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We’ve shown videos of the Big Cat Rescue group before, but one thing left out of their usual videos are all the tiny cats and the non-cat species living on the organization’s property.
The poor fellow in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia got his head stuck between two power lines. But linemen swooped in and rescued him.
Link -via Blame It on the Voices
When big storms hit the coast, adult seals can swim through the rough seas, but little guys often end up abandoned on the beach. Fortunately, the RSPCA is there to help treat them and care for them until the cool weather recedes. Best of all, we’re left with dozens of adorable baby seal pictures to cheer us up during these cold months.
An unnamed man in the town of Montmélian, France, dropped his wallet into a sewer opening in a parking garage and went to retrieve it. He then became stuck, with his head in the pipe and his legs sticking out of the manhole. The man spent the entire night like that until a passer-by called emergency services in the morning. After he was rescued, police figured out what he was doing when it happened.
Unfortunately for the man, there were yet more problems in store. Police also spotted that he had been siphoning off waste oil from his car into the sewer at the time.
Disposing of waste oil in this way is an offence in France, with serious cases risking up to two years in prison and a fine of €76,000 ($97,000).
The moral of the story: if you do something illegal, don’t get caught with your head in a sewer. Link -via Arbroath
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Clifton Vial of Nome, Alaska, set out in his Toyota Tacoma to see where a road went, but ended up stuck in a snowdrift on a deserted road that doubles as a snowmobile track. He was 40 miles from town, out of cell phone range, without provisions or much in the way of emergency equipment. Vial wrapped himself in a sleeping bag liner and waited, turning on the car occasionally for warmth. After three days, he was almost out of gasoline. On the second day he didn’t show up for work, his boss called emergency services.
The Nome Volunteer Fire Department was alerted and Vial’s co-workers and volunteer rescuers drove surrounding roads in search of the Toyota.
One searcher drove 41 miles along Kougarok Road — just a few miles from where Vial sat shivering and stranded in his pickup — but saw no tracks. The searcher turned back as daylight disappeared and the road conditions worsened, Handeland said.
Troopers joined the search. Rescuers looked for Vial on the ground and from the air, in planes and from a helicopter.
“When we get called on situations like this, it’s a needle in a haystack,” said Jim West Jr., a Nome fire department captain and search and rescue coordinator.
For Vial, the cold was worse than the hunger, he said. Still he scoured the pickup in vain for food.
His only provisions: Snow, and a few cans of Coors Light that had frozen solid in the cab.
Vial ate the beers like cans of beans. “I cut the lids off and dug it out with a knife,” he said.
Vial lost 16 pounds, but showed no signs of frostbite. Link -via Breakfast Links
A pregnant cat named Puss Puss had been missing for three days in the village of Moelfre in North Wales. She had escaped while being transported to a foster home by an animal charity worker. Then someone heard a meowing sound coming from a donation bin for used clothing! But the lock on the bin had been damaged, and it wouldn’t open. The fire brigade was called, and they, too, failed to open the bin. Finally, the entire bin was loaded up and taken 20 miles away to an engineering company.
There, steel saws were used to gain access and the mewing prisoner was revealed – as nothing more than a squeaky toy.
Kelvin Owen, who owns the engineering firm, said: ‘Once we got into the bin we heard the miaowing – it sounded just like a cat and we all started to carefully search the bags.
‘Then I found a bag of toys and picked out a toy. I said: “It couldn’t be this, could it?” As I held it it went “miaow, miaow”. Mystery solved!’
The sounds came from a talking plush toy resembling Marie from the Disney movie The Aristocats. Rescuers had a good laugh at the 12-hour effort to rescue the toy. Puss Puss is still missing, but may have been taken in by someone unaware of the search. Link -via Arbroath
Suzanna Bolton of Darwen, Lancashire, England, has an African Grey parrot named Sam and a Pomeranian named Sally. Sally was due to deliver puppies in a week when she went into premature labor in the middle of the night. Sam responded by jumping into Bolton’s bed and saying “Come on, come on,” in Bolton’s voice.
“That night he seemed to know what was going on and came looking for me to help.
“He’s never been in my bedroom before in the eight years I’ve had him, but he came up the stairs, climbed on the bed and started talking to me in my own voice with the words “come on, come on”, which I often say to Sally.
“I wondered what on earth was going on and took Sam back downstairs to his perch, but then he looked at me and squawked.
“It was then I looked in the kitchen and saw the puppies. One had died and the other five boys were all very, very cold and wet. I quickly got the heat pads out for them and got them next to a radiator, and luckily they’re now doing well.
Sam is 18 years old and is able to mimic several of the family member’s voices. Link -via Arbroath
Orange County Deputies in Laguna Hills, California were summoned by residents who heard screams from a creek bed Tuesday morning. They arrived to find an unnamed man stuck inside a tree trunk.
Firefighters and deputies said they are not sure why, but the man climbed into a narrow hole located near the base of the tree. The hole led inside the hollow tree trunk and about four or five feet underground, said Battalion Chief Kris Concepcion of the Orange County Fire Authority.
It took firefighters about 90 minutes to get the necessary equipment and safely cut through the branches of the tree to free the man from inside, he said.
The only body parts visible outside the tree truck were the man’s head and arms, he said. Part of the body was underground.
The man was checked for injuries and mental health. Link -via Arbroath
Sergei Ganyushev, a 25-year-old from Arkhangelsk, Russia, was stranded on an island in the White Sea only 150 kilometers from the Arctic Circle for 16 days. He set out along on October first to gather seaweed, but his boat sprang a leak.
Sergei managed to swim to Malaya Sennukha, one of the small stony islets dotting the area. There he survived on seaweed and rainwater, taking shelter in a makeshift dwelling of stones and a few wooden planks.
He said he gave up looking for passing ships three days before rescue and was about to take his own life when the helicopter flew overhead. When he heard the rotor, he managed to get up and wave down the aircraft.
Curiously, no one had reported Sergei missing. The helicopter was looking for survivors from another seafaring incident, in which a motorboat with a monk and a worker from a nearby Orthodox Christian monastery sank in the vicinity of the archipelago last Thursday.
The monk was found dead, but the search continues for his companion. Ganyushev was treated for hypothermia and malnutrition. Link -via Arbroath
George Trapotsis of Manchester, New Hampshire found a bull moose in his backyard pool Friday night.
“This train-like noise came through the fence and dove right into the pool,” said Trapotsis.
The moose fell right through the pool cover, according to Trapotsis. “He tore the cover, got entangled and just couldn’t move,” Trapotsis said. Trapotsis said his first concern was keeping the animal alive and freeing it from the cover.
At about midnight the rescue of the moose was underway. With a rope attached to the moose, nine men pulled the animal out of the water.
“I didn’t get trained on how to do this, that’s for sure,” said Jack Pushee of New Hampshire Fish and Game. “There’s a first for everything.”
The moose then wandered off into the woods, appearing to be unharmed. Link (with video) -via Arbroath
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Monday, one of two Austrian climbers on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, California took a fall. He didn’t fall to the ground, but his safety rope snapped off his right thumb. The thumb landed on the ledge that the climber’s partner was on, so he saved the severed digit. The climbers had a phone with them, and called for help. YOSAR (Yosemite Search and Rescue) made a difficult and dramatic retrieval of the injured man from the cliff face, as you’ll see in an account from climber and photographer Tom Evans.
I couldn’t believe it… they were going to send up Rangers Jeff Webb, and Dave Pope, on the end of a 100ft line hanging from the bottom of the NPS Fire chopper, and somehow have the climbers pull them into the belay! I have never seen such a mission on an EC rescue as the chopper would be awfully close to the face and it isn’t that easy to pull people hanging on a rope 30 or so feet into a stance. The late afternoon light was fading fast so they send the chopper, flown brilliantly by Richard Shatto, up to take a look and judge if the wind conditions were within limits.
After the initial flight the Rangers were attached to the long line and the mission was on. The chopper lifted up and the men were soon riding the rocket to the face of ElCap! Impressive to say the least!
Evans took plenty of breathtaking photographs of the rescue operation. Oh yeah, the thumb was surgically reattached. Link -via Metafilter
Colin Heaton and Anne Lewis of Southport, North Carolina, adopted a Pit Bull/Rottweiler mix that had been rescued from a “bad situation.” They named him Thor. The dog has since protected chickens from foxes, coyotes, and even a snake which bit him. Earlier this month, Thor got the chance to rescue a human.
Barbara Simmons, 78, fell on the side of the road while checking her mail on a hot day earlier this month.
She said she yelled for help but no one came to her rescue for at least a half hour. Thor, a dog with a heroic name, noticed Simmons and went to check it out.
“He was just so gentle and like, ‘are you okay, are you okay?’” explained Simmons. “It was like somebody asking, ‘are you okay, are you okay?’”
Thor’s owners said he was acting strangely that day, ignoring their commands.
“He ran to this point and he stopped and looked back at my husband and barked at him a couple of times like, ‘I’m not going to listen to you,’ and he took off right around the corner,” said owner Anne Lewis.
Thor led his owners to Simmons nearly a block away. They called for help and the EMT told Lewis that Thor probably saved her life.
Link -via Fortean Times
A young bull was spotted in South Ayrshire, Scotland in a delicate situation. His head was wedged into a ladder. Passers-by called the SPCA to report the problem. The farmer who owns the animal was contacted and said he had no idea how that happened. It wasn’t even his ladder!
Scottish SPCA Inspector Kerry Kirkpatrick contacted the farmer after being alerted to the cow’s plight.
He said: “When the job came through my first thought was, this is a wind up, but I arrived at the field to find the cow looking confused but surprisingly calm despite having his head wedged tightly in between the rungs of the ladder.
“The farmer’s family rounded up the whole herd into a holding pen and we managed to gently pull the ladder off the cow’s head.
Link -via Fortean Times
Tom McKinney of Yuba City, California fell off a ladder and couldn’t move. His neck was broken. His 10-year-old daschund Chelse was the one who found him. No one else was around, so McKinney told Chelse to get help -and she did, by waking McKinney’s sleeping wife and alerting her to the emergency. Now, Chelse is inspiring McKinney to walk again. After all, she had been through almost the same thing herself!
Doctors were worried that Tom may never walk again, but just two months later he’s moving around. He says he drew strength from Chelse who, seven years ago, also had to learn to walk all over again,
“Our vet had said, “you know that she had broken her back,’” said Tom.
They never thought Chelse could walk again. Tom says that if she can do it, why can’t he?
“[She] basically said, ‘don’t you quit.’ Anyway, I won’t,” said Tom.
With video. Link -via Arbroath
A family in Elbert County, Colorado awoke to find their horse Summer trapped in the home’s basement.
Summer had fallen down a four-foot window well and landed in the basement, which was not constructed with a walk-out door.
“We thought of bringing her up the basement stairs,” Heap said. “But the stairs didn’t look safe enough to support her weight.”
A veterinarian sedated Summer, who sustained minor cuts and injuries in the fall, and a coring company was contacted to cut into the foundation of the home. The initial plan was to expose an area around a second window well, remove a portion of the foundation and create enough space to bring the horse out of the basement, Heap said.
When the crew had removed enough material around the window, Summer walked out on her own. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Elbert County Sheriff’s Office)
Firefighters in Bridgend, Wales, were called to a home in Pontycymer because a sheep had been spotted walking around on the roof. A fireman at the scene said,
“We have never had anything like that before, though we have found sheep in some difficult places.
“It was running back and forward on the roof, but eventually it must have realised how many firefighters were there trying to get it down and thought, I’d better come down now, I think.
The sheep was absolutely fine and not harmed at all, and it was certainly an interesting call-out, it’s not where you’d expect to find a sheep, really quite funny.
“It brightened up our weekend, that’s for sure.”
The sheep was back on the ground about 40 minutes after the fire crew arrived. Link -via Arbroath
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The Humane Society of the United States named Yogi, a golden retriever, the 2011 Valor Dog of the Year for saving his owner’s life after a bicycle accident. Paul Horton of Austin, Texas, went over the handlebars on his mountain bike and landed on his head.
Horton was knocked unconscious. When he woke up, he couldn’t move and was bleeding from the nose and mouth. Yogi was at his side.
For the next 45 minutes, Horton pleaded with the 85-pound dog to go home and get help. Yogi didn’t want to leave. Horton couldn’t yell, and he was out of sight of passers-by, about 100 feet from a dead-end street.
Finally, Yogi headed back to the main road, where Horton’s neighbors Bruce and Maggie Tate were walking. The normally mellow dog barked frantically. The Tates knew something was wrong and followed Yogi to Horton. There, Yogi stood protectively by his friend.
“It’s pretty amazing that Yogi first stayed with Paul when he needed to, then recognized us and came to get us,” Bruce Tate said. “Paul was in desperate shape. He wasn’t in a place where there’s a lot of traffic.”
Doctors found that Horton’s vertebrae had pinched his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. They credit Yogi with saving Horton’s life. Horton has since regained some sensation, and has limited use of his arms. And Yogi is still his best friend. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Ralph Barrera/American-Statesman)
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A female poodle fell out of the sky onto the grounds of Shorncliffe Nursing Home in Sechelt, British Columbia.
How she came to be flying over the nursing home is explained by the deep talon marks in her back and sides, showing she was probably the unwilling passenger of a hungry eagle that had picked her up but eventually found her 18 pounds too much to hold on to.
May, her ribs broken, her body lacerated, was found by nursing staff May 2 and delivered to the Sunshine Coast SPCA.
The fall injured her, says BC SPCA official Lorie Chortyk, but the whole unnerving ordeal likely saved her life.
May showed signs of longtime neglect, including rotted teeth and claws that were growing into her paw pads. She is recovering after medical intervention by the SPCA, but the Society needs donations to pay for her care. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: SPCA)
A deer fell through the ice covering a frozen lake. A helicopter pilot came in close to observe and reasoned that he could use the force generated by his blades to blow the deer onto the ice and to the shore. And he was right!
via reddit
Danielle Michoud and her husband encountered a woman who was locked out of her car in Manchester, New Hampshire. Michoud was the smallest of the three, so volunteered to try getting in through the partially-open sunroof. But she became stuck.
“I actually thought I almost had it and then I hit my ribs and I couldn’t go any further. I could not go up. I could not go down,” said Michoud.
She says out of the 50 or so people passing by where she was wedged to the waist in the sunroof, many stopped, but it wasn’t to help her.
“They were taking pictures, they were filming, they were laughing,” said Michoud.
It took firefighters using a portable airbag to finally get her out.
Michoud was checked out at an emergency room and went home with bruises to her ribs and back. Link -via Arbroath
An Associated Press photographer had snapped a picture of a group of Shelties wandering the streets in Minami Soma city, an area that has been evacuated because of proximity to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan. A team called Sheltie Rescue went into action after the picture was published, determined to bring the dogs out of the danger zone.
Through emails and Internet research it was established that the owner of the dogs was a breeder in Minami Soma. The group contacted the Fukushima city branch of the Japan Collie Club, tracked the owner down by phone at a shelter and got her go-ahead to rescue the dogs.
In the wee hours of Sunday morning, seven volunteers left Tokyo and drove over broken roads and past demolished houses to meet three other volunteers in the ghost town that Minami Soma has become. Some had prepared radiation suits and others wore simple vinyl raincoats.
The group found the dogs waiting for their owner. A few ran off, but the group was able to remove twenty dogs from the area. Some of the dogs are being boarded at a veterinary clinic; others at the homes of volunteers. See more pictures at the MSNBC Photoblog. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Tamiko Nakamura/Sheltie Rescue)
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Rescue workers banded together on Tuesday to retrieve a naked woman from the side of a cliff in the San Diego area. The woman was apparently trying to reach Black’s Beach, a traditionally clothing-optional beach below the cliff at Torrey Pines State Park. San Diego Fire and Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque told the story.
It took lifeguards about 30 minutes to rig a series of rescue ropes. A female lifeguard then rappelled about a third of the way down the 500-foot cliff to an exposed ledge, where the very exposed 27-year-old woman was stuck.
After hooking up the young woman in a rescue harness, the lifeguard helped her rappel to the beach several hundred feet below, where she was provided with clothing. The entire operation took about an hour from start to finish.
The young woman was unharmed, Luque said. She will not be charged for the rescue, he added.
However, the unidentified woman was ticketed for disregarding signs and entering a restricted area. Link (with partially blurred video) -via Arbroath
A stray 4-month-old kitten in Louisville, Kentucky, helped himself to the remnants of a discarded can of soup and got his head wedged tight inside the can.
The kitten was brought in by MAS animal control officer Raymond Thomas on Monday, and was immediately taken to the veterinary staff, Gulbe said.
An initial attempt was made by veterinary assistant Brenda Keel to remove the can, but the kitten started crying. He was sedated and a pair of bolt-cutters were used to cut the can off of his head.
Gulbe said the kitten was also hypothermic and received medical attention to stabilize his condition.
Staff named the kitten “Campbell.”
Campbell, who cleaned up well, is now up for adoption. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Metro Animal Services)
Hideaki Akaiwa was at work on March 11th when the earthquake and then the tsunami hit his hometown, Ishinomaki in Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture. The city was covered with water ten feet deep -for days. Hideaki’s wife was missing somewhere in the flooded area. Rescue workers told Hideaki that all they could do was wait for the military to come help. But the 43-year-old man did not want to sit idly by while his wife was missing, so he put on some SCUBA gear.
Regardless of how he came across this equipment (borrowing, stealing, buying, beating up a Yakuza SCUBA diving demolitions expert, etc.) Hideaki threw on his underwater survival gear, rushed into the goddamned tsunami, and dove beneath the rushing waves, determined to rescue his wife or die trying. I’m not exactly sure whether or not the dude even knew how to operate SCUBA equipment, but according to one version of his story he met his wife while he was surfing (which is awesome, by the way), so it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to say that he already had a little experience SCUBA diving under a more controlled situation. Of course, even if this dude didn’t know how to work the gear I’m certain that wouldn’t have stopped him either – Hideaki wasn’t going to let a pair of soul-crushing natural disasters deter him from doing awesome shit and saving his family. He dove down into the water, completely submerged in the freezing cold, pitch black rushing current on all sides, and started swimming through the underwater ruins of his former hometown.
Surrounded by incredible hazards on all sides, ranging from obscene currents capable of dislodging houses from their moorings, sharp twisted metal that could easily have punctured his oxygen line (at best) or impaled him (at worst), and with giant f***ing cars careening through the water like toys, he pressed on. Past broken glass, past destroyed houses, past downed power lines arcing with electrical current, through undertow that could have dragged him out to sea never to be heard from again, he searched.
Hideaki maintained his composure and navigated his way through the submerged city, finally tracking down his old house. He quickly swam through to find his totally-freaked-out wife, alone and stranded on the upper level of their house, barely keeping her head above water. He grabbed her tight, and presumably sharing his rebreather with her, dragged her out of the wreckage to safety. She survived.
Hideaki wasn’t finished, though. His mother was still missing. Read the rest of the story at Badass of the Week. Warning: lots of strong language. Link -via reddit
Sixty-year-old Hiromitsu Shinkawa was found floating on the roof of his house ten miles from the coast of Japan, two days after the tsunami hit his town of Minami Soma.
Incredibly, he was spotted by a maritime self-defence force destroyer taking part in the rescue effort as he clung to the wreckage with one hand and waved a self-made red flag with the other. He had been at sea for two days.
Reports said that on being handed a drink aboard the rescue boat, Shinkawa gulped it down and immediately burst into tears. His wife, with whom he had returned home as the tsunami approached, is still missing.
He was quoted as saying: “No helicopters or boats that came nearby noticed me. I thought that day was going to be the last day of my life.”
Officials said Shinkawa was in good condition after being taken to hospital by helicopter.
Tambun Gediu of Kg Sungai Tiang, Malaysia, was hunting squirrels when he encountered a tiger. The 60-year-old man tried to climb a nearby tree, but the tiger dragged him down. Gediu’s wife, 55-year-old Han Besau, heard the tiger’s roar.
Realising it was coming from the area where her husband was hunting for squirrels she grabbed the nearest ‘weapon’ – the wooden ladle – and rushed into the nearby forest.
Staring in horror at the sight of her husband fighting desperately to prevent the tiger tearing him to pieces, she didn’t hesitate and charged at the animal, yelling at the top of her voice and bashing its head with the ladle until it ran off.
Tambun, who suffered deep lacerations on his head, face, neck and knees, had to wait more than 10 hours before he could be taken to hospital in the nearest town, Gerik, because rescuers had difficulty reaching his remote village.
Four-year-old Andrei Pavlov was feeding ducks near his home in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, when he fell through the ice into the freezing water of a pond. A stray dog named Naida immediately began barking frantically.
“She’s not just a dog,” Tatiyana Balashova told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “She’s not a pure bred, but she’s still very special.”
Balashova who usually feeds stray dogs in Krasnoyarsk was the person who reacted to Naida’s alert.
“I heard Naida barking on the pond bank, like she was calling for help. She saw me, ran up, looked at me and ran back to the pond…”
Balashova quickly realised that a child had fallen into the water and rushed to find help from utility service workers, who were luckily close at hand.
“Because of the fact the boy was taken out of water pretty quickly and due to medics’ professionalism, this story had a happy end for Andrei, without any serious consequences,” Vladimir Fokin, the chief doctor at the hospital Andrei was admitted to, told KP.
Andrei spent a few days in the hospital recovering, and is now in satisfactory health. Naida has been adopted by a family that lives 500 km away. The canine adoption was arranged before the near-drowning incident, and the new owners are particularly proud of Naida’s heroism. Link -via Arbroath
Shannon Keith and Gary Smith started the Beagle Freedom Project to find new homes for beagles that have been used for research. They named their first rescue dogs Freedom and Bigsby, and videotaped the beagles’ first brush with the great outdoors. Be warned that the video, while not graphic, may be disturbing and you’ll want to have a hanky handy.
Anyone interested in fostering or adopting a lab beagle should be aware of the challenges these dogs have. They will not be accustomed to life in a home and will not have experience with children, cats, or other dogs. They will not be house-trained and accidents will happen, although they learn quickly. Many have gone directly from a commercial breeder to the lab, and have never felt grass under their feet or even seen the sun. They will have been fed a special diet formulated for lab animals and may be difficult to adjust to new foods. They will be unfamiliar with treats, toys, bedding and may never have walked on a leash. They will have lived in cages with steel wire floors and may have inflamed or infected paws from the pressure. They may be fearful of people initially and may have phobias from a lifetime in confinement or from being restrained. They are likely to have been surgically de-barked by the breeder and have an ID number tattooed in their ear. Please also be aware that although these beagles are considered healthy, you will be given very little information about the beagle’s medical history, and you will not be told its origins or what kind of testing they may have been used for.
The video of Freedom and Bigsby is at the home page of the organization. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Osmar Persisco of Garibaldi, Brazil, took his dog out for exercise in a field and was approached by two robbers who demanded his car keys. When Persisco declined, they shot him, grazing the man’s head. That’s when Max the dog went into action.
“He saw the blood and was furious,” Persisco told Brazilian newspaper Globo. “He left like a rocket to attack the thieves. One of them ran away, but Max dominated the other one. To defend himself, the thief ended up shooting the dog. Max thwarted the assault and saved my life.”
Max was hit twice in his chest and once in his leg, but by then he had scared off the potential thieves.
Max was treated by a veterinarian and is expected to make a full recovery. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: Porthus Junior)
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Augustin Zamora was walking his Great Dane Scooby in Chicago Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, another man was following a 14-year-old girl.
The girl had just gotten off a Diversey Avenue bus near the 2800 block of North Whipple street and was walking home when she noticed a man following her, the Chicago Tribune reported. The man grabbed her as she ran up the stairs to her home, threw her to the ground and began to undress her.
Startled when Scooby and Zamora approached them, the attacker ran into an alley at George Street where he was corner by the team until police arrived.
Police charged 28-year-old Larry Smith with criminal sexual assault. Link -via Buzzfeed, where you can see more pictures of Scooby.
