The scariest animal I ever confronted as a cop

Early Tuesday morning, a police officer shot and killed a mountain lion in downtown Salt Lake City. Witnesses said the animal charged, forcing the officer to defend himself and others.

I don't know all the facts of the matter (and odds are, neither do you),but from what I read I probably would have shot the animal as well. Or tried to.

Note: A gun might not have done me any good. Mountain lions are scary, especially when up close and pissed off. It's damn hard to aim while going to the bathroom in one's pants.

During my time as a cop, I probably shot a hundred animals. Most of them were injured by traffic; lots of deer, but also a few dogs, a couple of elk and a bunch of cows.

Oh, and about 500 carp (ammo testing at the lake), which I don't really count because that's why God made them.

All of my animal killing was 20 to 30 years ago, long before they started sending ambulances and get-well cards to injured cats.

The scariest animal I ever confronted as a cop wasn't a mountain lion, a bear, wolves, Big Foot or some other apex predator, of which there are plenty in Utah.

If I had seen any of these, I believe the sensible thing to do would have been to remain in the patrol car with the windows rolled up.

If the animal approached within 200 yards, I would flee with all emergency equipment activated. It's what we in the business referred to as "Code3-Romeo" or "lights and siren retreat."

But that's just me. As a personal rule, I do not get close to animals large enough to have their way with me, especially the kind with claws and pointy teeth.

Back to the scariest animal I ever confronted during my law enforcement career. You'll laugh, I know, but I'm not kidding. We're talking serious evil.

Raccoons. I HATED the sons-of-[w]itches. Still do, in fact. And before you start that noise about range encroachment by humans, understand that raccoons are not indigenous to Utah. In short, WE were here first. They're the ones doing the habitat encroaching.

Unlike dogs and a cow, no raccoon ever bit me. None even attacked me. But that didn't make them any less scary or infuriating.

One night I got a call of a burglary in progress. When I arrived, the terrified woman insisted there was someone, possibly even a serial killer, in her basement. I heard the noise, too, so something was down there.

I went down the stairs hand on gun. When a raccoon popped up and screeched, I almost shot it. It tore around the room trying to get out. I considered hitting it with a chair but the woman said it was an antique.

Eventually, the raccoon left of its own accord the same way it got in — through a pet door.

Things like this kept happening. A raccoon in a tree once touched the top of my head while I breathlessly waited in the shadows for burglary suspect to exit a business. I was blind (and incontinent) for two days.

Then there was the "unknown disturbance" call with blood all over a driveway. What appeared to be a homicide scene turned out to be wiener dog who picked (and lost) a fight with a raccoon.

Add in the number of "shots fired" calls I rolled on (because residents fed up with raccoons sorting through their garbage decided to take matters into their own hands with a deer rifle), and you can see why raccoons have shaved years off the end of my life.

I don't know about the officer who shot the mountain lion, but I do know that any raccoon I see now will definitely be interpreted as charging at me.

Watch out for rabid bats and animals

The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) wants people to beware of rabid animals, including bats, as they become more active this time of year. To date, more than a dozen rabid bats have been reported in Illinois this year.

"Most cases of rabies in Illinois are almost always found in bats," said IDPH Director Nirav D. Shah, M.D., J.D. "You can't tell just by looking at a bat if it has rabies so it's important to avoid handling bats and to make sure your home has no openings where bats can come in."

Rabies is a virus that affects the nervous system. People can get rabies after being bitten by an infected animal. Rabies can also be contracted when saliva from a rabid animal gets directly into a person's eyes, nose, mouth, or a wound. People usually know when they have been bitten by a bat, but bats have very small teeth and the bite mark may not be easy to see.

If you find yourself in close proximity to a bat and are not sure if you were exposed, for example, you wake up and find a bat in your room, do not kill or release the bat before calling your doctor or local health department to help determine if you could have been exposed to rabies and need preventive treatment. If the bat is available for testing and test results are negative, preventive treatment is not needed.

The early symptoms of rabies in people are similar to that of many other illnesses, including fever, headache, and general weakness or discomfort. As the disease progresses, more specific symptoms appear and may include insomnia, anxiety, confusion, slight or partial paralysis, excitation, and hallucinations. Death usually occurs within days of the onset of these symptoms. If you have been bitten by any animal, seek immediate medical attention. Rabies preventive treatment, if needed, must begin quickly.

An animal does not have to be aggressive or exhibit other symptoms to have rabies. Changes in any animal's normal behavior can be early signs of rabies. A bat that is active during the day, found on the ground, or is unable to fly is more likely than others to be rabid. Such bats are often easily approached, but should never be handled.

The following tips can help prevent the spread of rabies:

-Keep vaccinations up-to-date for all dogs, cats, ferrets, and other animals you own. If your pet is exposed to a rabid animal, contact your veterinarian
-Do not touch, feed, or unintentionally attract wild animals with open garbage cans or litter.
-Never adopt wild animals or bring them into your home. Do not try to nurse sick, wild animals to health. Call animal control or an animal rescue agency for assistance.
-Teach children never to handle unfamiliar animals, wild or domestic, even if they appear friendly. "Love your own, leave other animals alone" is a good principle for children to learn to reduce the risk of exposures to rabid animals.
-Maintain homes and other buildings so bats cannot get inside.
-If a bat is in your home, do not release the bat outdoors until after speaking with animal control or public health officials.

After consulting with animal control or public health officials, you may need to capture the bat for rabies testing to determine if you need preventive treatment.

Steps you can take to capture the bat are:

-When the bat lands, approach it slowly, while wearing gloves, and place a box or coffee can over it.
-Slide a piece of cardboard under the container to trap the bat inside.
-Tape the cardboard to the container securely, and punch small holes in the cardboard, allowing the bat to breathe.

Animals in poor health taken from Rusk County home

Forty-six animals found in poor condition with no food or water were seized Tuesday from a property near Henderson, according to the Rusk County Sheriff's Office.

Sgt. David Roberts said the sheriff's office received a tip Monday about the welfare of the animals.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Texas and the Rusk County Sheriff's Office seized the animals after determining it was "in the animals' best interest to remove them," according to a statement from the SPCA.

In total, 28 dogs, nine kittens, six puppies, two cats and one red-eared slider turtle were removed.

Mary Katherine Erskine, owner of the property, has not been charged and is seeking to regain custody of the animals, the sheriff's office reported.

Multiple deceased dogs also were found on the land, some whose remains were too decomposed to move.

According to a warrant filed for the seizure of the animals, the owner told the animal control deputy that the dogs were "taken care of" and that "there was no problem with the dogs."

When asked if there were any dead animals on the property, the owner told the deputy there were a few, but she hadn't removed them from the property.

"(The deputy) asked where the (dead) animals were, and (the owner) advised there was one in a box on the trash pile, another wrapped in a sheet on the ground, then there was one in a bag by the door of the trailer," the warrant said.

The owner told the deputy one dog died of cancer and the others died of the parvo virus. When asked how she knew that, the owner said she had a puppy euthanized at the vet because it tested positive for the virus, according to the warrant.

Dogs were found throughout the property with no food or water, and some were found with chains so tangled up that they could not reach water near them, the warrant said. A pile of trash and used litter was also found near where the cats were kept in a travel trailer, the deputy reported.

"One dog and all of the cats were found living in the RV-type living quarters on the property, cruelly confined, forced to live in their own feces and debris, without access to appropriate food or water," the SPCA said in a statement. "The turtle was found in a small blue plastic pool outside the residence without access to appropriate food or water.

"The animals appear to have varying health issues, including malnourishment, hair loss, long nails, eye discharge and flea infestation. One dog had an extremely large growth on one leg. The chains used to restrain the dogs had rubbed the dogs' necks raw, and investigators had to use bolt cutters to free the dogs," the SPCA statement said.

The animals were transported to a SPCA facility in Dallas.

The SPCA stated the animals will be examined by medical staff and cared for until a custody hearing July 6 in Henderson.

Rusk County Justice of the Peace Pct. 4 Darlene Childress will preside over the case.

Humane Society needs people to adopt and foster animals as shelter population spikes

The Ottawa Humane Society is in urgent need of donations and people to adopt and foster pets as it faces its annual furry Canada Day inundation.

There were more than 600 dogs, cats and other pets in OHS care as of Friday. Of these animals, 36 were waiting for a foster placement and 117 were available for adoption. The remainder were still receiving medical care or are too young to be adopted.

"We're working hard to prevent a situation where we're stacking cages and temporarily turning away owners who want to surrender their pets," said OHS executive director Bruce Roney.

Summer is always the busiest time at the OHS. Costs are at their highest and donations are at their lowest. The reason is two-fold: First, animals are often spooked by fireworks, and the wayward pets are picked up by Good Samaritans or bylaw officers and deposited at the shelter. Second, the OHS often finds itself overwhelmed by pets surrendered by owners at the beginning of the summer holiday season.

"Becoming a foster volunteer gives these animals a second chance," said Roney. "It's one of three ways we need the community's help right now, the other two being adoptions and donations."

Animal that flummoxed Darwin finds its genetic home

An animal whose pedigree stumped even Charles Darwin has at long last found its place in the tree of life. A study released Tuesday in Nature Communications concludes that the Macrauchenia patachonica, or the "long-necked llama," is part of a sister group of the Perissodactyla placental order, which includes horses and rhinos.

The two groups split about 66 million years ago, reports the AFP, right about the time a massive asteroid struck the Earth, causing the extinction of land-roaming dinosaurs.

Macrauchenia, which looked like camels without humps and weighed up to 1,000 pounds, lived in what is now South America until the late Pleistocene Era, between 11,000 and 20,000 years ago.

"Its outstanding feature, however, was its nose," says study co-author and American Museum of Natural History curator Ross McPhee. "We have no soft tissue fossils," he continues, "so we don't know whether the nose was developed into an actual trunk, like an elephant's. It would not have looked very much like anything alive today." The new study built on a 2015 study that attempted to determine the animal's lineage through the analysis of ancient collagen, the structural protein found in skin.

CNN reports that McPhee and University of Potsdam paleogenomics expert Michi Hofreiter extracted mitochondrial DNA from a Macrauchenia fossil found in South America and employed new techniques in genome recovery, which together allowed them to identify the animal's origins without the DNA of close relatives.

Darwin was the first to find the animal's fossils, while in Patagonia in 1834, but neither he nor Richard Owen, the renowned paleontologist he sent the fossils to, was able to place the creature in any known lineage.

(As for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, it hit in exactly the wrong place.)

Red, White, and Blue Animals for the Fourth of July

Independence Day in the United States is coming up, and the red, white, and blue will be flying—and fluttering, and swimming, and skittering.

CHERAX PULCHER CRAYFISH
This freshwater firework was first formally described in a 2015 paper by German independent researcher Christian Lukhaup, who noticed the species being sold in the ornamental fish trade.

"It took me several years to find where it comes from," Lukhaup says, but he knew it was of the Cherax genus, endemic to several areas including West Papua, Indonesia. With the help of locals, Lukhaup finally tracked it down to the creeks of West Papua's Teminabuan region.

Cherax pulcher differs from other subspecies of crayfish in that its chalae, or claws, are smaller, its body slimmer, and its coloring far more fantastic. This crayfish is vulnerable to the pet trade, Lukhaup says, particularly as crayfish collecting becomes more popular in Europe and Asia.

CUBAN TROGON
Cuba's national bird, the Cuban trogon—also called the tocororo or tocoloro—matches the colors of the American (and Cuban) flag, and then some.

"The blue feathers present iridescent patterns," and sometimes appear dark green, "depending on the angle of the sunlight," says ornithologist Eduardo E. Inigo Elias, senior research associate at Cornell University, who has studied the biology and conservation of birds in Cuba for 14 years.

In this species both males and females sport these bright colors, but there's a marked difference in their songs, with longer calls for males, says Inigo Elias.

COMMON AGAMA OR RAINBOW LIZARD
Native to sub-Saharan Africa, "there is variation in color across the range of this widespread species," says Robert Espinoza, a biologist at California State University, Northridge.

"The color is related to social hierarchies," he says, and a 2002 study on the suburban population in coastal Kenya notes that the males with the best fighting abilities have the brightest "nuptial colors," a signal the animal is ready to mate.

"The biggest and brightest typically defend a harem of females from competing males," adds Adam Leaché, a biologist at the University of Washington.

(See: Earth Farthest From Sun on Fourth of July—So Why So Hot?)

MANDRILL
In this equatorial east African primate species only the males have dramatic white whiskers and chins, and bright blue and red on their noses and hindquarters.

And the brighter the colors, the more dominant the male. (Related: Some Monkeys Have Blue Testicles - Here's Why)

In 2005 Joanna Setchell of the University of Cambridge, UK, did a study showing that brighter males ranked higher than paler ones, which leads to less conflict since high ranking males can be identified and avoided.

A 2004 study by Setchell showed that brighter males also enjoyed more female attention and that females preferred them—even if they weren't the highest ranking.

POLKA-DOT WASP MOTH
So is it a wasp or a moth?

It looks wasp-like, but this is a moth, native to the Caribbean and also inhabiting Florida and Georgia. The only plant this moth's caterpillar offspring will chow down on is oleander, hence its other common name, the oleander moth.

As a caterpillar it is orange, covered in what look like patches of false eyelash. But after it has matured in its cocoon of silk, it emerges red, white, and blue, flying in the breeze.