After gloriously soaring to freedom over Falmouth on Sunday, a rare yellow-nosed albatross is back in captivity, thousands of miles from its South Atlantic range.

Jane Dolph and her son were driving in the pouring rain Monday afternoon when they were startled by an enormous waddling bird in the middle of the road, under a Route 25 overpass in Plymouth. A radio antenna was strapped to its back.

“It was such a beautiful bird,” Dolph said yesterday. “If it was a pigeon, I would have said leave it.”

She didn’t know that it was the albatross that researchers from the Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine had released the previous day on a Cape Cod beach, hoping it would fly far out to sea. Dolph’s son Cyrus frantically called for help and found a Wareham wildlife rehabilitator to take the bird in. Last night, the albatross was back at Tufts, where it had been nursed back to health after being discovered emaciated in a Maine cow pasture a month ago.

Scientists are unsure why the bird returned to shore, but say it is in good health. Perhaps the winds were too light to support its wings, which span 6 feet. Or maybe the creature became disoriented. They are running tests and hope to release it again, this time miles out at sea.

Police in Sanford stumbled onto an unusual case Friday morning.

Officers were on the trail of a bovine bandit, WESH 2 News reported.

Whether it was on the hunt for a midnight snack or just plain bored, the restless cow was on the move in Seminole County.

It began around midnight, when the cow somehow got outside a fence at state Road 46 and Richmond Avenue. It wandered into the road and into the path of a driver.

“I just didn’t want to hit him, you know. I was more worried about the cow than I was my truck. No reason to hurt something innocent, you know,” Neil Roberts said.

Roberts notified two Sanford police officers, who were at the scene of a carjacking down the road.

“It could be deadly. I mean a cow is an animal, it’s huge, a lot of mass, a lot of weight there. It could be deadly if a car were to hit a cow,” Sanford Police Department Sgt. Dave Morgenstern said.

The officers worked with a Seminole County sheriff’s deputy to get the cow back inside the fence, and it wasn’t long until the cow came home.

Hummingbirds, with their flighty nature and iridescent plumage, are celebrated visitors at windowsills and bird feeders across North America, even more so if they ever slow down long enough to pose for a photo.

But the Bellaire family from Corbeil discovered earlier this week that when a male ruby-throated hummingbird stays still for too long, something is wrong.

The Bellaires were taking photos of a hummingbird hanging out in their neighbour’s garden Wednesday evening when they realized something was wrong with the small bird. It wasn’t flying away from the family of four.

“We went outside and took a couple pictures and then we all realized that it couldn’t fly,” said Kayleen Bellaire, 12, who cared for the bird Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

“So I brought it inside to protect it.”

Kayleen called her grandmother for some advice. She told Kayleen to put the bird in a box filled with something soft, like grass, which they did.

And despite a failed feeding attempt Wednesday before going to bed, the bird finally drank some sugar water from a pipet - similar to a glass eye dropper - Thursday morning before the family brought it to the North Bay and District Humane Society where it was later transferred into the care of Kay MacKinnon, owner and operator of the new Northern Lights Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Marten River.

“I’ve always liked wildlife and I just wanted to help the bird,” Kayleen said modestly of her efforts, noting she has considered becoming a veterinarian.

MacKinnon, who had successfully transferred the bird to the centre by 4 p.m. Thursday, said both its wings were intact, but it was missing several tail feathers.

“It looks like something grabbed him,” she said. “They (ruby-throated hummingbirds) come all the way from Mexico and then to have something like this happen to them here is sad.”

MacKinnon said because the bird’s wings are not broken, it stands a good shot at surviving.

“I’ve had him in hand and he’s been flapping both his wings nicely,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s got to grow some feathers.” MacKinnon will look after the bird and encourage its recovery until October, when it will begin the long migration back to Mexico for the winter.

According to the Bird Rescue Centre in Santa Rosa, Calif., injured birds should be gently picked up around the shoulders so the wings are held against the body and cannot flap. Also, injured birds should only be fed water or sugar water, as the Bellaires did, to avoid foreign food sources that could damage the bird’s digestive system.

They should be kept in a cardboard box, prepared before handling the bird, with a soft towel on the bottom and a cover on the top.

A bald eagle pair has become the first of their species to become parents in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in 70 years.

Rangers are encouraging humans to keep their distance from the birds, which have set up housekeeping high in a large tree.

Pedestrians have been banned from the railroad tracks near the nest, and signs posted on a hiking trail urge walkers not to linger near the nest, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.

A pair of bald eagles nested in the same area in the park last year but produced no eggs.

Big Cat Falls at Philadelphia Zoo has some new residents.

Three rare Amur tiger cubs were born last night, the zoo announced today. They appear to be healthy, according to the zoo.

Female tigers keep their cubs hidden after they’re born, the zoo says, and the tiger family will remain off-exhibit for about three months so that Kira can care for her cubs in privacy. Amur tigers are the largest of all big cats.

Hero the dog is en route from Iraq to New Hampshire.

U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes says the puppy that Army Spc. Justin Rollins rescued off the streets of Samarra the day before he died has a health certificate and a travel plan for her trip to New Hampshire.

If all goes well, the dog is scheduled to arrive Thursday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, visit a veterinarian and be kept overnight. Hero will then be brought to Hodes’ office in Concord Friday.

Brittany Murray, Rollins’ fiancee, and Mitchell and Rhonda Rollins, the dead soldier’s parents, also are expected at Hodes’ office to greet Hero and take her home to Newport.

Rollins was killed in March by a roadside bomb

The Topeka Zoo announces that hatching of two Golden Eagle Chicks.

The zoo says the birds hatched on April 27 and May 1.

Both chicks are being kept in the nest by their parents and are not visible to the public yet.

Zoo staff says the chicks will be very dependent on their parents for feeding and care for the next few months.

The Topeka Zoo has had the Golden Eagles since the mid-1960s.

The zoo became the first zoo to successfully hatch Golden Eagles in captivity in 1971.

The zoo has produced a total of 57 chicks since then.

Deep in the heart of the Florida Keys, wildlife officials are laying bait laced with poison to try to wipe out a colony of enormous African rats that could threaten crops and other animals.

U.S. federal and state officials are beginning the final phase of a two-year project to eradicate the Gambian pouched rats, which can grow to the size of a cat and began reproducing in the remote area about eight years ago.

“This is the only place in the United States where this is occurring,” said Gary Witmer, a biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“They don’t belong here and they need to be controlled.”

A former exotic pet breeder, living in a small house, bred the species and allowed the critters to escape.

Without eradication, wildlife officials fear the rats could eventually make their way onto the Florida mainland where they could quickly destroy fragile ecosystems.

“They could cause a lot of damage,” Witmer said.

In Zimbabwe, for example, ravenous Gambian rats are blamed for damaging nut and young pea crops.

Grassy Key is a 1,500-acre (607-hectare) spit of land, lined with subtropical hardwood hammocks and flowering bougainvillea bushes, about 60 miles north of Key West at Florida’s southern tip. Streets are named after limes, lemons, peaches and avocados.

Like other islands in the Florida Keys, Grassy Key is a contrast of inland rustic wooden cottages just a stone’s throw from multimillion-dollar waterfront mansions.

“Florida’s become quite the hotbed. Florida and Hawaii are vying for which state has the most invasive species,” Witmer said.

That dubious honor is attributed to the region’s encroaching development, subtropical climate and free-spirited residents who like to keep exotic species, Witmer said.

“VERY MESSY ANIMALS”

In mid-April, Florida Keys wildlife officials found another invasive species: an 8-foot (2.4-metre) Burmese python. The first wild Burmese snake to be discovered in the archipelago, officials say, was found in a Key Largo state park.

The snake had swallowed two of an estimated 500 remaining and endangered Key Largo wood rats, one outfitted with a radio-tracking collar.

Unlike the wood rats, the Gambian rats “don’t have any real friends, that we can tell,” said Scott Hardin, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s exotic species coordinator.

Gambian pouched rats, targeted for eradication during the next six weeks, are not related to the Key Largo wood rat.

The African rats can weigh 6 to 9 pounds (2.7-4 kg), with body shades ranging from brown to gray. They have large ears, black, beady eyes, hamster-like pouched facial cheeks, sharp teeth and distinctive long, stringy and white-marked tails.

This week, wildlife officials began baiting 1,000 traps laid out in a grid with narrow four-inch (10-cm) openings. Peanut butter, almond extract and anise are the lures.

Most of the rats will die quickly in underground burrows after ingesting the bait laced with toxic zinc phosphide.

“They’re a big rodent. They’re not particularly attractive. I don’t understand why anyone would want them as a pet,” Witmer said. “They’re very messy animals.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and the Food and Drug Administration have banned importation of Gambian rats since 2003.

That was after an outbreak of monkey-pox, similar to but milder to humans than smallpox, was linked to Gambian rat contact with prairie dogs in the U.S. Midwest.

The CDC hopes to study the carcasses and fecal samples of Gambian rats from the Grassy Keys to learn about internal parasites, but they have shown no signs of monkey-pox.

“We’re lucky that’s the case,” Witmer said. “They sure can bite.”

The way Krissie the cat is filling in for Miranda the dog, she just might just warrant a Mother of the Year nomination.

Miranda is a dachshund, one of 31 dogs recently plucked away from a Union Grove dog hoarder. Twenty-seven of the dogs were discovered March 25 crammed into dog carriers in a locked storage unit, without food or water and covered in feces.

Days later their hoarder, Susan A. Ball of Union Grove, gave up four more dogs she had in her home.

Ball has been charged with four misdemeanors for her actions. Many of the dogs in her possession were dehydrated and malnourished, including a pregnant dachshund since dubbed Miranda.

“At first they thought her puppies were dead,” said Jody Halladay, senior humane officer and animal services director at Countryside, 2706 Chicory Road. “Then somebody thought they felt some movement, and she got very sick.”

Monday night Dr. Tom Mano at Racine Veterinary Hospital, 5748 Taylor Ave., performed a Caesarean section on the dachshund, and two female puppies were born alive.

But there was no way their sick mother could care for them. That’s where Krissie came in.
Krissie had been a stray cat, trapped and brought to Countryside. She moved into a foster home with Jim and Joyce Bates of Mount Pleasant, who almost constantly shelter dogs and cats for Countryside.

In Krissie’s case, she was pregnant. Her three kittens are now a bit more than a week old.
Tuesday, Miranda’s two pups entered the Bates’ home near Regency Mall. Then they entered Krissie’s litter.

The Bateses first rubbed kittens against both puppies to give them that smell. Then they placed the kittens back and added the puppies.

Voila! The mother cat is now nursing three kittens and two puppies.

“We’re wondering if the cats are going to bark or the dogs are going to meow,” Joyce quipped.
She said that Krissie responds to the puppies’ whimpering by checking to make sure they’re OK.

“She’s gone from a trapped (stray) cat to a heroine now,” Bates remarked.

In about eight weeks, when the puppies and kittens are weaned, Krissie and the pups will go to Countryside for adoption. The kittens will follow when they’re about 12 weeks old.

The fate of Miranda — who the vet hospital’s staff named partly for a character in “Sex and the City” — is less certain. She had been vastly underweight, debilitated in several ways and undergoing the stress of pregnancy. As of Friday she was still extremely sick, not eating and on intravenous fluids only, said Liz Dahlstrom, practice manager at the vet hospital.

But if Miranda recovers, it might be some time before the clinic’s staff will give her up to Countryside and adoption.

“When the dog came over here, everybody fell in love with her,” Dahlstrom said. “We’re pretty attached to her.”

It’s a sobering - and sometimes overlooked - statistic from the Iraq War.

Of the more than 22,000 troops injured in the conflict, more than 500 have come home as amputees.

A New York organization and a Chicago-area teenager are coming to their aid through the VetDogs program, which provides service dogs to such veterans.

“From when the soldier gets wounded and loses a limb, the treatment and rehab is first class,” says Mike Sergeant, the chief training officer for the program, which was started last year by the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind in Smithtown, N.Y. “But (there’s) a comment that has been made to us, from the veterans: Once they go home they truly are forgotten. I think the best comment I heard, when we issued a dog (recently), was, `This dog is my ticket back to the real world.’”

Since its founding 60 years ago, the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind has been providing guide dogs, at no charge, to blind individuals. Included in that group are U.S. military veterans.

“One of the original tenets of our mission statement was to provide guide dogs for returning wounded who were blind or visually impaired,” says Jeff Bressler, the foundation’s chief marketing officer.

About three years ago, after studies indicated that the number of blind and visually impaired Americans was going to double within the next 20 years, the Guide Dog Foundation ratcheted up its involvement with the Veterans Administration, and has provided more than 30 dogs since that time.

And last April, the organization began VetDogs, a program that provides service dogs for amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan. The dogs help the vets with balance and fetching, and are taught to react in emergencies. They also serve as friends.

Jose Ramos lost his left arm and suffered back and leg injuries when he deflected a rocket east of Fallujah in 2004. In January, the 26-year-old former Marine with 3/1 Scouts Sniper platoon became the first veteran to receive a dog through the program. His new partner is Stryker, a 2-year-old male Lab.

“One of the hardest things for people to realize is, when you get out of the military, in a way you’re sort of thrown out,” he said from Washington, where he and Stryker were undergoing training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. “A lot of us weren’t ready to get out. But due to the injuries we had to get out, and you lose all those brothers that you had in the service. You still talk to them, but talking to them on the phone isn’t the same as being with them all the time, which you’re used to. Stryker kind of fills that void.”

Ramos says Stryker assists him in getting up and down stairs and into bed, and fetches anything he might drop, such as his keys or wallet. In addition, Stryker goes with Ramos to George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where he’s studying international relations and trying to double-minor in Arabic and Islamic studies. Ramos was recently named to the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, a bipartisan commission investigating the treatment of wounded service members.

“He wears a vest with pockets, and he’s trained to carry 10 pounds,” Ramos says. “So when he goes to school he can help carry books.”

But the training - the dogs and then the dog-veteran team - is expensive, close to $40,000 according to Sergeant. That’s where Ari Schiff of Lincolnwood, Ill., comes in. A junior at Francis W. Parker High School, he wants to raise $30,000 to donate to the cause.

Schiff, 17, says he learned about the need for the dogs last August when he met a Marine Corps captain during a Colorado rafting trip.

“I asked him what the most important need was for soldiers coming back to the States,” Schiff says. “And he said a lot of guys needed guide dogs because it’s not a federally funded service.”

Schiff’s nascent efforts have included speaking to teachers at school and going door to door. He has raised about $6,500, a start at paying a debt, he figures.

“I really appreciate everything people in the military are doing for us,” says Schiff, who hopes to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. “This is a good way to pay them back.”