Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Animal News

Photo credit: Cathal McNaughton

The British are easily shocked. The Daily Mail (UK) reported yesterday (HT: WorldNetDaily) on this pelican's unusual dinner.

Families strolling through a London park were left shocked when a pelican picked up and swallowed an unsuspecting pigeon.

The Eastern White pelican struggled with the desperately frantic pigeon in its beak for more than 20 minutes before swallowing it whole.

Did these people have sympathy for the unfortunate pelican whose meal put up such a fight? No. Did they try to thank the pelican for removing a messy pigeon from the park? No. Instead, they were "aghast" at the sight.

It reminds me of something a friend of mine told me about her animal-loving friend at Sea World. When they went to look at the penguins (forgive me, my friend, if I got the animal wrong), her friend got excited that you could feed them, but she was on a budget and didn't want to spend the money for it. So my friend bought the penguin food, and when she presented it to her friend, her friend shrieked in horror. "They're fish!" she said.

"That's what they eat," my friend said. "What were you expecting?"

"Bread?"

It's Nature, folks. Cruel, heartless Nature. We don't have to like it, but animals eat other animals.

***

The second story, reported Monday by ABC News (HT: WorldNetDaily), is about a deer. They don't eat other animals.

Seventh-grader Kevin Cox was reminded this weekend that animals are unpredictable, and sometimes, just plain odd.

Kevin was warming up for a cross-country race in Bend, Ore., when a deer strolled by.

"I thought it would be pretty cool to pet a deer," Kevin said. "So I walked up and started petting this deer. And then it jumped on my back so I pushed it off and started walking away. And then I looked back and saw it running after me. That really scared me."

"So I started running away, and I thought it was kinda funny at first," Kevin said. "Until, you know, it ran after me for a good about seven minutes."

Kevin's cross-country training came in handy in this situation.

"I didn't know what the deer was gonna do to me when it caught up," he said. "I ran off. … And I was jumping over bushes. And I was running around in circles to get it to stop following me, and it kept on following me. That was kinda creepy."

"It caught up to me, and then it jumped on my back and started licking my ear, so I pushed it off and it started licking my ear again," Kevin said. "So I just kept on running, and there were coaches with sweat shirts and they yelled at me to come towards them. So I ran towards them, and they shooed the deer off with their sweat shirts."

Lucky break for Kevin. He says he won't be petting any deer from now on. Neither should you.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The deer story just really creeps me out. Why was it biting his ear? Why wasn't it afraid? Isn't there some law of nature that requires deer to be afraid of us?

At least it wasn't a fox. Foxes are carnivores, you know, and would bite your ear clean off.

SkyePuppy said...

Anonymous,

The article said they thought the deer was using the kid as a salt-lick. He (the kid) had been warming up for a running race. The deer was licking his ear, not biting it.

I hope you're not as creeped out now.