Fangs a Lot Not surprisingly, alcohol was reportedly a factor when a pet rattlesnake bit its extremely intoxicated owner on the finger while the man was playfully flicking its head, then bit him again on the lip and tongue after he attempted to kiss it. According to police Sgt. Gene Galitz's popular column "Cop's Corner," in the Lander (Wyo.) Journal, a man identified only as "Rattlesnake Bob" was driven to the emergency room at the Lander Valley Medical Center by his girlfriend. When he saw a patrol car at the hospital, he wouldn't get out, saying he hadn't had much luck with cops. Sgt. Galitz wrote that he attempted to persuade "Rattlesnake" to seek medical attention, but he refused. As it turned out, the snake apparently did not inject venom during the kiss. "I'll bet the next morning the snake woke up with a hangover and Rattlesnake Bob woke up wondering who pierced his tongue and forgot to put in the decoration," Galitz wrote.
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Retriever Performs Heimlich Maneuver Debbie Parkhurst, 45, of Calvert, Maryland told her local newspaper she was eating an apple at her home when a piece lodged in her windpipe. She tried unsuccessfully to perform the Heimlich maneuver on herself and began beating herself on the chest. That’s when her golden retriever, Toby, decided to get involved. “The next thing I know, Toby’s up on his hind feet and he’s got his front paws on my shoulders,” Parkhurst said. “He pushed me to the ground, and once I was on my back, he began jumping up and down on my chest.” Parkhurst said after the apple was dislodged, Toby started licking her face and essentially prevented her from losing consciousness. A physician later confirmed that the dog’s actions quite possibly saved the woman’s life. “I literally have pawprint-shaped bruises on my chest. I’m still a little hoarse, but otherwise, I’m OK,” Parkhurst said. Good boy, Toby!A Bear and a Shot A three-year-old black bear caused a bit of a ruckus when it accidentally triggered an automatic door opener and entered a clinic near Presbyterian Hospital in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Todd Sandman, director of public relations for Presbyterian Health Care Services, said the bruin startled a few early patients and clinic personnel in the waiting room before it sauntered to a side hall and into a bathroom, where it was confined until representatives from the New Mexico Game and Fish Department could be summoned. Game and Fish officer Darrell Cole said the 125-pound male was darted without incident and subsequently transported and released in the nearby Manzano Mountains. Cole said it was actually good that the bear was safely confined when the tranquilizer was administered. “We were able to dart him and easily move him out of harm’s way,” Cole told the Las Cruces Sun-News. “If it had been outside, he could have run off and got hit by a car.” Besides, the conservation officer said, there’s nothing unusual about going into a hospital clinic for a shot. “I guess if you’re going to be darted with tranquilizer you might as well get it done in a hospital.”The Jig Was Up A North Carolina angler gave a whole new meaning to the term “fighting rod” when he used his fishing gear to subdue a would-be robber who threatened him with a knife. The Gaston Police Department blotter reports that an unnamed man and his young son were fishing at a city pond when the perpetrator, described as a black male with neat hair and wearing blue, brandished a knife and demanded the twosome “give me what you got.” When the father requested the ne’er-do-well be a little more specific in his request (as he slowly reeled in his fishing line), the bad guy demanded money and valuables, according to the Roanoke Daily Herald. While grasping the age-old concept characterizing the basic ineffectiveness of a knife at a gunfight, the wise father seized on the basic geometric disparity between a four-inch blade and a six-foot fishing rod. So, dad simply proceeded to beat the dickens out of the bad guy using the business end of his fishing rod, including the lure, which hooked deeply into the unfortunate thug’s hide. Gaston police said a man fitting the description of the alleged assailant was seen fleeing the scene, with a bright orange jig still embedded in his arm.Poacher No Einstein A recommendation to all would-be poachers and game law violators out there: If you shoot a massive whitetail when you haven’t purchased a hunting license, it might not be a good idea to have your deer photos and story splashed all over the local newspaper. Alert authorities with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources compared information contained in a newspaper article about a 24-point buck taken during the archery season with the department’s hunting license database to discover that the hunter was unlicensed at the time the buck was shot. Doubting the claims made by Christopher James in an Oct. 26 story appearing in the Jackson Citizen-Patriot, conservation officers ran a DNR computer search and verified he did not purchase a license until the morning after he shot the buck. In the newspaper article, James said he shot the buck in a Spring Arbor Township swamp at dusk on Oct. 24. He said he tracked a blood trail part of the night and returned to recover the deer the following morning. He conveniently omitted the part about buying a hunting license after he found the deer. “He bought the license at 9:44 the next morning at Pine Hill Lake Marina,” Conservation Officer Troy Bahlau told the Citizen-Patriot. Authorities seized the record-class deer rack and filed poaching charges against James. “He lost the buck of a lifetime for the lack of a $15 license,” Bahlau said.Trailcam Nabs Trophy Scumbag Johnny Sandlin was sick and tired of people breaking into his South Lebanon, Ohio home. In the past two years, Sandlin has been the victim of at least six burglaries, in which he lost guns, cameras, a computer, a weed eater and even food from his refrigerator to thieving scumbags. After a break-in occurring in early December, the homeowner decided enough was enough. Sandlin placed the digital trail camera he normally uses for deer scouting in the fork of a maple tree and aimed it toward his driveway at the end of a secluded cul de sac. And, bingo! His trusty trailcam recorded the image of a lone burglar–his car and its license plate–on two subsequent days. For Sandlin, the pictures meant as much as if they’d been of a 10-point buck on a mineral lick. He presented the digital photos to Warren County sheriff’s officials, who in turn arrested and charged the culprit–thanks to the expert evidence provided by the camera. “This is a perfect example of a homeowner thinking outside the box,” Chief Deputy Larry Sims told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Mr. Sandlin did his part and our detectives were able to make a case out of the evidence he gathered.”Alaskan Identity Theft After he picked up a radio transmission during an airborne survey, Alaska biologist Kevin White subsequently followed the signal on the ground to an alpine plateau north of Juneau, where he observed a black bear wearing a tracking collar. That was cool, except that White had personally fitted the GPS tracking unit onto a Rocky Mountain goat in 2006! “When I was considering different scenarios to explain the situation, it seemed inconceivable that this bear could be wearing the missing mountain goat collar,” White told the Juneau Empire newspaper. “For one thing it was a nanny collar; it was small, not much bigger than a collar for a large black-tailed deer.” After further scrutiny of the signal data, White and his research partner, LaVern Beier, conclusively identified the collar as belonging to the goat, now officially deceased. They decided the bear had scavenged the carcass of the goat and somehow managed to put on the collar and wear it. “Bears…are really curious about foreign objects in their environment,” said Beier. “He didn’t really put on the collar–it’s not like he was trying on clothing.” “I’ve never heard of anything like this happening,” White told the Juneau Empire newspaper about the incident this week. Neither have we.Know the Drill Chances are that a couple of Sheboygan County, Wisc. teenage boys will remember an incident occurring last week as one of those seminal moments in their lives–that is, if they live to adulthood. Benjamin Fisher, 18, and a 17-year-old friend were messing around in Fisher’s backyard shed when they got the wild idea to remove the gunpowder from some surplus 7.62x54R cartridges they found. The two Sheboygan Falls High School students first tried to pull the bullet from the live cartridge using pliers. It didn’t work. That’s when they opted for power tools. After cutting the tip of the bullet so it offered a flat surface, one of the teens held the cartridge with pliers, while the other used a drill to bore through the bullet. Within seconds, the backyard shed became a classroom of sorts, as the teens were taught an important lesson about physics and compressed gunpowder. The boys were fortunate to receive only non-life threatening burns from the resulting explosion. “It’s just, I guess, bad judgment on my behalf, just kids being kids,” Fisher told the Sheboygan Press. “I’d kind of like to drop it right here, but I know that’s not going to happen.”Biologist Catches Trout He Stocked in 1983 While ice fishing at Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Bill Wengert, a 35-year veteran biologist with the state’s Game and Fish Department, reeled in a tagged lake trout that he helped stock at the impoundment in April 1983. “What is really amazing about this whole event is that I may have actually clipped the fins on this very fish and I know I was driving the barge when the fish were stocked,” Wengert told the Casper Tribune. Wengert, who has spent decades observing the finer details of fish, said he immediately noticed the trout’s clipped right pelvic fin, which indicated it was hatchery broodstock. When he further examined historical stocking data, he found that the fish was released on April 14, 1983–along with 11,655 other lake trout that day at Buckboard Bay.Fangs a Lot Not surprisingly, alcohol was reportedly a factor when a pet rattlesnake bit its extremely intoxicated owner on the finger while the man was playfully flicking its head, then bit him again on the lip and tongue after he attempted to kiss it. According to police Sgt. Gene Galitz’s popular column “Cop’s Corner,” in the Lander (Wyo.) Journal, a man identified only as “Rattlesnake Bob” was driven to the emergency room at the Lander Valley Medical Center by his girlfriend. When he saw a patrol car at the hospital, he wouldn’t get out, saying he hadn’t had much luck with cops. Sgt. Galitz wrote that he attempted to persuade “Rattlesnake” to seek medical attention, but he refused. As it turned out, the snake apparently did not inject venom during the kiss. “I’ll bet the next morning the snake woke up with a hangover and Rattlesnake Bob woke up wondering who pierced his tongue and forgot to put in the decoration,” Galitz wrote.
Can your dog perform the Heimlich maneuver? We didn’t think so! Wild and crazy outdoor stories that you absolutely can’t make up.
