Yamunanagar, Jul 26 (PTI) Two children died after being bitten by a snake in Sarava village in the district, police said. The snake had bitten a woman her three children last night when they were asleep, they said, adding nine-year old Jyoti and 13-year-old Jaspreet died while the woman and another child are under treatment.
Sick thugs kill animals in rampage at mini zoo
The couple behind a much-loved Glasgow petting zoo have spoken of their horror after thugs broke in and brutally attacked the animals overnight.
Vandals smashed their way through a back window at Animal Man’s Mini Zoo in Pollokshields and set off on a rampage that left animals maimed and dead.
The sick culprits broke a mouse’s back before trying to feed it to a tarantula, and a duck that tried to defend its partner had its bill snapped and the bones around both its eyes caved in.
Kevin and Kate McMillan, who run the zoo on Pollokshaws Road, said they loved the animals like part of the family.
They have issued a heartfelt appeal for the safe return of those pets stolen in the break-in, which occurred overnight between Friday and Saturday.
A tortoise named Michelle has been taken, along with two ducks, five bearded lizards, some baby rabbits and a guinea pig.
The animals have no resale value, but their owners fear they will die within days unless they are given the specialist care they need.
Mr McMillan said: “We just miss them. A lot of them are hand-reared from babies, from an egg right up to the way they are now.”
The couple are offering a cash reward for the safe return of the missing animals.
The break-in was reported to police on Saturday morning, when a mini zoo employee arriving at work walked in on the carnage.
Bars on a back window had been forced with a crowbar or similar object, and the glass pushed in. Almost every enclosure had been smashed open, Mr McMillan said, and the animals cruelly attacked.
They were part of a popular children’s party business, and thousands of kids across the city have attended the cowboy-themed events where they are allowed to handle the tame animals.
Because they were raised as pets, the missing animals cannot survive on their own in the wild. The ducks have had their wings clipped, and would be dead within days if released in a pond.
The bearded lizards need heat lamps and UV lights, and must be kept at temperatures between 72-80F or they will freeze to death.
The tortoise, which was rescued from an animal sanctuary, needs a diet of leafy green vegetables and fruit. It will die if fed lettuce, which has too much water in it.
“The baby rabbits aren’t old enough to come off their mother’s milk,” Mr McMillan added. “They’ve not taken the mother – just the babies. They could probably be bottle fed, but you’d need to know what you were doing.”
Ms McMillan said: “I’ve not slept at all – I was terrified that they’d come back last night.
“They’re just sick people. Sometimes we hear young guys drinking behind there, but it seems like they’ve been organised in advance.”
The window to the animals’ enclosure has now been bricked up, and the McMillans have called in specialists to install a state-of-the-art security system.
Police have urged members of the public who are approached by anyone selling unusual animals to contact them.
Alligator fished from Mass. river
MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. (WPRI) – A man made an unusual discovery in a Middleborough river last week.
He says he fished a two-foot long alligator from the Nemansket River Friday.
The man took the reptile to the Massachusetts State Police barracks in Middleborough.
It was held there until Massachusetts Environmental Police could come to pick it up.
Police are not sure where the alligator came from.
It is illegal to keep them as pets in Massachusetts.
Uninvited Winnipeg guessst slithers in
WINNIPEG – It was the kind of sight that would give many people a sssssinking feeling.
But Justin Wolters was more curious than creeped out when he spotted a snake Saturday morning along the edge of his kitchen sink in his Osborne Village apartment. And when he realized the 31/2-foot serpent wasn’t some sort of joke played on him by his girlfriend, he called police to capture it.
“I have no idea where it came from,” city police Const. Pete Breuer told the Winnipeg Sun at the building in the 300-block of River Avenue after getting the snake — which he said is likely a baby boa constrictor — into a cardboard box and taken away. “There’s no way it could have come out of the sink. There’s a grate there.”
Responding to Wolters’ 911 call, Breuer arrived alone to check it out.
“He was stoked for it,” Wolters said of the officer’s willingness to tangle with the creature, which hadn’t moved too much on the kitchen counter.
“He was like, ‘All right, let me see it.’ He was all for it.”
Though the snake was “pretty docile,” Breuer said later, he needed a few nearby tools to take it into custody.
“I didn’t hold it — I took a broomstick and pushed it into a box,” the officer explained. “We actually put it in the garbage first, then put it in the box.”
After the snake initially appeared to be “just chilling out there,” Wolters said, it became “a little aggressive” when bothered.
“It was pretty agitated when we tried to move it,” Wolters said. “I had kind of pissed it off a bit, poking it and trying to see if it was alive.”
Though staff from Winnipeg’s animal services agency eventually arrived to take away the already-corralled reptile, Wolters said he wasn’t impressed by the city’s early response to his 311 phone call.
“I said, ‘I have a snake in my apartment and it’s not mine. I don’t know what to do with it,’ ” he told the Sun. “They said they wouldn’t respond to that sort of situation. So then I called 911.”
Once the snake was carted away, Genevieve Krahn, Wolters’ girlfriend, could only wonder where it had come from — and how it had entered their first-floor suite.
“We have no idea how it got in. It’s pretty weird,” Krahn said.
Wolters suggested that the experience in the kitchen was almost amusing, when he saw the snake after getting up about 10 a.m. and wondering if it were a rubber toy.
“I thought it was fake, because she was the last one in there,” he said of Krahn, who had left the apartment before he was up.
“I was like, ‘Is she pulling a quick one on me?’ Then I tapped it with a knife, and it felt heavy. And I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Then I was kind of blown away — I was over my head, pretty much.”
Exotic-animal owners, sellers fear for future
Selling boa constrictors and pythons is Tim Koppenhofer’s lifeblood.
But if Gov. Ted Strickland issues an executive order to ban the sale and possession of exotic pets in Ohio, Koppenhofer’s business could run as cold as the blood of his prized snakes.
Koppenhofer, who with his wife, Susan, owns Special K Reptiles, has had to rely on his hobby to make ends meet for the past six months after losing his job at an insurance company.
Reptile business owners wouldn’t be the only ones hurt, he said.
Companies selling heat lamps, aquariums and rodents used for food also would face an immediate drop in revenue.
“If this forces me out of business, I’ll move out of the state,” said Koppenhofer, 57, of Madison. “I would stay close because I have family here.”
He said Michigan and Indiana are potential landing spots.
During the All-Ohio Reptile Show yesterday at the Moose Family Center on Demorest Road, Koppenhofer was one of several exotic-pet dealers thinking about the potential fallout from
a ban on their business.
A promise to issue the order was part of a three-way deal among Strickland, the Humane Society of the United States and the Ohio Farm Bureau. The deal prevents a proposed constitutional amendment on farm and animal-care reforms from reaching the November ballot.
MT Schwartz, show spokeswoman and owner of Saffire Dragons in Powell, said the long-running show either would move or stop completely if the order takes effect. The show began in 1988.
Elayne Bruckman, co-owner of Bruckman Reptiles in Ligonier, Pa., said her yearly profits would be chopped in half if she
can’t make stops in Ohio.
Bruckman, who was laid off from her job at an insurance company recently, said the business is her family’s sole income.
“In this economy, we need more jobs, not regulation and restriction,”
said Bruckman, 54. People who already own exotic
pets would be able to keep their animals, but they wouldn’t be allowed to breed them or buy more.
That would leave Urbana snake dealer Jeff Crabtree stuck with a gang of boas and pythons at his house.
“They’re trying to take our freedom,” said Crabtree, 53.
Schwartz pointed out several children checking out the assortment of snakes, bearded dragon lizards, geckos and turtles.
If reptile shows like this one become extinct, youngsters would lose educational opportunities, she said.
Schwartz let children
feed and pet her rhino
iguana Sandy.
“That is heaven to
me,” said Schwartz as
she talked about the curious youngsters. “This is the
way to get them to appreciate nature.”
Gator Cleans Up Dead Fish At Dam Break in AZ
And finally tonight.Earlier this week a section of a dam at the Tempe Town Lake in Arizona collapsed, sending about a billion gallons of water into a normally dry river.The loss of the water means there are a lot of dead fish laying around….And that had city officials trying to figure out how to clean up that mess in desert heat.So, the idea was born to bring in an alligator and let that gator do what it does best… eat!City officials have hired a crew to scoop up fish and those fish will be fed to the six-foot reptile.
Snake worshippers press council for puthu shrines
Snake worship is an ancient practice among certain Hindus who worship the snake goddess Nagamma.
Trevor Moodley, 61, of Brookdale has already erected a temporary structure around a puthu on a piece of vacant land, with financial help from community members.
“Worshippers in the community have assisted with donations to erect a steel structure. We had a prayer at the site last Sunday. We want the municipality to give the land to us or lease it so that we can build a solid structure. We will then maintain the land,” he said.
He said he had approached local councillors to help obtain permission to lease the land, but without success.
Puthus have been set up illegally on vacant land, at roadsides and on verges throughout Durban, where worshippers have used saris to adorn “holy ground” and make offerings of fruit and milk.
A Democratic Alliance member of the provincial legislature, George Mari, said religious leaders needed to motivate the legitimacy of the snake pits as holy ground for the council to make a ruling.
“There is a need for the council to come up with a policy, as the community is saying it has religious significance,” he said.
He said councillors were not able to give permission for structures to be erected around snake pits.
He added that the community should not build the illegal structures and then become angry when the council removed them.
Ashwin Trikamjee, the SA Hindu Maha Sabha president, said puthus were regarded as holy. “In instances where they can be accommodated, the municipality must consider and be flexible, but obviously they can’t do it everywhere, as it is not practical and may have an impact on traffic,” he said.
Council spokesman Thabo Mofokeng did not respond to enquiries.