Animals
S


Eye 2

Employee finds copperhead snake inside Charleston day care

Travis Crum
The Charleston Gazette
Tue, 24 Sep 2013 14:18 UTC
Image
© Wikimedia CommonsClose up of head of the copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix).

Wildlife biologists will inspect the Sacred Heart Early Learning Center in Charleston after an employee found a small copperhead snake in a drawer beneath a crib on Tuesday.

The employee captured the 8-inch snake inside a Styrofoam cup until a biologist with the state Division of Natural Resources arrived. How the snake got there is still a mystery, said DNR spokesman Hoy Murphy.

The center is housed inside the Sacred Heart Pavilion on the corner of Quarrier Street and Leon Sullivan Way.

"This is not typical," Murphy said. "We are talking about it being right in the middle of downtown Charleston."

Eric Richmond, a DNR wildlife biologist, said the agency would sweep the building Tuesday night and early this morning and would then recommend how to prevent other snakes from getting in, Murphy said.

Even though the snake was small, it carried as much venom as an adult-sized copperhead, Richmond said. The snake was turned over to Noel Braley of Wildlife Removal Service in Charleston.

Dawn Snyder, director of the Sacred Heart Early Learning Center, did not return phone messages. The center is licensed by the state to provide care for 52 children age 6 weeks to 3 years, according to its website.
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Bizarro Earth

30 large dolphins beach themselves in northeastern Brazil; 7 die, news reports say


StarTribune
Mon, 23 Sep 2013 15:35 UTC
Rio De Janeiro - Around 30 large dolphins beached themselves in northeastern Brazil over the weekend, and news reports said Monday that at least seven of them had died.

The dolphins, known as false killer whales, ran aground early Sunday on the shallow sands of Upanema beach in Areia Branca, roughly halfway between the cities of Fortaleza and Natal.

Images distributed by the environmental police of Rio Grande do Norte state show beachgoers and passers-by attempting to aid the animals, which lay stranded in inches- (centimeters-) deep water. Most of the animals were still, occasionally twitching their tails, as beachgoers swabbed them with wet T-shirts.

O Globo newspaper reported Monday that at least seven on the animals died, six of them on the Upanema beach. O Globo said one animal died following an apparent shark attack after it was returned to the ocean. The report stressed that the dolphin was likely attacked in very deep waters and that area beachgoers needn't worry about shark attacks.

The paper said it was not immediately known why the animals beached themselves, but biologists were examining whether the pod leader might have been ill. Another hypothesis is that the dolphins were pursuing a school of fish and were trapped on Upanema's high sand banks.

O Globo said it was among the largest collective beachings in Brazil in recent decades. In 1991, around 19 whales beached themselves on the sands of the nearby town of Sao Miguel do Gostoso, the report said.

Source: Associated Press
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Eye 2

Snake on a plane! Mandarin rat snake grounds Tokyo-bound Qantas jet

Sara C Nelson
huffingtonpost
Mon, 23 Sep 2013 12:10 UTC
A tiny snake "about the width of a pencil" is responsible for grounding a jet of 370 passengers.

While the eight-inch reptile didn't cause quite the same high octane scenes as his cold-blooded cousins in the Samuel L Jackson film Snakes On A Plane, it succeeded in raising the profile of the humble Mandarin Rat Snake.

The live specimen was found in the passenger cabin of a Qantas Boeing 747 in Sydney on Sunday night.

Image
Snake on a plane! A Mandarin Rat Snake (pictured) grounded the Qantas flight at Sydney on Sunday
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Question

Dead birds found around cellular tower in Conception Bay South, Canada

Josh Pennell
The Telegram, Canada
Sat, 21 Sep 2013 13:12 UTC
A number of dead birds found near the base of a Bell Aliant cellular tower in Conception Bay South have both a resident and a councillor concerned.

Ward 3 councillor and C.B.S. candidate for the mayor's chair Ken McDonald was out campaigning Thursday evening when a call came in from a resident who had been walking his dog near the cellular tower on Eason's Road behind the Manuels River Interpretation Centre.

Image
© Rhonda Hayward/The TelegramA group of dead birds were discovered near a cellular tower in Conception Bay South by a man walking his dog Thursday evening.
The resident said he had seen a number of large, dead birds near the tower.

"He was concerned, one, for the dog and secondly that this is above the Manuels River and everything runs towards there," said McDonald. "He felt it might be something related to the tower or some seepage that's coming from the water that's trickling past it."

McDonald met with The Telegram at the site Friday morning.

There were at least a half dozen bird carcasses - what appeared to be crows and ravens, which belong to a group called the corvids.
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Eye 2

850 snakes part of New York man's home business, authorities say

Julia Talanova
CNN
Sat, 21 Sep 2013 09:23 UTC

An animal control officer on disability kept 850 snakes, including two 6-foot Burmese pythons, while running an illegal snake business out of his suburban New York home, according to authorities who made the discovery on Thursday.

Richard Parrinello, of Brookhaven, New York, kept the snakes in his detached garage, all neatly stacked in containers and at the right temperature, according to Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County SPCA.

Burmese pythons are illegal in New York, and Parrinello's were taken from the house to a reptile sanctuary in Massachusetts while the rest of the snakes are still in his garage, according to Jack Krieger, communications director for the Town of Brookhaven on Long Island.

Gross said all the snakes appeared to be in good health and there was no animal abuse or neglect.

"It was a well-maintained facility, it was very clean and organized, it was a business," Krieger said.
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Arrow Down

7,500 songbirds killed at Canaport gas plant in Saint John, Canada


cbc.ca
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 11:05 UTC
Migrating birds, some possible endangered species, flew into gas flare


About 7,500 songbirds, possibly including some endangered species, were killed while flying over a gas plant in Saint John late last week, officials have confirmed.

It appears the migrating birds flew into the gas flare at Canaport LNG between Friday night and Saturday morning, said Fraser Forsythe, the company's health, safety, security and environmental manager.

The birds were drawn to the flame like moths, an extremely unusual event, according to Don McAlpine, the head of zoology at the New Brunswick Museum.
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Attention

More than 100 deer found dead west of Missoula, Montana

Rob Chaney
The Missoulian
Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:52 UTC
Image
Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Jay Kolbe drags a deer carcass from a backwater of the Clark Fork River on Wednesday evening to confirm signs of internal hemorrhaging caused by a virus spread among deer by biting gnats. Dozens of deer have died west of Missoula in recent days in what appears to be the first documented case of epizootic hemorrhage disease west of the Continental Divide in Montana.
Wildlife officials are trying to find out why more than 100 whitetail deer have died along the Clark Fork River west of Missoula.

"The deer may show no outward symptoms of disease," said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Vickie Edwards. "People are seeing healthy looking deer fall over dead."

Fishing guides and landowners along the Clark Fork and fields near and downstream of Harpers Bridge started reporting the dead deer on Sunday. Dead deer have also been found in the Mill Creek area northeast of Frenchtown.
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Bug

'Alien bugs' discovered in atmosphere


Sky News, Australia
Thu, 19 Sep 2013 17:07 UTC
Nitzschia
© Milton Wainwright et al.This image shows a diatom frustule, possibly a Nitzschia species, captured on a stud from a height of 25 km in the stratosphere. Image
British scientists believe they have found small bugs from outer space in the Earth's atmosphere.

Tiny organisms were discovered by University of Sheffield experts on a research balloon they had sent 27 kilometres into the atmosphere during last month's Perseids meteor shower. The microscopic bugs were detected when the balloon landed back on the ground in Wakefield, West Yorkshire in England.

But the scientists insist the samples could not have been carried from the Earth's surface into the stratosphere - the second layer of our atmosphere, which stretches up to 50 kilometres from the ground. Strict tests were taken to avoid any contamination, they said.

Professor Milton Wainwright, who led the team, said: 'Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth, but it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27 kilometres.

'The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip.' He went on: 'We can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space.

'Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here.' The findings are to be published in the Journal of Cosmology.

'If life does continue to arrive from space then we have to completely change our view of biology and evolution,' Prof Wainwright added. 'New textbooks will have to be written.'

He said further 'crucial' tests on the samples are planned and researchers will carry out further experiments during a meteor shower in October.
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Bizarro Earth

2013 is strange, part 18: September 2013

Last Messages
YouTube
Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:41 UTC
Image
The green fireball that turned night into day over Ferrara, Italy on September 3rd 2013, the second major fireball to explode over Italy in a week.
'2013 is strange, part 18' covers the 8 days from August 27, 2013 to September 4, 2013 - during which we saw major wildfires in Southern California and elsewhere, volcanic eruptions in Japan and elsewhere, fireballs in Italy and elsewhere... we live in interesting times!

This series include strange phenomena of all kinds and awesome natural events or beautiful phenomena in 2013. Enjoy my editing!

You can find all my other videos for the collective awakening on my channel 2013MESSAGE.


This is an educational/teaching and research purposes only video.

This application is not commercial and is free to use.

Music

1) Pip John - Dante's Riddle
2) How To Dress Well-Take It On (Holy Other Remix)
3) Sun Glitters - The Wind Caresses Her Hair
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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Signs of change in September 2013

HawkkeyDavis Channel
YouTube
Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:21 UTC
Image
A snapshot of the weather around the planet in the past week or so. Floods devastate parts of the U.S., Mexico and India; tornadoes wipe out Tokyo and Bangkok suburbs; mass fish deaths in the U.S. and China; a smokenado in the U.S. (?! yes, it's new to us too!); massive fireballs over Italy (for the second week running) and the U.S. (where they're now being reported daily); major hailstorms in the UK... what in the world is going on?

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