They will work long hours over the next week to 10 days and won't collect a pension or charge for working overtime and won't call in sick - and 100 of these laborers cost only $3,000. The cost of human workers would have totaled as much as $7,500.
Leaders of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency have hired 100 goats to nibble away thick weeds on a steep slope on a weed-choked lot in the Bunker Hill high-rise district.
An electrified fence helps corral the goats and keeps them from falling over a retaining wall at the base of the slope. Security guards will be on duty when goat-keeper George Gonzales is not there to watch over the herd.
Source:
L.A.Times(via:
L.A. Unleashed)
Visitors flock to the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust in the Indian city of Chennai because of the remarkable beauty of Goya, an albino cobra.
Goya, who is a milky color with shades of pink, was a gift from Dehiwala Zoo in Sri Lanka where they specially breed albino snakes.
The three-and-a-half foot reptile was the only one of his albino siblings to survive, and is now kept on his own in a specially constructed enclosure. Goya spends most of his day indoors due to his sensitivity to light, only venturing outside for his daily meal of five live rats.
Source:
Telegraph
Even the polar bears are going green ...
Three polar bears at the Higashiyama Zoo in Nagoya, central Japan, changed their colors in July after swimming in a pond with an overgrowth of algae, prompting many questions from visitors concerned about whether the animals are sick or carrying mold, a zoo official said.
(AP Photo/Kyodo News, Shuzo Shikano)
Source:
boston.com
Referred to as 'Big Brother' or 'Xiguang' in Chinese media reports, the elephant was captured in 2005 in southwest China by illegal traders who fed him heroin-laced bananas.
The traders used the spiked bananas for several months to control him before they were arrested by police.
Xiguang was released back into the wild but was soon sent to animal protection center after his behavior appeared to suggest he was suffering withdrawal symptoms from heroin, Xinhua news agency reported.
A year of methadone injections at five times the human dosage helped wean the elephant off heroin.
Gradually, the dosage was reduced until he was completely weaned off the drug.
Now clean, Xiguang is expected to move to a wildlife park in Kunming - the capital of the elephant's home province of Yunnan on the mainland.
Source:
Telegraph
Gil Smith drove 75 miles from his home in Gilbert, Ariz., to Kearny, Ariz., for business. When he got out of the truck, he heard a cat in distress and realized it was his.
Bella had taken a nap on the truck's spare tire, which sits on a frame under the truck. Smith said Bella was hysterical, shaky, dehydrated and tired, but otherwise OK.
"I have to admit when she got out of that truck, she was kind of like a drunken sailor," Smith said. "She didn't have her sea legs yet."
According to Smith, Bella was smart enough to stay on the tire as the truck was moving.
"She had an opportunity to jump out from there, [but] she would have been so far from home we would have lost her," he said. "The fact that she stayed so close to the truck saved her."
Smith said he has added a new step to his morning routine.
"I check that truck," he said. "Every time I back out of the driveway, I look at that wheel well."
Source:
wftv.com