Mike and Linda Stabler of Waterloo are two creative people who recognized a need shared with many other horse owners and met it with technical innovation in a market that underwent little change for generations.

There are 203,000 horses in Indiana, according to a recent study commissioned by the American Horse Council Foundation, with an estimated direct effect of $779 million on the state’s economy. Additionally, there are more than 9 million horses throughout the United States, many living on small farms with only one to four of these animals.

In 2004, the Stablers launched their own business, designing and manufacturing rotary manure spreaders for small horse farms. The difficulties in using traditional manure spreaders were many, including the significant effort required to lift up to 75 pounds of manure into the machines. When deposited, the manure often would clog the opening at the bottom of the spreader until cleared by the farmer.

These conventional spreaders usually operated with gears, belts and chains that could break or wear, increasing maintenance costs. These moving parts also could become choked with fecal matter, uneaten hay or wet bedding.

The manure that was successfully distributed onto a field or pasture would be spread in large clumps, requiring weeks or months to break down and becoming part of the ground cover. These clumps would increase the likelihood of flies and worms breeding, endangering livestock and farm residents.

Alternatively, to better prepare the manure for uniform spreading in small bits, it often would be deposited in large piles to decompose for months, thereby requiring that some location on the farm be dedicated to this purpose. Because flies and other parasites can travel considerable distances, the health hazards of these manure heaps could become substantial if in close proximity to horses and other farm animals.

In recent years, several manufacturers have improved upon the traditional design for small manure spreaders. These newer devices reduced the number of moving parts and increased ease of use. Nevertheless, many of the basic shortcomings in operation and maintenance remained immutable, seemingly beyond our capacity to overcome.

Then one day six years ago, Linda Stabler was inspired to use a rotary drum device for spreading manure. Her design is ground driven. As the wheels turn the drum, the manure placed inside the rotating barrel is broken into small pieces by the circular motion and a beater bar and then released through the hundreds of small mesh openings in the steel lattice forming the sides of the cylinder.

The result: a fine layer of manure resembling peat moss in consistency is spread quickly across the ground, needing only a few days to enrich the soil with its nutrients while reducing the dangers of flies and other nuisances. Further, these layers can be deposited with much greater precision than with standard spreaders.

Because the rotary machine has no belts, chains or gears, it requires a minimum of maintenance. Produced in several models, the smallest version is only 31 inches wide, allowing the farmer to maneuver it through places where larger devices cannot fit.

Manure can be mixed with hay and other materials without any loss in performance. And because the drum rotates, the user can open and lock it at whatever height is most convenient – making the chore of filling the spreader with manure incredibly easy.

After Linda Stabler developed the concept, her husband, Mike, used his knowledge of fabrication methods and his home workshop to create prototypes, refining the design into the commercial forms now available from their firm. The response from horse owners has been gratifying, demonstrating that a better idea will be embraced by the market, even in application areas that seem to be fully developed.

There was strange discovery in east Lubbock late Monday morning, when Lubbock Animal Control received a call that a leopard or cheetah was perched in a tree on East Brown Street.

The call came from the 1800 Block of E. Brown Street. When animal control arrived on scene, they found the large cat sitting in a tree.

Animal control tells NewsChannel 11 it’s a bobcat, and our cameras caught them trying to corral the cat. It took them about two hours to get the animal into safe keeping.

“The cat was not harmed at all. Animal control did a very good job taking this cat into custody,” Director of Lubbock Animal Service Kevin Overstreet said.

Overstreet tells us the cat will not be placed at the shelter. He says they’ll most likely keep it at a private facility for exotic animals that they contract with.

Overstreet tells us they had an expert check out the bobcat. He says it was malnourished, and may have come into the city looking for food.

Janice Burleson is tending a quartet of orphaned baby rabbits, including one with a spinal cord injury.

The Oteen animal rehabilitator said this is the time of year of the wildlife baby boom. And with every boom comes either orphans or babies people assume are motherless.

“First it was baby squirrels. Right now it’s baby cottontails,” Burleson said. “I have six and three more are coming in tonight.”

The group of four arrived after someone building a driveway bulldozed through the nest, she said.

“One has a cut. The one with the spinal cord injury seems better and is responding to pain.” She’s hoping the cord is bruised and not severed.

Such is a typical day for a wildlife rehabber come spring and summer.

In Burleson’s five years as a licensed rehabilitator, she’s cared for everything from an abandoned crow to a groundhog with a head injury. Incidentally, both creatures still inhabit her property, having become too dependent to be released into the wild.

“They will live in the same area for up to 20 years,” she said. As for the groundhog, she named it Ginger, and later discovered the mammal was male.

“I’ve seen it all,” she said. “My daughter wanted to be a vet when she was 15. We met a friend who said a good way to get her foot in the door was through the (WNC) Nature Center.”

Burleson’s daughter’s foot is out of the door and onto something new, though Burleson remains in the field, mending and tending squirrels, possums, raccoons, flying squirrels and some birds that don’t require her to have a federal license.

What to do

This is the time when numerous birds, mammals and reptiles are born. That means we humans are more likely to come into contact with them and not know what to do, says Hyta Mederer, president of the Florida Wildlife Hospital and Sanctuary.

“It’s really hard to know what’s accurate and what isn’t,” Mederer says. Take, for instance, the theory about scent — touching a baby bird will cause its mother to reject it because it smells like a human. While this may be true of some animals, such as tortoises, it’s not true of the majority.

“Most animals don’t care,” says Laura Simon, field director of urban wildlife for the Humane Society of the United States.

Where’s Mom?

While the human scent story is a myth for most baby animals, it doesn’t mean humans should pick up any lonesome-looking baby and rush it to the nearest animal clinic. Many babies found around homes by themselves, in fact, aren’t far from their mothers at all.

“Our perception of motherhood is that mothers stay with their young,” Simon says. “When people find a baby animal, they assume it’s orphaned.”

That’s particularly true of rabbits, which leave their young in safe holes during the day, so as not to attract predators. To test if a rabbit has been abandoned, people can place twigs over the top of its hole and wait 24 hours. If, after one day, the twigs have not been disrupted, chances are the mother has not returned and it is abandoned.

The wildlife baby season has no specific start and end dates, but usually tapers off around late August. Until then, being cautious of feathered and furry “neighbors” and keeping their homes in mind could save lives.

If you find a . . .

• Baby squirrel: If they fall from a tree being cut down, immediately cease the tree-cutting and leave the babies out for the mother to retrieve. If it is cold outside, put the squirrels on a heating pad on low and place a shirt underneath the squirrels so they do not overheat. If the mother does not retrieve them by nightfall, contact a wildlife rehabilitator.

• Fawn: It is normal for mother deer to leave their fawn alone for long periods of time to avoid attracting predators by the mother’s scent (the young are odorless). Call a wildlife rehabilitator if the fawn is wandering and bleating constantly, or if a clearly lactating, yet dead mother is found nearby.

• Rabbit: Baby bunnies often are left alone so the mother’s scent does not attract predators. Only if the babies have been attacked by an animal or injured should you call a rehabilitator.

• Raccoon: If you find a baby raccoon alone for more than a few hours outside, it is a sign something happened to its mom. Contact a rehabilitator. To avoid orphaning baby raccoons, do not use a trap. To keep them out of your garbage, take the trash out on the morning of pickup, not the night before.

• Skunk: Sometimes baby skunks get separated from their mothers due to their poor eyesight. If you find baby skunks, place a laundry basket upside down over them to hold them in place and give the mother a chance to find them. If she does not retrieve them by the next morning, call a rehabilitator. Remember to move slowly around baby skunks. Even babies can “spritz” if they perceive an attack.

• Bird: It is a myth that if a baby bird is touched by humans, the parents will reject it. The reality is birds have strong maternal instincts and the best thing to do if you find a fallen chick is to put it gently back in its nest.

• Fledgling bird: You may think you see a bird with a broken wing, but many birds in June cannot fly yet because they are fledglings. You can tell if their parents still are taking care of them by watching to see whether adult birds fly over to feed them and by seeing if there are bird droppings on the ground. Birds poop right after they are fed, so fecal material indicates his parents are around.

DO’S AND DON’TS

• “The main thing is, people should realize songbirds live on the ground as fledglings for three days before they fly, and people think it’s an injured bird that’s left the nest,” said Michelle Dandoy, office manager at Sweeten Creek Animal and Bird Hospital. “The parents will come back and take care of them. We get inundated with fledglings, which should be left alone. It’s OK to move them to a safe location nearby if they are on a driveway or road.”

• “You can pick them up and move them.” What no one should ever do is touch baby raccoons with their bare hands, she said. “Use an instrument to pick them up. They can carry rabies.”

• Bunnies live on their own at four inches or longer. Leave them alone if they are four inches or greater and not injured. “They die very easily. Put them in a box, give them a little water, no food, and leave them alone until you can get them here or to a rehabilitator,” Dandoy said.

• If you find squirrels out of the nest, observe for a few hours because sometimes the mothers return to retrieve them.

• If attacked by a cat or other animal, bring the bird or small creature in for treatment or antibiotics, she said. If the animal is attracting flies or insects, been hit by a car or has other obvious injuries, also bring them to the vet or rehabber.

A deer which survived nine weeks with a metal bird feeder trapped in her mouth has had the object removed.

The wild deer, which has been named Mary, had still been managing to feed every night in Peter Sluggett’s garden in Plymouth.

RSPCA officers managed to catch the deer on Wednesday night and were able to remove the feeder.

“She has become just like one of the family, we love her to bits. I can’t thank them enough,” said Mr Sluggett.

‘Likes her food’

“It’s clear the bird feeder had managed to get over the top of the lip and the teeth,” said Neil Thomas from the RSPCA.

The officers prepared a trap for the deer in Mr Sluggett’s garden so they could catch her and remove the feeder.

She was not badly injured and was treated for a small bite to the tongue before being released.

“We have grown so used to her, we feed her every night and she really likes her food.

“It’s just fantastic,” said Mr Sluggett.

THINK your pet is younger than you?

Multiply its age by seven and there might be a surprise new head of your household.

Veterinarians nationwide have put the spotlight on senior pets this month, as animal-owners often don’t realise just how old their pets really are.

A seven-year-old pet is the equivalent of a 50-year-old human, Batemans Bay Veterinary Surgery’s Dr Paula Roberts said.

Better food and care for animals mean they live longer, which puts them at risk of age-related illnesses.

“Pets are living longer and are thus at higher risk of developing old-age diseases such as arthritis, kidney disease and canine Alzheimer’s,” Dr Roberts said.

“Warning signs of these problems include bad breath, sleeping more, increased urinating and drinking, and changes in weight and behaviour.”

Many health problems can be aided by a shift to special pet food once they reach seven years old. It’s best not to wait for symptoms, as many conditions are only obvious once serious damage has occurred internally.

“Kidney disease, one of the most common diseases amongst older cats and dogs, will only show symptoms once 75 per cent of kidney fuction is lost,” Dr Roberts said.

Dr Roberts has two cats, Scamp and Missy, who are 21 and 19 years old respectively.

The cats have been with Dr Roberts from birth, and are very much part of the family.

“They’re just like [my] children. They’re the same age as my niece and nephew,” she said.

Missy can’t jump as many fences as she used too - she and Scamp are housebound now - but is as physically fit as can be expected for 133 cat years old.

Scamp, at 147 cat years old, is also doing quite well. She takes arthritis pills daily, sleeps a bit longer in the sun than she used to, and has very little time for reporters who disrupt her sleep routine.

Caring for older pets is a lot like caring for older humans - the animals can’t groom themselves as they used to and eat smaller portions more regularly.

“They do tend to be very demanding of your time as they get older,” Dr Roberts said.

Scamp does suffer occasional Alzheimer’s, but so far all the cat needed when it forget something was to be picked up, turned around, and pointed in the direction of her food bowl.

A sea lion crawled out of a Delta waterway in January, across a field and into a farm near Tracy.

A 19-foot bottlenose whale achieved a British first last summer when it swam up the River Thames in London past Big Ben and Parliament, before dying.

A manatee, a creature found in warm Florida waters, made its way up the coast and followed a river last year to New York City and then swam off.

It’s not just the two humpback whales that swam upriver to Sacramento and international fame last month that have fascinated and puzzled people with travel out of the ordinary.

“There are many species that end up in places we don’t expect,” said Jay Holcomb, director of the International Bird Rescue and Research Center in Cordelia. “I think sometimes they just make mistakes.”

Or, Holcomb said, “The animals may be simply curious. Each species has its own story.”

Some scientists, environmentalists and animal rescue experts say the unusual travel may be linked to storms, food shortages, sickness or injuries. In some cases, they said, global warming or sonar testing may disrupt habitat and confuse the animals.

Scientist say they may never know what motivated Delta and Dawn, the humpback whales that visited the Delta for two weeks before returning to the Pacific Ocean last week.

After all, whales can’t talk, or at least they can’t in a way people can understand.

Under one theory, the mama whale sought out calm waters to safely rest and recuperate from suspected boat propeller wounds to both whales. The mom may have sensed she and her calf would be vulnerable to killer whales known to prowl the Northern California coast.

The humpbacks’ tale has some parallels with the plight of an endangered North Atlantic right whale and her injured calf that were out of place this winter.

The two whales — the calf with an apparent propeller wound like the two humpbacks in the Delta — were spotted in January along the Gulf of Mexico more than 1,200 miles away from their normal wintering habitat.

The Coast Guard issued alerts to shippers and boaters to steer clear of the two whales.

Some environmentalists suggested Navy testing of long-range sonar may have confused the whales. Navy officials say there is no proof.

Injured or sick animals are known to land in strange places.

A green heron too young or sick to fly boarded a San Francisco-bound BART train in August last year, causing a stir among passengers.

One rider brought the heron to the bird rescue center in Cordelia, where it was nursed to health and later released in the Suisun Marsh.

Birders are still cooing over the 2001 sighting in Marin County of a Central Asian bird that had never been seen before in North America.

The greater sand plover, a small wading bird with a thick bill, is believed to have flown over the Pacific Ocean and landed in Bolinas Lagoon.

“Birders traveled from other states to see the plover,” recalled Steve Glover, a bird-watching trip leader with the Audubon Society’s Mount Diablo chapter. “Sometimes, birds turn left when they should have turned right.”

Young birds and animals sometimes end up in odd places as they learn how and where to survive.

Albatross, big birds that live at sea, occasionally mistake barges or tankers at sea for their island breeding habitat.

“We get calls from ships docked in the Bay asking us to rescue this big bird that’s been on board for days or weeks, and it won’t leave,” said Susan Heckly, rehabilitation director at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek.

Food shortages can pressure animals to change travel patterns.

The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito this past winter rescued 34 beached young northern fur seals, a species that lives at sea, breeds on islands and rarely comes to the mainland The center usually gets no more than one or two of this type of seals in a year.

“We’re not sure what happened, but we think something may have affected their food supply,” said Doreen Moser Gurrola, assistant education director of the Center.

A bumper crop of northern fur seals born on the Farallon Islands also may have played a role in the high number of fur seals coming to shore, where they are rarely seen, Gurrola said .

Holcomb of the bird rescue center in Cordelia said he is pleased when he hears wildlife experts admit they don’t understand the strange travels of wildlife, like the two whales that just left the Delta.

“I think these animals in unexpected places puts us in our place,” Holcomb said. “It shows us there’s a lot we don’t know. Maybe the animals know a lot more than we give them credit for.”

A woman who helped rescue an injured cat on the roadside got a surprise when a veterinarian told her it was a wild and potentially dangerous bobcat.

Liza Eldred, her teenage daughter and the girl’s friend found the female bobcat Saturday on U.S. 98 in south Baldwin County, wrapped it in a sweatshirt and drove it to an animal clinic for treatment.

Veterinarian Andy Duke said the women were “extremely lucky” that the bobcat, which had a broken paw, did not panic and injure them.

They were in “a lot of danger,” Duke said.

Eldred believes the bobcat didn’t harm them because it sensed they were trying to help.

“It was not moving, making a sound,” she said. “It hissed once, so we stopped once so my daughter’s friend could move into the (far) back seat.”

Duke’s staff named the 11-pound bobcat Bobbi. He said it is undersized at 10 to 12 months old, and the animals typically grow to about 35 pounds.

Vetenarian Laura Serio, who treated the bobcast at the clinic Saturday, told the Press-Regiser on Monday that it was doing well.

“I think she will recover well in the wild,” Serio said.

A 75-year-old woman who felt threatened by a wild cat rented a trap for $55 and caught the animal.

But what’s in the cage? A rogue feline or a cat who just needs affection? A Cedar City animal-control officer compared it to Morris, the cat who appeared in TV commercials for pet food.

“There’s nothing wrong with that cat,” Lisa Haller said. “He’s a wild cat, but he’s not a rabid cat. … If we can adopt it out, we will.”

A maintenance man at the apartment building where the cat was captured won’t be taking him home.

“It looks like something out of ‘Pet Sematary,’” said Jason Murray, referring to the 1989 horror film.

Nola Burkitt said she trapped the cat after it jumped through an open window last week and attacked her cat.

“I made a lot of noise and chased it out the door,” she said. “Ever since then, I’ve been locked in my house. … I’m glad to get rid of that thing.”

Arthur Du Mosch has averted a cat-astrophe.

The 49-year-old nature guide was fast asleep Monday, his family and pet cat dozing beside him, when a larger feline hopped in his bed for a latenight visit - a wild leopard, to be exact.

Du Mosch, 49, a nature guide, didn’t flinch. Clad only in underwear and a T-shirt, he lunged at the leopard, grabbed it around the neck, then pinned it down for 20 minutes - until park rangers arrived on the scene.

“This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day,” he said, plainly. “I don’t know why I did it. I wasn’t thinking, I just acted.”

Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half-dozen of the leopards have been spotted near Du Mosch’s small community in the Negev desert in southern Israel, “but we have never heard of a leopard coming into a private home,” he said.

He said it was food, not curiosity, that lured the cat.

Those who near humans are usually old and weak, and too frail to hunt in the wild, resorting instead to the easier option of chasing down domestic dogs and cats, Shapira added.

Leopards in Israel pose no threat to people and, in fact, this leopard was chasing Du Mosch’s cat and not the humans sleeping in the bed, Shapira said. He said the leopard was very weak when captured.

Du Mosch said he probably would not have been able to control the big cat were it in better health. As a nature guide, he said, he was familiar with animals and did his best to hold down the leopard without harming it. He said he took it all in stride, “but the kids were excited.”

His young daughter had been in the room at the time because a mosquito in her own bedroom had frightened her, he said.

Nature officials said they were assessing the leopard’s health and would soon likely release him back into the wild, after fitting him with a tracking device.

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.”