Free Republic

NOVATO, Calif. - An 82-year-old animal lover was arrested this week on allegations he grabbed and brandished a trapper's revolver during a scuffle over the skunk. Lou Kessler was arrested Tuesday. He was released on his own recognizance Wednesday after being charged with misdemeanor counts of using a firearm in a fight and disturbing the peace. The victim, Ron Bailey, 52, told The Press Democrat in a phone interview that he simply was doing his job as a state-licensed trapper and he believes Kessler disobeyed the law and attacked him. The scuffle allegedly began when Kessler and his wife went...

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. - This cat used up his nine lives. Fire officials are blaming a 20-pound cat for starting a town of Washington house fire that caused about $25,000 damage. The gray and white cat apparently jumped on an electric range in the basement of a two-story home at about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and turned on the push-button control, said Darrell Christy, the fire department's chief of operations. Plastic containers on top of the range smoldered. "We eliminated everything except for the cat," Christy said. A smoke detector alerted at least three people in the home, who were not...

HONOLULU - Everyone thought the humuhumunukunukuapuaa was Hawaii's state fish. As it turns out, the brightly colored fish with the excessively long name has been dethroned. The news shook the world of Rep. Blake Oshiro, who found out the designation was no longer official from Joel Itomura, a 6-year-old fish-loving son of a friend and constituent. "I was really surprised," said Oshiro, who has drawn up a bill that would make humuhumunukunukuapuaa _ also known as the rectangular triggerfish or "humuhumu" for short _ the official state fish for the islands. The stubby-nosed, brightly striped and slightly aggressive little fish...

TOKYO - Gohan and Aochan make strange bedfellows: one's a 3.5-inch dwarf hamster; the other is a 120 yard-long rat snake. Zookeepers at Tokyo's Mutsugoro Okoku zoo presented the hamster _ whose name means "meal" in Japanese _ to Aochan as a tasty morsel in October, after the snake refused to eat frozen mice. But instead of indulging, Aochan decided to make friends with the furry rodent, according to keeper Kazuya Yamamoto. The pair have shared a cage since. "I've never seen anything like it. Gohan sometimes even climbs onto Aochan to take a nap on his back," Yamamoto said....

LONDON (Reuters) - Just like their owners, a growing number of British pets are becoming obese and face chronic illnesses such as heart complaint, diabetes and arthritis, according to research Friday. A survey of British vets and owners showed that one in three pets, or 33 percent, were considered overweight and 38 percent of pet owners said their animals put on weight over Christmas. Despite this, few owners plan to put their pets on a diet. "Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period," said Frances Wright at Halifax Pet Insurance, who conducted the survey....