women held

Two women have been arrested following a parents' brawl that interrupted a Southern California kindergarten graduation ceremony, authorities said.

School officials placed Puesta del Sol Elementary in the desert town of Victorville on lockdown Wednesday morning after a fight broke out among a group of parents.

The San Bernardino County sheriff's department says witnesses told deputies several mothers were involved in an argument and it got physical in a field near the ceremony. Several men then jumped into the fray and the incident turned into a brawl.

A deputy later arrested two people on suspicion of being a disruptive presence at a school. Witnesses said they were the main instigators. In all, 20 adults were identified in the brawl. A school district official said there could be more arrests.

No injuries were reported.

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The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled that a police officer acted correctly when he seized 15 cats from a woman who was driving with the animals running free inside her car.

In a 3-2 decision Thursday, the justices ruled that the felines were a distraction and interfered with driver Patricia Edwards' ability to see where she was going.

Chief Justice David Gilbertson said Edwards nearly backed into patrol car at a convenience store parking lot in Pierre, S.D., because of the moggies in her back window.

The court said Edwards and her cats presented a significant risk to the public.

Edwards was appealing a lower court ruling that transferred ownership of the cats to a humane society for adoption.

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A woman obsessed with rabbits, known as the 'Bunny Lady', has been arrested after violating a court order that banned her from going within 100 yards of a rabbit.

Authorities were alerted on Tuesday, after an employee at a hotel in Portland, Oregon reported finding 16 rabbits in Miriam Sakewitz's room.

In April 2007, Sakewitz was sentenced to five years probation and given a court order banning her from owning any animals, or getting close to a rabbit. This followed from an incident in October 2006, when authorities confiscated almost 250 rabbits from her home in Hillsboro, Oregon - including around 100 dead bunnies, stored in freezers and refrigerators.

In January 2007, Sakewitz broke into the facility where the rescued rabbits were being cared for, and stole most of them back. She was arrested a few das later with eight live rabbits and two dead ones in her car.

Sakewitz spent a few days in jail later in the summer of 2007 after she was found in possession of a single rabbit. A subsequent check on her house failed to uncover any further rabbits, but did find a half-empty 10lb bag of carrots.

On Tuesday, animal control officers removed eight adult rabbits, five young rabbits, and one dead rabbit from Sakewitz's hotel room. She was returned to custody, and faces animal neglect charges.

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Furie and Cigale eye each other warily, take a step forward and lock horns.

It's an ancient ritual, one that plays out each summer high in the Swiss Alps, as cows battle to be queen and villagers come to watch.

Judges record every fight as spectators sit on the surrounding mountainside, sipping local wines and cheering their family herd. But it is the cows who choose who to fight and who will reign supreme at the end of the season.

"They've been doing this ever since my grandparents were young, and even before that," says Marthe Vianin, once the proud owner of several fighting cows. "It's hundreds of years old."

Vianin, in her sixties, has come to watch her son's two cows — Tzardon and Bamby — take on champions from other herds.

Down in the corral, Bergamote faces off a challenge from Berkane with a fierce stare and a tussle of horns. No harm done. Still, there are clearly some seasoned fighters in this contest, judging from the scars they bear from past battles.

Locals insist the bovine power-struggle is both humane and irrepressible.

"It's very rare for them to hurt themselves," says Vianin.

The fighting season starts in early June, when cows are taken up to pastures 9,000-feet (2,700-meters) high and encounter rival herds. What follows are a hundred days of grazing on lush Alpine meadows — and lots of fighting.

Black, with short legs and built more like bulls than cows, the Herens breed found in the southern canton (state) of Valais is naturally competitive and will always establish their own hierarchy. Natural leaders distinguish themselves in battle, where strength and determination are key.

In the fall, the herds' return to the valley is marked by a celebration. Owners decorate their cows with flowers and giant bells and they parade through the village, led, of course, by the queen.

"It's a beautiful thing to see," says Trisha Cochrane from London, who owns a vacation home in the village of Grimentz.

There is no prize money for the winner, but owners can fetch a handsome price — up to $30,000 (euro21,000) — if they choose to sell a queen.

Most important, says local Albert Salamin, is the respect.

The winner's owner is "king of the village for the year. He's more respected than the mayor," Salamin says to laughs from bystanders.

The Salamin brothers have several cows in competition, but Albert admits only his brother Armand's prize heifer Bolero stands a real chance this year.

Cow fighting is still taken seriously, but it's largely a hobby and a cherished tradition for most villagers, who have long since stopped living off the land.

Four-wheel drive cars and all-year tourism have changed life in these remote Alpine valleys, bringing prosperity and making cattle-rearing less appealing to a younger generation.

"Even 40 years ago, most families got much of what they needed from three or four cows," says Salamin. "Milk, cheese, meat, the cows provided it all."

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An eggs-straordinary hen named Harriet has laid the 'world's largest egg', measuring an amazing 9.1 inches in diameter.

The astonishing specimen easily beats the previous record holder, which measured a paltry 8.6 inches diameter. Hen's eggs are typically 5.5 inches in diameter and 2.3 inches long.

64-year-old owner Tony Barbouti told the Daily Mail 'My hens have laid big eggs before but when I saw this one I was gobsmacked.

'Harriet is only a young hen, she's about six months old, and has only just started laying eggs.

'She was limping a bit but she was all right. I'm really proud of her. She doesn't seem to have been putting off laying as she's still producing eggs.'

Barbouti, a taxi driver from Eastwood, Essex, keeps Harriet along with 16 other hens in a coop in his garden.

He added: 'They are not special hens. I feed them ordinary hen food and they give me a good supply of fresh eggs. But I think we may need bigger egg cups if they keep this up.'

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The kookaburra in Australia - named Mama Cass - who became too fat to fly after developing a fondness for sausages has taken flight once more, after being put on a crash diet.

It took a five-week exercise regime at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo for the bird to lose almost a quarter of her body mass after her love of sausages (which developed after residents at a Sydney park started feeding her them at barbecues) saw her weight soar.

Mama Cass - named after the overweight singer from 60s pop group The Mamas & the Papas - successfully lost 100g through diet and exercise through the specially-designed avian fat camp regime.

Her last weigh-in saw her tipping the scales at 447g, within the normal limit for adult kookaburras. She has now been released back into the wild.

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A hen has smashed her own egg-straordinary record by laying a second whopper.

Harriet hit the headlines last week after producing an eye-watering egg measuring 11.5cm in length and 5cm across.

But on Sunday owner Tony Barbouti was stunned to find an even bigger offering in her nest.

Mr Barbouti, from Eastwood, Essex, said: ‘It’s virtually the same length but it is even bigger across.

'She is a young hen so maybe she hasn’t settled into her laying pattern yet.’

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Dogs love nothing more than to chew slippers, boots and bones – but one tiny terrier managed to scoff an entire family of cats.

Little Snowy, a one-year-old white West Highland terrier, weighs just 3.6kg (8lb) but still found room for the five ornaments.

The vet initially thought it was a joke when X-rays clearly revealed a cat peering out of the dog’s belly.

‘We were all stunned. I have been a vet for ten years and never seen an X-ray like this,’ said Nigel Belgrove, a partner at Cromwell Vets.

‘We’ve had dogs that have swallowed golf balls and batteries before but Snowy beats them all, hands down,’ he added.

The terrier began to worry her owner Samantha Reed, 42, when she suddenly lost her appetite and started vomiting several times a day.

Initially, it was thought Snowy had reacted badly to dog food and the vet recommended a diet of rice and chicken.

She remained ill so they took urine samples to test for a kidney problem and tried a course of antibiotics.

It was only when they took the X-ray that the feline face emerged. The cats were removed last week in a one-hour operation and Snowy is now recovering well.

She was lucky not to suffer permanent internal damage and vets said she could have died if the toys had reached her small intestine.

‘The big cat is hardly chewed up at all – she must have swallowed it down whole,’ said Mrs Reed, from Wyton on the Hill, Cambridgeshire.

‘We’ve never seen the toys before but the grass in the garden is quite long so we think she must have dug them up out there.’

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