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Piercing, terrible screams shook Roddy Muir out of his sleep at about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.“It sounded like a young child was being thrown around — and I could hear this banging and racket,” says Muir, 43, who lives on Campbell Ave., near Bloor St. W. and Lansdowne Ave. “I ran into the back of my yard,” said Muir, a voice actor who had fallen asleep on a couch on the main floor of his house. What he saw was a familiar sight. Last summer, behind his house, Muir saw a man attack raccoons with a pronged implement. In that incident,...

Spanish public television showed dramatic images of screaming spectators, including children, frantically trying to avoid the animal after it hurdled a security barrier that surrounds the arena as well as a fence and clambered into the crowded stands. The incident occurred on Wednesday evening in the bullring in the town of Tafalla, in the Navarra region. Some 30 people were injured, the local Diario de Navarra newspaper said. Most suffered cuts and bruises or shock, but one man was gored in the back and a 10-year-old boy was being examined at a hospital in the nearby town of Pamplona after...

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is the smartest and richest animal rights group around.  Unlike PETA, it doesn’t openly proselytize that old animal rights religion, e.g., sentience gives moral value, “a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy,” the quote from Ingrid Newkirk and title of a certain author’s soon to be published book. This strategy has been very effective, allowing HSUS a level of mainstream respectability that other animal rights groups can’t match.But make no mistake, HSUS is about animal rights–eventually ending all animal husbandry and human hegemony over fauna–and its head, Wayne...

SARASOTA COUNTY - Like many dog owners, Ila Abis views her dogs as "her children." When her two German shepherds got sick after getting heartworm shots from a veterinarian, one so badly she had to euthanize it, she could not speak for a week. But her real shock came when she wanted to sue the vet and discovered Florida law values dogs in a much different way: not as a cherished family member, but as simple property, like a table or book. While some Florida laws give pets more legal standing -- such as allowing them to be primary beneficiaries...

A $1,000 reward is being offered for the conviction of whoever body-wrapped a cat in duct tape and abandoned it in a North Philadelphia yard. Only its head was uncovered. "Whoever did this is very sick," said George Bengal, director investigations for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which is headquartered in North Philadelphia. "I've never seen a cat totally wrapped like a mummy before," he told 6ABC. A resident of the 2200 block of Edgley Street found the cat yesterday afternoon. "It's a damn shame," Irissa Torian told CBS3. The female cat - nicknamed "Sticky"...

When last we left Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathleen Rundle in February, she was taking her sweet time prosecuting the murder of a baby aborted alive in a Hialeah, Fla., abortion mill almost three years ago, in July 2006. Rundle gave Sunshine State legislators a cold rebuff after they wrote her to get a move on, responding: While we understand the emotional perception that this is an "easy matter," nothing could be further from the truth. The legal and ethical requirements that we be able to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt dictate that we thoroughly complete our investigation before...

9:52 AM CDT, June 11, 2009 LaPORTE, Ind. - A judge has rejected a man's guilty plea in the killing of a Belgian draft horse, saying the case should go to trial because the man deserves time behind bars.

LODI, Calif. -- A community controversy is brewing in Lodi. A neighbor posted a sign with the words, "Hit a cat, I'll hit your kid." Some neighbors said they are concerned their children's lives are being threatened. "Basically what this is saying is: Hit a cat and I'll hit your kid," said Tina Teixeira. Teixeira got a lot of attention after she put the sign up in front of her West Elm Street home in Lodi. "You don't want me to hit your kid so don't hit mine. You hurt mine, that is just like if I went over and...

FREEHOLD, N.J. — A New Jersey man who abandoned his family's pet rabbit in the woods behind his home was barred from owning animals for five years. Jong Park was also fined $500 after he pleaded guilty to an animal cruelty charge in Marlboro Township Municipal Court Wednesday. Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Police Chief Victor Amato filed charges after Park admitted releasing the 1-year-old bunny named Hope because she had outgrown her cage.

81-year-old accused in killing By Erin Sullivan, Times Staff Writer Published Saturday, April 25, 2009 SHADY HILLS — The man was shirtless, belly to the sun, near a patch of purple wildflowers. He laid where he fell, splayed, just before 1 p.m. Saturday, between the road and his neighbor's chain-link fence. Seth Sigmon, 29, lived on the dead-end side of Connie Court in Shady Hills. Neighbors say he has a son and that his wife was getting out of the shower when he was slain. Authorities say his next-door neighbor, 81-year-old John Croft, shot Sigmon multiple times with a .22...

By Matt Guillermo, KESQ.com Digital Content Director mguillermo@kesq.com ANZA - A man who told authorities his horse was attacked by dogs was arrested after deputies found that the horse, instead, was beaten with a sledgehammer. According to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, the horse's owner, Jack Ziniuk, called deputies Sunday afternoon to "put down" his horse, saying that it had been badly injured by attacking dogs and that it was suffering from seizures. Deputies and, later, Animal Control officers investigating the horse found that it had been struck several times in the head with a sledgehammer and, then, decapitated with...

(AP) — LOS ANGELES -- As soon as he heard his car alarm blare and saw the orange glow through his bedroom window, University of California, Los Angeles neuroscientist J. David Jentsch knew that his fears had come true. His 2006 Volvo, parked next to his house on the west side of Los Angeles, had been set ablaze and destroyed in an early morning attack March 7. Jentsch had become the latest victim in a series of violent incidents targeting University of California scientists who use animals in biomedical research.

Jean Poholsky looks forward to dining at Iron Bridge Wine Co. for the upscale ambience as well as for the food. So when she arrived at the Columbia restaurant for lunch with friends Monday, she was shocked to see glass shards covering a stone walkway that had been spray-painted in red with the words "Get rid of the foie gras." An admitted lover of the French delicacy made from the livers of ducks and geese, Poholsky concurred with the restaurant's owners that whoever was responsible for the overnight vandalism could have expressed their opinion differently. "It is like saying, 'It's...

A favored method of preparing fresh crabs is to simply boil them alive. A longstanding related question: Do they feel pain? Yes, researchers now say. Not only do crabs suffer pain, a new study found, but they retain a memory of it (assuming they aren't already dead on your dinner plate). The scientists say its time for new laws to consider the suffering of all crustaceans. The study involved using wires to deliver shocks to the bellies of hermit crabs, which, being hermits, often take up residence in left-behind mollusc shells. The crabs that were shocked scampered out of their...

My bunny-hugging antagonist’s embarrassed silence on the BBC radio phone-in told me all I needed to know. Yes, it really is now a criminal offense in Britain to abuse an ant, a worm, a slug, cockroach, a scorpion, a stick insect or whatever creature you care to name. The moment you decide to keep it as a pet you are obliged by our Animal Welfare Act to take full account of its welfare needs -- or face a $30,000 fine or a twelve-month prison sentence. And if you think cockroach rights sound crazy, wait till you hear how the law...

SYDNEY, Australia - A 7-year-old boy broke into a popular Outback zoo, fed a string of animals to the resident crocodile and bashed several lizards to death with a rock, the zoo's director said Friday. The 30-minute rampage, caught on the zoo's security camera, happened early Wednesday after the boy jumped a security fence at the Alice Springs Reptile Center in central Australia, said zoo director Rex Neindorf.

BOISE -- A 12-year-old Caldwell boy has come forward to claim responsibility for the arrow found lodged in the head of a cat. Prosecutors will decide whether the boy should be charged with animal cruelty. The boy and his father told the Gem County Sheriff's Office he was protecting quail, but the question many are asking tonight is - does intention matter? Gem County officials tell us that it is illegal to shoot at pets with a bow and arrow any time. But some are making the argument that this was a stray cat. Jeff Rosenthal with the Idaho Humane...

Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming president’s most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost. Because as we’re telling the media today, there’s one troubling portion of the new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have flown under everyone’s radar: Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights activist. Don’t believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his...

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. — A rare gull that apparently tried to eat a couple's ice cream was euthanized after the man beat the bird with a stick. Dragan Djuric, 50, of Wichita, Kansas, and his wife were eating ice cream New Year's Eve on the boardwalk at Main Beach when a flock of birds attacked them, Laguna Beach police Sgt. Jeff Calvert said. One bird hit Djuric's wife in the head and tried to take the ice cream. Djuric was defecated on. The couple dropped the frozen food and Djuric began hitting the birds with a stick, Calvert said. One...

The two friends followed Arthur through a series of twists and turns off Socrum Loop Road, until he decided to turn around in the parking lot of a vacant business. That's where Pribe first saw Arthur's face, with a cigar hanging out of his mouth and wearing a dingy hat, she said. They followed him back to U.S. 98 North, where he turned into the supply store. She parked away from the store and called 911 for a second time and waited for deputies to arrive, she said. "Before we knew it, there were lots of police cars all over...