Animals

[neoplacebo]

That photo would be a lot better if there was a guy with a red hat lying next to trumpy bear.

[1 CAT FAN]

They have one bigger at Alligator Adventure Myrtle Beach.

[Vrede too]

'It smells like a decomposing body': North Carolina's polluting pig farms

After years of burying neighbours’ complaints about illegal spraying of hog manure, state officials suddenly began posting them online. What changed?

In September 2016, with Hurricane Hermine bearing down on North Carolina, Kemp Burdette rented a single-engine plane and flew over Duplin county. Burdette, a riverkeeper with the environmental group Cape Fear River Watch, was worried that some of the local pig farmers might try to drain their manure lagoons before the rains hit, to prevent them from overflowing. Spraying waste is illegal just before storms because of the risk that runoff from saturated fields will contaminate waterways.

As he flew, Burdette estimated that he saw at least 35 farms spraying their fields. He took high-resolution, GPS-stamped photographs and videos documenting the apparent violations, and then filed a complaint with the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), hoping the evidence would move the agency to act. He and his colleagues did the same a month later, just before the devastating Hurricane Matthew. “This isn’t just one bad actor,” he said. “This was widespread – complete disregard for the rules.”

But, according to Burdette, DEQ told him that the images were inadequate proof. “They were basically saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’” he said. “They can’t stand behind evidence collected by somebody else.” Nor did they have funds to do their own aerial surveys. For evidence, DEQ said it could only review the farms’ self-reported spray logs. And in November 2016, when Burdette and his colleagues followed up, they say all public traces of their complaints had disappeared.

For years, residents say, North Carolina regulators shielded the identities of polluting farms, burying public complaints against them and leaving those who lived nearby with few avenues for redress. Neighbours said their complaints were going unheard.

A joint investigation by the Guardian, the Food & Environment Reporting Network, and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting backs up residents’ assessments. In response to a public records request, DEQ released only 33 public complaints against livestock operations in North Carolina from January 2008 to April 2018. Over the same period, other hog states have registered thousands.

Abruptly, in April 2019 the DEQ said it had validated 62 complaints against animal operations over a six-month period and posted them online. The offenders included 11 industrial hog farms, some of which had let their waste discharge into ditches and streams.

State regulators had publicly documented nearly twice as many violations in the six months prior to April 2019 than in an entire decade. What happened?

Explosive growth of the hog industry...

An underfunded agency...

Residents of hog farms turn to courts

... EPA investigators visited North Carolina and interviewed more than 60 hog farm neighbours. The residents described strong stenches that made them gag, vomit, and lock themselves indoors. Several also mentioned keeping silent, because “for more than 15 years, the government has been well aware of the conditions they have to live with, but has done nothing to help, so complaining to North Carolina DEQ would be futile,” the EPA wrote in a letter to DEQ. Those who did complain reported “threats, intimidation, and harassment” by the industry.

Finally, in December 2016, advocates challenged the complaints system head-on, filing a separate petition with the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings, alleging that DEQ had failed to investigate complaints against hog farms. The groups pointed to the photographic evidence of illegal spraying just before Hurricane Hermine and Hurricane Matthew and the later disappearance of those complaints.

This multifaceted campaign began to bear fruit in 2017, after a change ofleadership in North Carolina. Incumbent Republican Pat McCrory was replaced by Democrat Roy Cooper, and he appointed former Environmental Defense Fund official Michael Regan to head DEQ.

Has anything really changed?

... Given the legislative climate, and lawmakers’ control over the state budget, environmentalists say they’re not surprised by the timidity at DEQ. “When I think of ‘agency capture’, it’s not just a product of wilful decisions not to enforce, or wilful decisions to demonstrate favouritism to the industry,” said Will Hendrick, staff attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance. “Some of it is agency aversion to the risk that may result from taking action against an industry that is favoured at the legislature.” ...

Still a long way to go and we still have a Repug Leg, but having a Dem Gov makes a huge difference.

[GoCubsGo]

No sure how I'm feeling about this one.

Woman Brings Miniature Support Horse on American Airlines Flight

[neoplacebo]

Largest flying animal discovered; looks like a Canadian flag in the sky.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/largest-flyi ... 00904.html

[Vrede too]

Largest flying animal discovered; looks like a Canadian flag in the sky.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/largest-flyi ... 00904.html

I think dinosaur coloring is entirely speculative.
"first discovered more than 30 years ago in Alberta, Canada"
Ah-ha.

They evolved to carry emotional support miniature horses.

[neoplacebo]

Largest flying animal discovered; looks like a Canadian flag in the sky.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/largest-flyi ... 00904.html

I think dinosaur coloring is entirely speculative.
"first discovered more than 30 years ago in Alberta, Canada"
Ah-ha.

They evolved to carry emotional support miniature horses.

Yeah, I sort of wondered about that earlier Canada connection. Guess they made it look like they wanted it to; a sitting duck for a big blue bird from above or a big green one from below.

[Vrede too]

Yeah, I sort of wondered about that earlier Canada connection. Guess they made it look like they wanted it to; a sitting duck for a big blue bird from above or a big green one from below.

Not sure that it needed camouflage or was a sitting duck for anything.

With a wingspan of ten metres and weighing 250 kilos, Cryodrakon boreas rivals another pterosaur as the largest flying animal of all time, researchers reported in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

That's a BFB! If I worked at the Ark Encounter I would create an erect caveman caught in a massive pile of fossilized Cryodrakon boreas guano (I hate when that happens).

[neoplacebo]

If I were a serious fisherman and caught one of these, I'd never fish again.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fish-resembl ... 19608.html

[Vrede too]

If I were a serious fisherman and caught one of these, I'd never fish again.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fish-resembl ... 19608.html

Comments:

About 6 hours after eating the fish, a strange crab like creature burst out of his abdomen, and hid in his house.

Looks like a tadpole. I can’t imagine what a huge frog it would turn into. I definitely would not eat it.

I think it's a whale sperm.

My thought, too:

I noted Mr. Lundahl's comment that "We were looking for blue halibut which is a rare species about five miles offshore...” So he caught and ate an unusual species, but what we was really trying to do was catch and eat a species he already acknowledges is rare...

Pig.

[Vrede too]

To be delivered to The United States House of Representatives

Ban the Import of Trophy-hunted Lions (and Elephants)

[Vrede too]

Runaway circus zebra shot dead on major motorway in Germany, police say



Harambe!

Both the circus trainer and the emergency animal (non)rescue unit should have tranquilizer guns.

[O Really]

I ran across this article https://www.outsideonline.com/2402981/f ... a-operator

and then clicked on their website https://explore.org/livecams/currently- ... ooks-falls

So cool - live cams tracking animals all over, including Alaskan bears, bald eagle cams, gorillas, pandas...

[neoplacebo]

Squirrels demonstrate how the phrase "squirrel away" came to be.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/squ ... 41398.html

[billy.pilgrim]

Squirrels demonstrate how the phrase "squirrel away" came to be.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/squ ... 41398.html

http://cruiser.mototribe.com/discuss/biker-vs-squirrel

very funny

"The matter should have ended right there.
It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristine kept yards and gone on about his business and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH! Twisted Evil."
"

[neoplacebo]

Looks like today is animal day for me; came across this one showing a clever way to help cows avoid being bitten by flies. I plan to explore a part time job in this area and in the process make the Tennessee zebcow famous nationwide.
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/study-co ... 08325.html

[billy.pilgrim]

Looks like today is animal day for me; came across this one showing a clever way to help cows avoid being bitten by flies. I plan to explore a part time job in this area and in the process make the Tennessee zebcow famous nationwide.
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/study-co ... 08325.html

Would have worked with our herd. Black Angus cows and Charolais bulls. The calves were all solid black or white.

[neoplacebo]

Squirrels demonstrate how the phrase "squirrel away" came to be.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/squ ... 41398.html

http://cruiser.mototribe.com/discuss/biker-vs-squirrel

very funny

"The matter should have ended right there.
It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristine kept yards and gone on about his business and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH! Twisted Evil."
"

That squirrel is the one you want to take out to bars with you on Saturday nights. I figure he is likely a descendant of Rocky the flying squirrel from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show. And this one has obviously taken some knowledge from Mr Know It All, too.

[Vrede too]

Squirrels demonstrate how the phrase "squirrel away" came to be.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/squ ... 41398.html

Wow.

"There's definitely an angry squirrel wife right now wondering where all the nuts went", Chris said.

Just like Rep. Adam Schiff on Mar-a-Lago weekends.

[billy.pilgrim]

Squirrels demonstrate how the phrase "squirrel away" came to be.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/squ ... 41398.html

http://cruiser.mototribe.com/discuss/biker-vs-squirrel

very funny

"The matter should have ended right there.
It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristine kept yards and gone on about his business and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH! Twisted Evil."
"

That squirrel is the one you want to take out to bars with you on Saturday nights. I figure he is likely a descendant of Rocky the flying squirrel from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show. And this one has obviously taken some knowledge from Mr Know It All, too.

I'll never understand why people melanie things? They always get caught.
Vrede pointed out that this version of this story had been melanied
the original version is here

http://lifeisaroad.com/stories/2004/10/ ... treet.html