Free Republic

In this Oct. 15, 2009 photo, Scott O'Konek, a Minnesota bowhunter displays a 32-point buck he took during a hunt at Camp Ripley, Minn. The buck might have the largest non-typical or asymmetrical rack taken by archery in Minnesota. The buck scored a preliminary antler score of 228. The current record is 225 set in 1989, according to the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association. The deer was an estimated 5 years old and field-dressed at 192 pounds. (AP Photo/Minn. Dept. of Nat. Resources, Beau Liddell)

The mean-spirited would call it Darwinism at work. A suspected thief got the shock of his life after apparently trying to steal copper. The man is in a Northern California burn unit after his alleged robbery attempt when horribly wrong. Police were tipped to the crime by a power outage. Soon after the power went out someone called the Rodeo Fire Department to report a telephone pole fire. As crews responded to the fire, they noticed a man walking down the street suffering from visible burns. Investigators with the East Bay Regional Parks District say they think the man was...

A picture of a hunting wolf has won the prestigious Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award. Jose Luis Rodriguez captured the imaginations of the judges with a picture that he had planned for years, and even sketched out on a piece of paper. "I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting - or predation - but without blood," he told BBC News. "I didn't want a cruel image." With a great deal of patience and careful observation of the wolves' movements, he succeeded in taking the award-winning...

The little pond will be bone dry soon, I'll have to find another place to watch birds for a while. A good heavy rain would be a big help.

By Nick Bryant BBC News, Ceduna, Australian outback One of the holes is called 90 Mile Straight The vast Australian emptiness of the Nullarbor Plain is famous already as one of the world's most gruelling car journeys.Now it has become the proud home of the world's longest golf course. Eighteen holes spread over 1,365 km (848 miles) of outback terrain that can take as long as seven days to play - longer even, if you keep on hitting your balls into the scrubland or suffer the indignity of having them stolen by an errant dingo. But more of the hazards...

A Proctor man driving a motorized La-Z-Boy lounge chair hit a parked vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. Dennis LeRoy Anderson, 62, pleaded guilty Monday in St. Louis County District Court to DWI in connection with the Aug. 31, 2008, incident in Proctor. There were no injuries. According to the criminal complaint, Anderson drove his motorized chair into a vehicle parked near a Proctor bar. Anderson told police he was traveling from the Keyboard Lounge after consuming approximately eight or nine beers. His blood-alcohol content was measured at 0.29 percent, more than three times the legal limit to drive.

Scott O'Konek shoots his bow 300 days a year, dreaming that someday in the woods somewhere in Minnesota a white-tailed buck of memorable proportions will stride beneath his tree stand. For O'Konek, 29, dream and reality blurred last week at Camp Ripley when a 32-point buck -- bearing perhaps the largest non-typical rack ever taken by archery in Minnesota -- ambled toward him. Forty-four yards from O'Konek's perch, the statuesque whitetail stood a moment, shaking snow from its back as leaden skies drizzled rain. This was about 9 a.m. during the first of two special Camp Ripley archery hunts.

YAKIMA, Wash. -- With two wolf packs totaling about a dozen animals and more expected in the coming years, Washington state is grappling with a proposed wolf management plan. Authors of the plan called the process that produced it wrenching and polarizing. In short: a flashpoint issue.When it comes to attitudes about wolves, there seems to be no middle ground.Hunters are afraid wolves will decimate elk and deer populations. Ranchers fear the state’s newest alpha predator will wreak havoc on their livestock. Conservationists worry that hunters and ranchers will shoot the wolves despite state or federal protections.A recently released draft...

Police are investigating the death of an American tourist who apparently drowned while swimming with dolphins in the Marlborough Sounds. The 27-year-old American woman was with Dolphin Watch Ecotours in Tory Channel when she was seen floating face down about 11am on Tuesday. An ambulance spokesperson says the woman was pulled from the water but resuscitation efforts by a doctor and staff on the boat were unsuccessful. Paramedics on a coastguard boat were transferred to the vessel but they could not revive her.

A FISHERMAN spent a nervous night perched in a mangrove tree as two crocodiles menaced him from below after his boat sank on a remote Kimberley river in Western Australia. Stan Martell told Wyndham police his boat dragged its anchor on Friday night and became wedged under a tree branch as he slept during a fishing trip ... The 7.2m craft was then swamped by the incoming tide ... two crocodiles surfaced near the sinking boat as he scrambled up the tree were he spent the night "sitting there like a Koala bear".

The report alleges that Toyota exploits guest workers, mostly shipped in from China and Vietnam. According to the NLC, these workers are “stripped of their passports and often forced to work — including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota — 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage.” Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds.

Feral Hog Festival On Tap Donna Limberger, Staff Writer Email this Print this It’s time to mark your calenders for the second annual Feral Hog Festival in Ben Wheeler. The event will be held over two days which will be Friday, October 23 and Saturday, October 24. On Friday, the Fall Feral Hog Follies, pageant and wild hog ball will be held at Moore’s Store at 7 p.m. The show will include the 2009 Hog Queen Coronation, entertainment, music and dancing. On Saturday, festivities will begin at 10 a.m. with the hog parade. Local businesses and car enthusiasts are encouraged...

ScienceDaily (Oct. 18, 2009) — Norwegian scientists have found “mummified” pine trees, dead for nearly 500 years yet without decomposition. Norway’s wet climate seems perfect for encouraging organic matter to rot – particularly in Sogndal, located on Norway’s southwestern coastline, in one of the most humid, mild areas of the country. In fact, with an average of 1541 millimetres of rain yearly and relatively mild winters, Sogndal should be an environment where decomposition happens fast. Not so. “We were gathering samples of dead trees to reconstruct summer temperatures in western Norway, when our dendrochronological dating showed the wood to be...

We thought cash for clunkers was the ultimate waste of taxpayer money, but as usual we were too optimistic. Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama's stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart. The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart.

Officials haven't seen sea cow since FridayThe South Florida manatee who made news for his 1,200 mile trip from the Keys to NYC is missing in the waters off New Jersey, and officials are worried he may be in trouble. Ilya the manatee was spotted in New York harbor late last week after a month-long trip that began in Key West with stops in Maryland and Massachusetts. Ilya, who was first tagged by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 10 years ago, had found a warm place to stay near a refinery in Linden, N.J., and officials were hoping he'd...

It's every hunter's worst nightmare. You've nestled into your tent for the night when you're awakened by the sound of a bear charging. Within seconds it's on you, teeth sinking into flesh as you fight for your life. "I went into survival mode as she batted me around, biting me," Ken Scown, 36, said Saturday. "I was kind of waiting for the bite to the head and neck and it would all be over." Scown and his pal Jeff Herbert were three days into an 11-day hunting trip near Canal Flats in the East Kootenays region of B. C. when...

My wife and I drove up to Estes Park, Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. We only saw about ten deer, but about 300 elk. They were everywhere. In the national park, but most were in town. They were eating shrubbery in people's front yard, crossing roads and only occasionally not disrupting things.

Animal Pictures of The Week: 16 October 2009 Visitors to South Croydon Recreation Park in Croydon have been lucky to get a glimpse of this rare albino squirrel [Pic in URL] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/6348435/Animal-pictures-of-the-week-16-October-2009.html?image=16

3:59 p.m.: We're about 15 minutes from kickoff here at Gillette Stadium, and the grounds crew is shoveling snow off of the field. It's been snowing pretty hard here for about an hour.

There are times when the pond is like liquid glass. We need rain, the water is getting very low now.

RENO, Nev. - A new federal proposal to manage wild horses is rekindling debate over another fixture of the Western range: cattle. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week proposed moving thousands of mustangs to preserves in the Midwest and East to protect horse herds and the rangelands that support them. ~snip~ Many horse defenders and others who had been working to save the romantic symbols of the American West and might have been expected to welcome Salazar's solution instead stampeded the other way. They want Salazar to remove livestock to make room for the mustangs and argue that cows are...

Clouds come in many shapes, sizes, colors and forms—all unique and beautiful in their own way. Whether it is a sky full of red and orange clouds lighting up the Brooklyn Bridge or rare mother-of-pearl clouds in Scandinavia, we found some unbelievably stunning photos that capture fascinating cloud formations from around the globe. Have a look at the pictures below—and you never know, they may inspire you to look up to the sky every once in a while. Florence, Italy As Frank Slack stood over the Arno river, the combination of the setting sun and clouds rolling in produced this...

This may be old to most of you, but I just happened on it today. Your 1911 at play Great animation of how 1911-style pistols function. Play around with the check boxes below the pistol and watch the internal workings of a 1911 as it cycles through. Interesting stuff. For me, anyway.

“Tubes” as they are known are a surfers lifeblood and a thing of natural beauty. We salute these adventurous photographers who, one of whom is named Clark Little, armed with a waterproof camera and perfect timing, were able to snap these incredible pictures.

The late inspiration for this was a book I saw in the bookstore, "Ansel Adams in Color", linked above. Very good photography (as you might expect), but not as iconic like his black-and-white images. So for fun I'm posting a picture of Vernal Falls from Adams in black-and-white and another one from nearly the same vantage in color. Which do you like better? That doesn't mean that color or B&W is really better, it's just an artistic perception. Also included are a couple of aerial shots. I didn't realize how close these falls are to Half Dome; that's because I...

Neighbors Thought Dead Man's Body Was Part of Halloween Display The body of Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed, 75, an apparent suicide, sat decomposing on his Marina del Rey balcony for days because neighbors thought the lifeless figure was a dummy and didn't call police. By Seema Mehta and Martha Groves October 16, 2009 The body of 75-year-old man sat decomposing on his Marina del Rey balcony for days because neighbors thought the lifeless figure was part of a Halloween display and didn't call police. Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday with a single gunshot wound to one eye....

Ibis, Snowy Egrets and Roseate Spoonbills today. I got more but too tired to process until after a nap. Good thing y'all don't pay me by the hour!While I was out today my daughter came in my room, evidently with a bulldozer, it is all neat and tidy for a change! She found all kinds of stuff I thought was lost, LOL!

A small band of sea lions that made their home on Pier 39 in weeks after Loma Prieta has ballooned to a record number in the past week. Perhaps it's a wildlife reunion to celebrate the quake's 20th anniversary next month. Regardless of the reason, the people who do the counting say they have never counted this high before. Last Friday, there were 1,585 sea lions hanging out at the pier. The experts at the Marine Mammal Center say they don't know what is behind the increase, but that they are hunting for clues. Record Number of Sea Lions Flock...

The bodies of thousands of rabbits culled every year from the parks in Stockholm’s Kungsholmen neighbourhood are being used to fuel a heating plant in central Sweden. The decision to use Stockholm’s rabbit cadavers as bioenergy to warm Swedes living in Värmland doesn't sit well with Stockholm-based animal rights activists. “Those who support the culling of rabbits surely think it’s good to use the bodies for a good cause. But it feels like they’re trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem,” Anna Johannesson of Vilda kaniners värn (‘Society for the Protection of...

Swimmers and sunbathers arriving at Humiston Park Beach in Vero Beach, Florida got a disgusting surprise last Wednesday evening when they found a mysterious mile-long trail of large feces in the sand. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve lived along beaches all my life,” onlooker Bill Becker told TCPalm. “It was disgusting, but mystifying. It looked like Great Dane poop all along the beach.” Officials with the county’s Environmental Health Department were able to rule out humans as the source of the mess on arrival at the beach, but it took a bit more digging to determine the...

MIAMI (Reuters) - Thanks to El Nino, the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season has been the quietest in more than a decade, offering a reprieve for residents in the danger zone and a chance for insurance firms to refill depleted coffers. With the peak of the season -- late August to mid-October -- now behind, the Atlantic-Caribbean basin has seen just two hurricanes and a total of eight tropical storms. El Nino, the Pacific warm-water phenomenon that can produce destructive weather in other parts of the world, played a big role in suppressing Atlantic cyclones this year, experts said. If the...

Union City police say a homeless man sleeping in a recycling bin barely escaped with his life after the container was emptied into a compacting truck. Union City police Lt. Kelly Musgrove says the man was nearly killed when he and the rest of the contents in bin outside a Taco Bell were emptied into the truck. Musgrove says before the truck driver hit the compact button, he heard the man screaming and banging from inside the truck. "He's lucky the employee was not listening to loud music," Lt. Kellly Musgrove told the San Jose Mercury News. The homeless man...

A moose is squirreled away at a Fargo hotel this morning, and authorities are asking the public to stay out of the area. The animal is "contained on the property" of the Mainstay Suites at 1901 44th St. S., according to an e-mail report from Fargo Police Sgt. Jeff Skuza. The moose is showing "no sign of trying to leave as we work to resolve the situation," Skuza added. The sergeant said that the species' "size and temperament make them a significant public safety risk in an urban setting."

Grandson Gerry has ROTC drill Tuesday after school, and I pick him up. I leave early and sit by the pond, or cruise around looking for models. I timed it right, the pond crew started showing up about the same time I did. The season change is bringing in a lot of new birds, the Boat Tail Grackles were back in the marsh today.The double Hibiscus was growing in a yard close to the street.

An image of the mustard plant's male reproductive organ, enlarged 20 times under a microscope, took top honors in the 2009 Small World Photomicrography Competition, announced October 8. Arabidopsis thaliana is the first plant to have its genome fully sequenced and is commonly used as a model in scientific research. But it was the unusually artistic appearance of the winning shot that inspired photomicrographer and plant biologist Heiti Paves, of the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, to enter it into the 35-year-old competition, she said in a statement.

Albatrosses fly many hundreds of kilometers across the open ocean to find and feed upon their prey. Despite the growing number of studies concerning their foraging behaviour, relatively little is known about how albatrosses actually locate their prey. Here, we present our results from the first deployments of a combined animal-borne camera and depth data logger on free-ranging black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys). The still images recorded from these cameras showed that some albatrosses actively followed a killer whale (Orcinus orca), possibly to feed on food scraps left by this diving predator. The camera images together with the depth profiles showed...

From the North Lake Beach parking area in the Catskill Forest Preserve, a narrow foot trail climbs a rocky incline. After following the trail for about 20 minutes, hikers reach Artists Rock, which gives a sweeping view of the Hudson Valley, the river a sliver of silver in the distance. The trail then leaves the ledge and in less than a half mile it meets a junction with a side trail toward Sunset Rock, the prized view from atop North Mountain that by the late 19th century had become an iconic view of the northern Catskills, celebrated in the work...

Beware of the blob—this time, it's for real. As sea temperatures have risen in recent decades, enormous sheets of a mucus-like material have begun forming more often, oozing into new regions, and lasting longer, a new Mediterranean Sea study says. Up to 124 miles (200 kilometers) long, the mucilages appear naturally, usually near Mediterranean coasts in summer. The season's warm weather makes seawater more stable, which facilitates the bonding of the organic matter that makes up the blobs. Now, due to warmer temperatures, the mucilages are forming in winter too—and lasting for months. Until now, the light-brown "mucus" was seen...

...The original White House memo and not surprisingly the Task Force report contains multiple references to developing a national policy where Great Lakes and coastal regions are managed, “consistent with international law, including customary international law as reflected in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea” - a 300-page treaty the U.S. has never ratified...

Fire fighters rescue a 7-foot gator from a storm drain Urban myth our fat fannies! Miami-Dade Fire Rescue pulled a 7-foot, 150-pound alligator from a storm drain in a residential neighborhood Friday afternoon, just before it could burst from underneath the street and take its revenge on the person who flushed it down the toilet. Not really. No one knows how the reptile got stuck in the sewer, but our guess is it was flushed as a baby and then grew up in the sewers while eating rats, beef patties and the occasional chihuahua. Rescue officials think it just wandered...

We always have some of the various sandpipers around, but now the winter migrants are starting to trickle in. These are Greater Yellowlegs, Tringa melanoleuca

BATH COUNTY Breathing Cave is the name of a deep, dark hole in the ground off an unmarked mountain road here in western Virginia, a foreboding place mostly because of what lurks within – bats, hundreds of them. Inside the mouth of the cave, the limestone walls are cool and moist. There is no light, only echoing creaks and clops of water drops – and the unnerving knowledge that somewhere down a blind tunnel ahead, creatures associated with blood and folklore and rabies are alive and close by. As the sun goes down, the winged inhabitants silently emerge, the start...

AN alligator has bitten off part of a golfer's arm as he went to pick up his ball at a private course in the US, reports said today. The man, aged in his 70s, was retrieving his ball from a pond when the 3m alligator bit him at Ocean Creek Golf Course in Beaufort County, South Carolina, the Associated Press reported. The report said the gator pulled the man in and ripped off his arm before his golf partners were able to free him.

AMMO

After a full day of awards and golfing, Obama and friends had a champagne and caviar flight to Kathmandu where Obama set a world record for climbing Mt Everest in just 3 hours.Obama said weather was balmy 85 degrees...perfect day for a little exercise!Upon his return to Kathmandu, the Nepalese government immediately made Obama king and renamed Mt Everest in honor of Obama.

I've been stranded for several days, the ignition switch on the Ford locked up and stranded the kids in town last Saturday. Replacing an ignition used to be a ten buck, 20 minute job, it isn't anymore! For some reason the car decided that someone was trying to steal it, and shut everything down. Thinking back to all the times I've been 20 miles from a paved road I sure am glad the vehicles I drove were repairable in the field. The pond was busy, All these shots but the Osprey were taken from one spot.

Two brothers were just driving along N.C. 133, near Orton Plantation, on Wednesday morning when they noticed a large snake - different from those native to the area - in the roadway. “We thought it was a rattlesnake,” said Billy Ballard, of Oak Island. But a closer look and, later, an expert opinion revealed it was actually a boa constrictor that stretched at least 7 feet long. The snake had been injured, and a pool of blood circled around its head, Billy Ballard said. So, not wanting the snake to suffer, he and his brother Ronnie picked it up and...

Reporting from Shepherdstown, W.Va. - Still growing somewhere here on Eric and Gloria Sundback's 100-acre tree farm is the two-story fir that will stand resplendent in the Blue Room of the White House this Christmas. This is because the Sundbacks -- he's 82, she's 83 -- have just turned out a grand champion Christmas tree for a record fourth time, a feat they once mistakenly assumed they were too old to pull off. Now the Sundbacks will once again watch a tree they nurtured from seed, fed and pruned, cast as the glittery showstopper at almost nightly holiday parties, then...

The government wants to deal with the booming number of wild horses crowding the Western range by sending the animals east. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today unveiled his plan to control the rising environmental and monetary costs associated with wild horses and burros by moving tens of thousands of them onto new preserves in the Midwest and East. "We must consider citing these preserves in areas outside of Western States because water and forage are extremely limited in the West, and drought and wildfire threaten both rangeland and animal health," Salazar said in a letter today to Senate Majority Leader...