Beer Can Hill

Boy’s Tragic Death Could Have Happened To Any Family With 20-Foot Pet Python

Capybaras are large rodents that are related to guinea pigs. They are from South America.

GiantHamster.com

By EMMANUEL TUMANJONG (AP) –  February 10th, 2010

YAOUNDE, Cameroon — A conservation group is caring for more than 1,000 African gray parrots with help from an Ohio zoo after the birds were rescued from smugglers who had stuffed them into crates bound for the Middle East.

At least 120 of the birds have died since they were saved last month. The remaining parrots have been transferred to a wildlife conservation center in the West African nation, said Ofir Drori, director of a conservation group called the Last Great Ape Organization.

“The birds have been tied down for too long. They are very tired, many are sick,” he said Tuesday.

The parrots are kept as pets, but they also are believed to possess special powers in countries such as India, China, Nigeria and Cameroon, where the birds are used by witch doctors for rituals.

Cameroonian officials found the parrots stuffed into poorly ventilated wooden crates at the airport. Drori said the crates were being ferried to a Kuwait-bound Ethiopian Airlines flight.

The birds will be released into their natural habitat in a few months after veterinarians complete treating them, Drori said.

The Columbus Zoo in the U.S. state of Ohio said it will provide a grant of $6,000 to help feed the parrots and provide emergency care.

It was the third time in two years that authorities have stopped a shipment of parrots from being taken onto an Ethiopian Airlines flight. Ethiopian Airlines could not be immediately reached for comment.

In 2007, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora put a ban on the trade and export of the African gray parrots in five countries including Cameroon.

Two days before the authorities saved the 1,120 parrots, the Last Great Ape Organization, with the help of U.S. investigators and the Cameroon government, tracked down an Internet trader in the southwest regional capital of Buea who had struck a deal to deliver 23 African gray parrots to the United States. The trader is now awaiting trial.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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The Aquarium Phone Booth was created as part of the Lyon Light Festival.

“With the advent of the mobile telephone, telephone booths lie unused. We rediscover this glass cage transformed into an aquarium, full of exotically coloured fish; an invitation to escape and travel,“ statement made by creators Benoit Deseille and Benedetto Bufalino.

Teri & Ringo live with Jenny Savage.

Special thanks to my friend Scott Rossi for showing me this clip!

She has been bugging me all day about getting her driver’s license.

It’s mind-blowing to think about how Roxanne has been around for most of my life, age 13 to now at 29.

A displaced woman walks along the street of Altos de la Florida shantytown carrying a parrot on her shoulder in Soacha, in the outskirts of Bogota, on August 7, 2009. Bogota authorities estimate that some 52 displaced families arrive to the capital city (population 7 million) every day from different regions of the country, part of the approximately three million displaced people around Colombia caused by almost half century of conflict. (EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP/Getty Images)

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Found here.

_{Beer Can Hill is participating in Blogathon 2009 by updating twice an hour, for 24 hours, today. Proceeds are going to RAINN.}