It’s a reality show with a difference. On a visit to Chhatbir zoo the last thing you expect to see is a man atop a tree whistling away to glory, a wildlife guard making loud, strange noises and another one busy beating a drum.

No, it’s not even an effort to recreate a tiger hunting scene from yesteryears. In fact, what greets visitors at the zoo is wildlife authorities pulling off every trick in the animal management book to lure a 11-month-old white tiger to go back to its enclosure.

The tiger is one of the two such cats brought from Delhi zoo some days back and released from captivity on Saturday morning, and has since then been playing hide and seek with zoo keepers.

Probably, it’s trying to convey something — the weather, the living place, or maybe just a day or two of solitude.

Whatever be, zoo officials, after losing a few from the tribe recently, are now too fond of the cat to leave it alone.

On Monday, they tried to push the female tigress near the wire mesh and grills of the locked enclosure, hoping that it may at least respond to feminine sweet-talking.

Field director Dharmender Kumar and zoo warden Neeraj Gupta seemed the most worried of all, finding it difficult to chose from options being suggested by all except those inside cages.

Recent criticism for showing negligent in handling the felines in captivity too proved a hindrance as officials dared not touch any tranquilliser or any other medical aid, fearing the worst.

The official reason, however, remained: “It is only a child enjoying all those mood swings.”

A mother cat in China has adopted a mouse, letting it join her family of newborns.

The cat was brought into a children’s clothing store to catch mice, reports Yanzhao City News.

A mother cat in China has adopted a mouse, letting it join her family of newborns /Lu Feng.

Ten days ago, the cat gave birth to five kittens.

“She stays in the box all day long, taking care of her babies, but three days ago, my colleague found a small mouse playing with the kittens,” said a spokesperson for the store in Shijiazhuang city.

“The cat was protecting the mouse, and would become alert if anyone came too close.”

The store staff threw the mouse out once, but immediately the cat ran to bring it back and let it play with her kittens.

Experts say it’s quite exceptional, but that maybe the cat became lenient after becoming a mother.

The largest of the world’s “big cats”, the Amur tiger, has bounced back from the brink of extinction after the charity WWF disclosed that it had reached its highest population for more than a century.

The Amur is a magnificent beast, its glossy gold and black coat gleaming as it pads its way on huge paws across the snowy wastes of Siberia and northern China. The tiger has been hunted relentlessly by those who covet its gorgeous fur, or want to exploit the fabled healing qualities of its crushed bones for traditional Chinese medicine. Or those who simply want to kill this giant of nature to hang its head as a trophy on the wall.

The prospects for the Amur tiger, also known as the Siberian, Korean or Manchurian tiger, have looked grim for many years. It was poised to join the white-fin dolphin of the Yangtze river as the latest species made extinct by man’s unstoppable encroachment. Everyone thought the tiger was dead as a dodo.

However, a census by the Russians this year showed there were 480 to 520 Amur tigers living on the remote edge of Siberia.

This puts the total world population at about 600, said Alexei Vaisman, head of the Russia WWF’s anti-animal trafficking programme. Mr Vaisman said that at one point, the tigers were close to being extinct. The creature’s main habitats are eastern Russia and north-east China. The tiger can grow up to 3.3 metres long and weigh as much as 300kg (660lb). They are fierce beasts that have been known to attack bears.

To survive the bitterly cold Siberian winter the tiger has fine, long fur and a thick coating of fat. Its coat is lighter than other tigers and its big paws function like snow shoes as it crosses the icy terrain.

A fully grown Amur usually lives in an area with a diameter of 100 to 300 kilometres, and uses its urine to mark the boundary that other tigers cannot breach, according to experts.

The Russians count the tiger population every three or four years and the population has stabilised at the highest level the food chain can sustain.

The Soviet Union banned tiger poaching in the 1950s, rescuing the species, and a joint programme between the WWF and the Russian government in 1994 nearly doubled the population.

While the overall figures are encouraging, the problem still remains that the tiger’s habitat is diminishing in north-east Siberia, where there are only around 40 left, said Mr Vaisman.

“I’m a pessimist on the survival of the Amur,” he said. “I think it could go.”

A major problem remains the use of crushed tiger bones in traditional Chinese medicine to cure impotence. The skeleton of an Amur tiger can fetch £10,000 on the black market.

The Chinese have also banned tiger-hunting and have also been trying to introduce artificially bred Amur tigers into the wild. Chinese scientists claimed last year that 12 of the animals bred in captivity had developed instincts to survive in the wild, four years after being released from a breeding base.

In December last year, a coalition of environmental groups organised a group of volunteers to go to north-east China to clear snares that were a threat to the animal’s survival.

Some hospitals are getting help from a tireless group of volunteers. They never complain and only ask for a little food and water for their services. When even the human touch isn’t enough, it’s time to call in the dogs!
Meet everyone’s favorite physical therapist- Hans the dog! An accident just more than a year ago left him paralyzed, but don’t tell him that.

“He’ll come up and so you can pet him, and he’s just the sweetest little dog,” said Lynne Mell.

Mell is recuperating from a stroke — a long process involving painful physical therapy.

“Least favorite is this,” Mell said. “It’s stretching out, but without it I can’t walk. I can’t move.”

But Hans helps.

“Petting him, they have to really control the movement of their hands, they have to be gentle,” said Anne Huber, Hans’ owner. “They don’t want to hurt the dog.”

“It makes them really concentrate on their hand movement.”

Research shows animal-assisted therapy can reduce heart rate and blood pressure, lessen anxiety during medical procedures, increase long- and short-term memory, and motivate patients.

But Hans is a special case. Though he’s not a certified therapy dog — his disability reminds patients of everything they can do.

“I feel so bad for him, oh but he manages, he gets around,” Mell said.

Hans faces obstalcles — and overcomes them. He depends on a wheelchair … and never lets it slow him down!

“This dog is wandering around, and it doesn’t seem to bother him at all — it actually enhanced his life,” Huber said.

And inspires patients to restart their lives, limbs and hearts.

Hans injured his back jumping off a sofa — an injury many dachshunds like him are at risk for.

Everything above the break works fine, but his back legs are paralyzed — that’s why he wears a diaper.

Therapy Dogs International is one organization that trains and certifies therapy dogs. There are now more than 13,000 therapy dogs in the U.S.

Turkey is one of the most spectacular countries on earth, with an extraordinary rich cultural and natural heritage. The main reason underpinning this richness is Turkey’s location. It intersects three old world continents: Asia, Europe and Africa. Over thousands of years, many species of birds, plants and other biodiversity have found their home in this country.

Turkey is known to host three out of every hundred species of plants in the world; it is indeed one of the richest plant countries in the world. Scientists have identified 34 “global biodiversity hotspots” on earth, three of which are in Turkey.

Birds are probably the best species that exhibit Turkey’s natural wealth. The Central Anatolian Plateau and the plains of Eastern Turkey host tens of thousands of water birds including the globally threatened White-headed Duck and the Greater Sand Plover.

The fascinating diversity of the species is now severely threatened by the immense growth of the Turkish economy that depends on the use of natural resources. Doğa Derneği, BirdLife Partner in Turkey, is the leading conservation NGO in Turkey working to safeguard Turkey’s most beautiful natural landscapes.

Doğa Derneği has been closely collaborating with the local communities at the important bird spots and has trained hundreds of bird experts across the country who will be employed to run DoğaTours trips. Dr. Çağan H. Sekercioğlu and Soner Bekir were the first Turkish people to have successfully run a bird tour in Turkey in 2005 and they have played a major role in founding and operating Doğa Tours.

They now arrange a tour called The Eagles of Istanbul. Istanbul is known for its indisputable historical sites. As well as its historical attributes, it is known to be on one of the world’s most important bird migration routes. Thousands of birds of prey and storks soar over this fascinating city every spring and autumn. Apart from Istanbul’s amazing panorama, one also has the chance of having the unique experience by witnessing thousands of little spotted eagles, buzzards, storks and other soaring birds. Sarıyer, located on the edge of Istanbul’s last surviving forests, is an ideal location to watch the migration miracle.

PROFOUNDLY deaf Trevor Larke did not think a hearing dog would make much difference to a life he had almost given up on.

That was until the former Greene King brewery worker and his wife Jean were introduced to Megan - a specially trained terrier cross who has utterly transformed their existence and on one occasion even saved 61-year-old Mr Larke’s life.

Now, six-year-old Megan has been recognised for how she has changed her owner’s life as one of 25 dogs across the country nominated for the Heroic Hound competition run by Hearing Dogs for the Deaf charity to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Mrs Larke, of Gloucester Road, Bury St Edmunds, said: “We have had to eat our words many times since we got Megan. We didn’t think it would make much difference, but she has transformed Trevor’s life and given him a reason to live.”

She said she and her husband were delighted with Megan’s latest accolade: “We were sent a letter just before Easter saying she had been nominated - we were so pleased and proud - Trevor was chuffed when he found out.

“I said it was an honour to be nominated and it would mean even more if we won but if we don’t Megan will still be our hero.

“Trevor had to retire early due to bad health and he gave up on life. He just wanted to sit down and give up - he was ready to die. But then when we got Megan he had to take her out, she gave him more confidence and made him more independent.”

After 18 months, Mr Larke, who was born profoundly deaf, decided to go out shopping on his own for the first time in five years and Megan showed just how special she was by saving him from a potentially serious accident.

Mrs Larke said: “He was on his mobility scooter with Megan, and an ambulance was heading to town where someone had collapsed.

“Trevor couldn’t see the lights as it was behind him. Megan touched his leg and got off the scooter alerting Trevor to danger - he then saw the ambulance and got out of the way. She saved his life.”

Megan also sat with Mr Larke while he had an epileptic fit when they were out - and now alerts Mrs Larke when he has a fit.

In 2004, Megan helped her home town win the Hearing Dog Friendly Town competition. People in the town were not aware of hearing dogs before Megan and now she and her owners are welcomed wherever they go.

Mrs Larke said: “The bond between Trevor and Megan is amazing, they go everywhere together. If Trevor goes out without her for even a minute she is jumping up and down. She is wonderful and has done so much for Trevor.”

Colleen Ovenden readily admits what she did was foolhardy, but as an animal lover, she’d do it again in a heartbeat.

On Saturday afternoon, she saw a domestic cat, frozen with fear, in the middle of Highway 30 with cars whizzing by at speeds of 100 kilometres an hour or more. She braked on the highway to save the cat.

Ovenden, 43, was driving back to Montreal from an Easter visit with her in-laws in Sorel when she spotted the grey-and-white cat crouched in the slow lane just past Contrecoeur. The car in front of her had driven over but not hit the terrified feline.

“I said to my sister-in-law, ‘Holy s–t! That’s a cat,’ and put the hazard lights on and pulled onto the shoulder,” Ovenden said yesterday. “My sister-in-law (Sophie Genereux) ran out of the car and tried to direct traffic away from the cat, into the passing lane, but two more cars, at least, drove over the cat, which was frozen in shock.”

When there was a break in the traffic, Genereux ran onto the highway and scooped up the cat. When she put it in her car, it promptly urinated all over the seat.

Ovenden has named the cat 30 West and is taking it to a veterinarian today to be checked out. What she can tell is that the male had been declawed but not neutered and has deep cuts above the right eye, on the hind legs and scratches on its face. The fur around its neck bears the telltale indentation of a collar.

“There are no houses around there. It’s a desolate part of the highway,” Ovenden said. “This is a domestic cat, but why would you declaw it and not neuter it?”

The idea that someone threw the cat out of a car is too horrible to contemplate, but how else could a pet wind up on a busy highway? she wonders.

The traumatized cat has been hiding in a closet at Ovenden’s Mile End duplex for three days. Although scratched and cut, the cat allows Ovenden’s daughters Emilie, 9, and Mikayla, 5, to pet and hold him.

“Right now I don’t know if we’ll keep him. First we want the vet to make him better,” Ovenden said. The household already has two large dogs, two hamsters and a guinea pig.

“If the owner came forward, I’d ask for proof it’s their cat and then I’d say, ‘How did your cat get on the highway and why was it declawed and not neutered?’

“I know pulling over for a cat was dangerous but, of course, I’d do it again.”

The cardinal may be Ohio’s state bird, but the fowl spotted most in a recent count is considered by many to be its No. 1 pest.

The aggressive, messy Canada goose is so annoying that even the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium doesn’t want it around .

Because of its location along the O’Shaughnessy Reservoir, a major flyway for geese, the zoo is frequently visited by the unwanted birds, said Dan Hunt, assistant director of living collections.

“The first thing we try and do is exclude them from nesting in the sites that we know traditionally they might use,” Hunt said.

That doesn’t always work, so each morning and evening, Bonnie the border collie makes her rounds at the zoo, chasing away the geese who linger near ponds, leaving behind liberal amounts of droppings.

The Canada goose has been the most populous bird in Ohio in three of the past five years of the Great Backyard Bird Count. It was the second-most spotted bird in the country in this year’s count, Feb. 16-19, behind the American robin.

The northern cardinal finished a distant No. 2 in both Ohio and Columbus. The other finishers in Columbus, in order, were the house sparrow, ring-billed gull and dark-eyed junco.

Sponsored by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, the count enlists 80,000 volunteers in North America to count the birds they saw. Ohio was seventh among U.S. states in the number of participants this year.

“We’ve created the perfect goose habitat throughout this area with a number of retention ponds and the reservoir,” said Tom Sheley, owner of the Wild Birds Unlimited on Riverside Drive and a participant in this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count.

Ohio also is smack in the middle of several birds’ migration patterns, said Judy Kolo-Rose, a member of Columbus Audubon.

Birds heading south from Canada in the winter and north from Central and South America in the summer pass through the state.

“Ohio is a very birdy state,” Kolo-Rose said.

This year, a record 3,652 Ohioans participated in the count, 132 in Columbus and 117 in the city’s suburbs. Last year, 2,904 people participated across the state, 80 in Columbus.

As a result, more birds were spotted in Columbus, 8,602 this year vs. 5,293 last year.

The count is done in February because that is the middle of a nonmigratory period, Sheley said. It’s also easy to attract birds to feeders because natural food is still not in bountiful supply.

Pat Leonard, who coordinates the count for Cornell University, said the reports from volunteers help scientists evaluate trends in the bird community. That is increasingly important as the global climate changes, she said.

“We’re already seeing some changes in ranges from species that might not go quite as far south as they usually do,” Leonard said.

The Canada goose, for example, goes only as far south as necessary to find open water. Last year, only 445 were spotted in Columbus. With this year’s mild winter and relatively unfrozen O’Shaughnessy and Hoover reservoirs, the number of geese increased by nearly five times.

For Port Columbus, that is more than an inconvenience.

“Geese can create a hazard with flying aircraft, such as engine ingestion,” airport spokesman Dave Whitaker said. “That is not conducive to good flying.”

Among other things, the airport places inflatable alligators on the ponds at the Airport Golf Course to discourage the geese from landing.

If none of the techniques works, the airport has the authority to shoot the geese.

Whitaker said he doesn’t think it’s gone that far yet.

US coastguards had to use a helicopter to rescue a man who climbed a 60ft pine tree to retrieve his pet parrot.

William Hart, 35, from Montgomery County, near Houston, Texas, followed his £1 000 white cockatoo Geronimo after it escaped its cage.

After he got stuck, about 30 Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters converged on the tree but the ground was too wet to get a ladder near the tree.

Houston Police Department’s water rescue team then tried to reach Mr Hart with a rope, but it was not long enough.

As daylight began to fade, the decision was made to call in the coastguard from Galveston, reports the Houston Chronicle.

Before the helicopter finally retrieved him, Mr Hart could be seen standing on a branch holding the bird under his shirt and smoking a cigarette.

“In my 18 years as a firefighter, I’ve never seen anything like this,” Porter Fire Chief Jody Binnion said.

Apart from a few scratches and a bite on his finger where the frightened bird nipped him, Mr Hart was unscathed and relieved to be back on solid ground.

Cradling the shaking bird in his arms, he said he was surprised by all the fuss, but had no regrets: “He’s my baby. I’d do it again.”

His 14-year-old daughter had forgotten to put the latch back on Geronimo’s cage after feeding him and the bird had flown out the bedroom window

Ever have a pet that was lost? A lot of people know the feeling of what it is like to have their pet be lost, it is hurts emotionally to know that they might be hurt somewhere and you cannot help in any way, shape, or form at that moment in time.

Mickey, the Boston terrier that was lost for four years, finally arriving at home.

However, in Missouri there ws a happier ending to one of these lost pet stories. After 4 grueling years, Mickey, a Boston Terrier was reunited with his owners after they had lost him in Kansas City four years ago. The owner Cher Jarosz and her daughter Kari Mitchell probably thought that Mickey was in fact gone forever, and was never to be found again. But their luck had changed as soon as they got a call from an animal shelter almost 1,100 miles away in a city called Billings, Montana.

What essentially led to the safe return of the Boston terrier named Mickey? Apparently there was a microchip planted on Mickey which helped the Billings Animal Shelter return Mickey safely to his family after all of these lost years.

The office manager at Billing’s Animal Shelter, Kristal Ward, had this to say to CNN about the incident that ended happily after all:

“Some lady from the public walked in the back door. She found the dog running up the street. She tossed him to me, and that’s how it started. […] I called that vet clinic because they were the one that should have a record of that chip. I gave them the chip number, and the woman kind of started screaming. She goes, ‘Oh my God, is that a Boston terrier? Oh my God, it belongs to Kari Mitchell. She used to work here.”‘ (Kristal Ward to CNN).

Afterwards Kristal Ward called Kari Michtell to make confirmation that Micket was in fact her dog.

When the dog was happily returned to the family they said he looks somewhat different, probably due to aging over the four years, and he is unresponsive to his name now. Mickey’s teeth show signs of wearing, but none of that stopped the family from still loving Mickey, the now returned Boston terrier.

Kari Mitchell had this to say about the incident to KSHB-TV in Kansas city about the incident:

“We’re happy to have him home. I just hope whoever was taking care of him, I hope they were just glad he’s home.”

In the end, it was a happy ending for Mickey, and for all.