Meet Charlie the meerkat

Posted by: Jan S  :  Category: news, wildlife, zoo

Charlie was found near death after being neglected by his mom. Zoo keepers found him and are now his 24/7 nannys. The full video story is below.

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What ever happened to Snowball the deer?

Posted by: Jan S  :  Category: news, pets, raising animals, wildlife, zoo

Back in 2007, you might recall the saga of Snowball the deer. A fawn that was injured and found by a family in Oregon and then nursed back to health by them. I first wrote about Snowball in 2007 and you can read that post here. Then came my update on the court battle (as you remember, the state of Oregon took possession of Snowball and her son Bucky) where over $39,000 was spend by the state (at that time) to keep Snowball out of the hands of those awful animal lovers and deliver her and her son to state fish and game. If you missed that post, you can read it here. The last I had heard about the court battle, the family that found Snowball had won their case and the state of Oregon was to turn over Snowball to them - that did not happen. The state ushered Snowball away into “protective” custody. The Aardvark’s Tongue also wrote about Snowball and gives a time line that ends in 2008, here is a link to that (with a photo of Snowball). So now it is almost 3 years later and I thought I would check up on Snowball. There is almost nothing on line about the court action going on. But I do know where Snowball is being held.

In mid 2008, Snowball was handed over to a for profit zoo. There she is in a petting zoo, where she gets lots of poking and prodding by little kids all day long. Here is a link to that part of the saga, you’ll want to read all the comments over the public outrage about that little part of the Snowball the deer story. So what has happened since 2008?

It so happens that just a month ago, my daughter was invited with some friends of hers to visit one of those drive through wildlife parks. This one is called Wildlife Safari in Winston Oregon. That is the same zoo that Snowball is located at. My daughter along with all the other visitors saw Snowball, not in the petting zoo but just in a small pen where you can reach over and touch her. She is located in an area where she can run like other deer. She is in fact another zoo animal. The zoo website, Wildlife Safari, mentions Snowball at the bottom of this page. The family that first took care of her allowed her the full freedom of their farm, which was acres of land not square feet of a pen.

To me, it is so sad to know that this saga has not had a happy ending for Snowball. I still don’t know if there is any news on Bucky, her son.

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Unicorn - the other white meat - WTF?

Posted by: Jan S  :  Category: animals, news, strange

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Apparently a web store called ThinkGeek ran an April’s Fool joke ad poking fun at spam. Calling the product, canned Unicorn meat, “the NEW white meat.” Well it got the attention of the pork marketing people and they wrote a 12 page cease and desist letter. Didn’t they know that Unicorns don’t exist? I know that pigs are intelligent but it seems that the people marketing them are not. They didn’t like the idea of the slogan that ThinkGeek used. It sounded too much like, “pork, the other white meat.” You can read more about it at Chow.com at this link.

My guess is that the pork people don’t get out much otherwise they would have written a 12 letter to the rattle snake industry in Texas, who mention, poke fun and say that, rattle snake is “the other white meat.” I am assuming it (rattle snake) tastes just like chicken.

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