– – It’s been said that were videos about cats and pornography eliminated from the internet, there would be little left! While appealing and loved by many, cats can at times also show a darker side. Here we see the lap cat of Bond arch-villain Blofeld. Cats have demonstrated abilities to be efficient predators, as has been recently noted by research conducted by the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
The study found that previous wildlife mortality estimates owing to feline predation were way too low. Cats, primarily un-owned, feral ones, are felt to be responsible for the deaths of 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds, and 6.9 to 20.7 billion mammals annually. If 2.3 billion birds are killed by cats, this would mean that 1 in 10 birds are taken by cats every year.
In New Zealand, cats are considered an invasive species, and have prompted environmentalist/economist Gareth Morgan to push for much tighter controls on the island nation’s cat population expressed through a “Cats to Go” campaign. Rather than declaring open season on cats, however, the program advocates neutering cats, keeping them indoors, and not getting any new ones.
The American study does not recommend any drastic schemes to cut down on U.S. wildlife deaths, but rather calls for “conservation and policy intervention” in order to reduce environmental impact. It should be pointed out that humans are responsible for most modern animal extinctions, whether through hunting, habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species, or other environmental disruptions…
– – Children, it is sometimes said, should be seen and not heard. Bigfoot in Oregon, in contrast, has been heard but not seen. People residing near the Indian reservation near the Blue Mountains have reported noises described as roaring and screeching, and sounding unlike anything they’ve heard before from the local wildlife.
– – Witches could use a good spin doctor to handle their bad PR problem; they’re often portrayed as ugly and evil. Hollywood has also put forth a number of doctored and rehashed variations lately on classic fairy tales, with Red Riding Hood one of the most common. In this vein, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters will be coming your way soon, conceived as an action fantasy sequel to the tale of two kids who stumble into a candy-covered witch house in the woods where they are taken prisoner and almost wind up consumed.
– – Harvard geneticist George M. Church created waves recently when poorly-translated comments he made to a German-language magazine led to reports that he was looking for “an extremely adventurous female human” to serve as a surrogate mother for a cloned Neanderthal using developing technology. With fragments of Neanderthal DNA in fossils, Church noted that someday it might be possible to assemble them into a complete genome that could be put into a human egg to create a cloned embryo, which in turn could be put into a human surrogate mother to bring back a human relative long extinct.
– – The Aflac Duck had seemed almost indestructible up to this point…after all, he’s been bonked by soccer balls, whacked with logs, singed by flames, and even dropped into the Grand Canyon. Now the daredevil duck has suffered the unthinkable, involved in an undisclosed accident with ensuing injuries to his wing and beak! In a new series of television commercials, a “doctor” discusses the duck’s disaster in front of reporters, and we only see the familiar fowl as a small fixed image on the screen. 
– – The month-long python purge is in progress in Florida, with about 800 intrepid hunters in pursuit of the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Burmese pythons who live in the Everglades where they are an invasive species and decimate natural populations. The pythons are elusive, however, and not that many carcasses have been turned in to date. Recommended methods of dispatching them include shooting or cutting off their heads with a machete; the “captive bolt” method is also mentioned if the device can be attached to their heads to destroy their brains as one would a zombie. 
– – Seems like everyone’s a critic these days, even Fancy Bear from the FreeCreditScore commercial! It appears that you’re just not safe from having a home invasion by a bowler-hat wearing, cane and moustache-sporting bear in a dress jacket who criticizes your taste in home decor. “May I respond negatively about your porcelain poodle?,” interjects the well-dressed ursine intruder, disdainfully holding up the objectionable artifact. “This should be in the trash!,” he huffs. The commercial closes with Fancy Bear playing a piano piece while the properly scolded human couple sit listening on the couch. 
– – We all know about the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson film, Snakes On A Plane (sample repeatable line: “Why exactly are there snakes on this plane?”), but in another case of life imitating art(?), a scrub python hitched a ride on the wing of a plane on a flight from Australia to Papua, New Guinea. A woman supposedly pointed outside the plane and told the cabin crew, “There’s a snake on the wing,” recalling William Shatner’s memorable performance in the classic Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. 
– – We’ve all heard the heroic dog stories, typified by something like Lassie alerting folks to Timmy having fallen in a well.–Well, cats can do some rather helpful things, too! 
– – It may alarm some to hear that hundreds of blob-like squid are invading California; on the other hand, some might think that this was inevitable, or that they might just be assimilated to become Californians. The squid are big suckers known as Humboldt squid, who can reach up to six feet and weigh as much as 100 pounds. They normally live at depths of 660 to 2,300 feet in the eastern Pacific.
FOXSYLVANIA 
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