Free Republic

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — South Texas ranchers brought nilgai antelope from a California zoo decades ago, when it became fashionable to stock their sprawling acreage with exotic quarry. These days the species native to India and Pakistan are not so much a rarity in South Texas as a nuisance. For cattle ranchers they are a possible nemesis, threatening to spread a deadly tick to their herds. Federal wildlife officials say they are competing with native Rio Grande Valley species for food and trampling the brush they are trying so hard to preserve. The fast-running, 600-pound antelope have wandered all around the...

Pythons swallow their prey whole, and take several days or even weeks to fully digest it.Biting off more than it could chew cost a 20-foot python its life in Junagadh district. The python died yesterday after swallowing a blue bull (‘nilgai’) at Baliavad village near Gir wildlife sanctuary, a Gujarat forest department official said. Villagers found the python lying on the road, its belly distended beyond normal capacity, and apparently struggling to digest the animal it had swallowed. “Forest officials were informed and they rushed to the site to ascertain its condition,” Deputy Conservator of Forest R Senthilkumaran said today....