The amazing story of Argentinian streetboy saved by gang of wild cats.

From the Daily Mail:

A young boy was kept alive by wild cats while living rough on the streets, it emerged today. The one-year-old ...was discovered by police in Misiones, in Argentina, surrounded by eight of the animals.

The cats snuggled up with him during freezing nights that would otherwise have killed him, doctors believe. The boy was seen eating scraps foraged by his feline friends while they licked him. And they hissed as police approached the child.

Officer Alicia Lorena Lindgvist said: ‘I was walking and noticed a gang of cats sitting very close together. It is unusual to see so many like that so I went for a closer look and that’s where I saw him. The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him licking him because he was really dirty. When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept.’

The officer, who noticed scraps of food near the boy in the Christ King district, also told The Sun: ‘The cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting.’

Police have found the boy’s father who is homeless and said he had lost the boy several days ago while out collecting cardboard to sell. He told officers cats had always been protective of his son.

Many observers have noted the similarity between this story and that portrayed in the 1967 Disney movie 'The Jungle Book', in which a young boy, Mowgli, is raised in the jungle by wolves and is befriended by an amiable bear named Baloo.

Hat tip: Chris

Beavers and buttheads

While many loggers are buttheads (and a few bloggers too) - some are just beavers, as Polish police recently discovered:

Green campaigners called police after discovering an illegal logging site in a nature reserve – only to find the culprits were a gang of beavers.

Environmentalists found 20 neatly stacked tree trunks and others marked with notches for felling at a beauty-spot in Subkowy, northern Poland.

But when officers followed a trail left by a tree which had been dragged away, they found a beaver dam right across the river as reported by the Austrian Times.

A police spokesman said: "The campaigners are feeling pretty stupid. There's nothing more natural than a beaver."

It sure is a dam shame that natural beaver behaviour involves resorting to crime!

Heartless Coppers: "Stop grieving, it's only a chicken!"

From the BBC:

Flowers and tributes were left in an alleyway where the body of a mystery dead baby was found - before police realised it was only a chicken foetus...

Police cordoned off the scene but soon realised that it was not a human but a chicken foetus.

Well-wishers had laid more than a dozen bunches of flowers at the scene, along with cards and teddy bears. One of the cards read: "RIP Little Baby. Safe in the arms of Jesus. From someone who is a loving mother xxxx."

Merseyside Police told the community on Monday to "stop grieving, it's only a chicken".

A spokeswoman for Merseyside Police said: "It seems a member of the public saw the remains of a foetus, which possibly resembled a human foetus, and called us.

"We cordoned off the area to investigate, as we would with any possible suspicious death, but it became apparent it was not a human foetus.

This is very similar to the time a friend of mine saw a toy alien lying on the street and mistook it for a dead human foetus with much alarm!

However, Animal News is left wondering why the good people of Liverpool are not permitted to grieve for a chicken foetus as they would a human one. This anti-animal discrimination has to stop!

Hat tip: Robino

World first: dog appears in court - as a witness

A French canine named 'Scooby Doo' has taken after his cartoon namesake by fighting crime. Scooby appeared in the witness box during a court hearing in Nanterre, France, and was able to identify a suspect by barking furiously.

The court was convened in order to see whether a suicide verdict arrived at by police investigating the death of Scooby's owner can be overturned. The owner's family are calling for a full murder inquiry and are hoping that the crime-fighting efforts of Scooby Doo will bring them justice.

The judge in the case complimented Scooby for his "exemplary behaviour and invaluable assistance", while others were left wondering if the French legal system has gone to the dogs.

A source told Animal News: "These French judges are barking mad."

Animal News was not able to confirm whether any other members of Mystery, Inc. will be assisting Scooby in this case.

Get Shorty

Firefighters in Hampshire were baffled earlier this year when they were called out to rescue a horse stuck knee-deep in mud. Eleven firefighters, two fire engines, a multi-role vehicle, a rural officer and a fire officer turned up to help with the rescue in Redbridge, Southampton, only to discover that it was a pony with short legs.

Read more from the UK's leaders in Rural Reportage, Horse and Hound.