Polkas with Pugs

Hi! I'm Birdie Puggins, and I'm your host for Polkas with Pugs, a puggerific blog for you critter lovers out there! I'll be sniffin' the 'Net for news, stories and pics about the furred, feathered, flippered, finned and otherwise critterly folk with whom you hoomans share this wonderful planet we call Earth.

(Deep, dramatic announcer's voice) In a world filled with confusion, violence, corrupt politicians, shallow sit-coms and vacuous "reality" TV, one pug stands alone ... one pug dares to raise her paw against the tide of international strife, government's betrayal of the people, and an apathetic nation's obsession with media personalities, and say, "Look! Isn't this critter cute!" One Pug to rule them all! One Pug to find them! (Erm ... sorry -- wrong gig.) That pug is Birdie. Birdie Puggins.

Um ... thank you.

Why cows attack BBC News Magazine

Liz Crowsley, a vet, has been trampled to death by a herd of cattle while walking the Pennine Way with her two dogs. And a fortnight ago, a cow left David Blunkett with a black eye and a cracked rib. Also on a walking holiday, the former home secretary was accompanied by his guide dog Sadie.

In both cases, the cows are thought to have been trying to drive off the dogs in order to protect their young.

While such attacks are rare, Health and Safety Executive figures show that 18 people - excluding Ms Crowsley - have been killed and 481 injured by cows in the past eight years.

Et tu, Elsie?

The placid providers of cheese and ice cream have turned upon us? The divine docents of yummy yogurt and milk moustaches?

If you find yourself in a field of suddenly wary cattle, move away as carefully and quietly as possible, she says. "Keep dogs close and on a leash - and if the cows charge, let go the leash. The dog will outrun the cows and it will outrun you."

Oh, very good -- let the dog draw off the crazed cows!! Man's best friend, indeed!

Have you seen these stubby little pug legs o' mine? "Cobby" is how our physique is described in the American Kennel Club. I don't fancy tryin' to outrun a herd of crazed cattle.

Yer on yer own, Mommy. Stay away from pastures. And load up on cheese an' dairy at the grocery store. Just because they're violent doesn't mean we don't want their business.

Kitten dropped, discovered in Boston city mailbox AP News

Officials said a two-pound, eight-week-old kitten was dropped in a public mailbox in Boston and later found unharmed among envelopes and packages. According to the MSPCA Animal Care and Adoption Center, the kitten they're calling "Postina" likely was stuffed Friday through a small opening of the mailbox and dropped several feet below.

Ya know, Mommy has often threatened to mail one or the other of our cats to Cuba, but I know she really didn't mean it... at least I don't think she meant it...

A U.S. Postal Service letter carrier discovered Postina on Saturday during a scheduled afternoon pick-up.

The MSPCA is offering Postina for adoption after several days of nourishment and a round of vaccinations.

The MSPCA said there has been a 48 percent increase in pet owners citing financial reasons for surrendering their pets.

S'cuse me, but this wasn't "surrendering" the kitten -- it was a pretty cold-blooded stunt. Sometimes hoomans really take the cake, and I don't mean angel food. Stuffing a kitten through a slot into a mailbox, where she will spend 24 or more hours in sun-baked heat and darkness, without water and food, with mail and possibly heavy packages raining down on her, is an unforgivable cruelty. They will most likely never find the hooman who did this.

The only up side is that Postina was found in time, was in relatively good health, and will be adopted by a loving family -- and hopefully will have little or no memory of her ordeal in time, though she will likely always have abandonment issues, poor mite.

The hero of the hour is the mail carrier, who carried the kitten to the MSPCA, instead of just turning her out onto the street as many people would have done. We furry folk salute you! You turned a tragic tale into a life transformed, for Postina the postageless.

Fox steals more than 100 shoes Reuters

A fox has been unmasked as the mystery thief of more than 100 shoes in the small western German town of Foehren, authorities said Friday.

A forest worker stumbled upon shoes strewn near the fox's den and found a trove of footwear down the hole which had recently been stolen overnight from outside locals' front doors.

"There was everything from ladies' shoes to trainers," said a local police spokesman. "We've found between 110 and 120 so far. It seems a vixen stole them for her cubs to play with."

Now, let's not be hasty in our conclusions, here. Maybe Momma Fox was planning an audition for "The X Factor," Europe's version of "American Idol," and needed some snazzy footwear to impress Simon Cowell.

Although many were missing laces, the shoes were in good condition and their owners were delighted to reclaim them, he said, adding that no reprisals were planned against the culprit.

You can tell this didn't happen in the United States. "Ewww! Fox spit! I don't want them back! Lord knows what diseases, fleas, and rabies are on them!"

Germans are such practical folk.

Meet Eclyse, amazing zebra-horse crossing Daily Mail Online

...[W]hile most zebra-horse crossbreeds sport stripes across their entire body, Eclyse only has two such patches, on its face and rear.

The one-year-old zorse was the accidental product of a holiday romance when her mother, Eclipse, was taken from her German safari park home to a ranch in Italy for a brief spell.

There she was able to roam freely with other horses and a number of zebras, including one called Ulysses who took a fancy to her.

When Eclipse returned home, she surprised her keepers by giving birth to the baby zorse whose mixed markings betray her colourful parentage.

The foal was promptly given a name that is in itself a hybrid, of her parents' names.

Now she's become a major attraction at a safari park at Schloss Holte Stukenbrock, near the German border with Holland, where she has her own enclosure.

This little lady looks a bit confused ... like she couldn't decide what to wear this morning.

Or maybe she just had trouble gettin' out of her pajamas.

No wonder everybody's lookin' at her. Maybe a nice pink bathrobe would help. Or bedroom slippers.

see more dog and puppy pictures" >Pugs in a Blanket

Hyena giggles no laughing matter BBC News

Researchers have begun to unravel the information and social content present in the hyena's famed laugh, which they say is only used in times of conflict.

The pitch and variability of the giggles may be used to indicate age or social status, they say.

Wowsers! And I thought it was all those orangutan jokes they tell.

The giggles probably advertise an individual's age, because the fundamental frequencies tended to decline among older individuals. Before they reach maturity at three years of age, hyenas have noticeably higher-pitched giggles.

Well, that goes wifout sayin' -- we all know teenagers snicker more than grandmas.

Dominant females - the leaders of the clan - seemed to advertise their powerful role by not giggling as much.

"During the competition between the animals, subordinate animals emit far more giggles than dominant ones," Dr Mathevon told BBC News.

"We guess that it's a call of frustration," he said.

They laugh because they're fed-up? Well, I guess that's better than knockin' each other upside the head, like lions do!

One secret remains, though: the giggles, seemingly relevant to close-range interactions, are incredibly loud. That can attract other diners to a feast.

"There's a lot of competition between lions and hyenas, and hyenas always lose," Dr Mathevon said.

"So there's still a question as to why they make a lot of noise that could attract lions."

Speakin' of lions ... sounds like this laughin' stuff isn't working out too well for the hyenas. Maybe they should ind a better way to work out their frustrations. I hear World of Warcraft is real popular right now ... but I'll bet their aren't many Internet connections in the Serengeti.

Maybe karaoke is a possiblity. That should drive the lions off, anyway...

And fun they do have! Just watch this video from the BBC Live News Channel:

Guinea pigs groomed for shows

Makes me want to get a shaggy wig and par-tay!

Meet Jasmine, the rescue dog who's become a surrogate mother for the 50th time Daily Mail Online (UK)

When Jasmine the abandoned greyhound arrived at a wildlife sanctuary shivering and desperate for food, she needed all the love in the world to nurse her back to full health.

Now it appears the kindness and patience shown to her has rubbed off - for the rescue dog has become a surrogate mother for the 50th time.

Seven-year-old Jasmine is currently caring for tiny Bramble, an 11-week-old roe deer fawn found semi-conscious in a nearby field.

She cuddles up to her to keep her warm, showers her with affection and makes sure nothing is matted in her fur. In short, the perfect foster mum.

But then again, she has had plenty of practice, having cared for five fox cubs, four badger cubs, 15 chicks, eight guinea pigs, two stray puppies and even 15 rabbits.



Say WHAT!!!?? Did I hear right? Homina Momina! That makes (counts toes on front feet, back feet, then starts over, and again) ... thirty-nine kids!! Woowee!! But ... they said ... fifty times!

Geoff Grewcock, who runs the sanctuary, said: 'She simply dotes on the animals as if they were her own, it's incredible to see.

'As soon as an animal is brought in, she walks over takes a sniff or two and then licks and cuddles them.

'It is quite amazing, particularly as she is a greyhound breed and they are usually quite aggressive, That is why they are used for racing.'

Bramble the fawn arrived at the centre two months ago after a dog walker came across her in a field dazed and confused.

Until she is old enough to be released back into the wild, she will continue to be cared for by Jasmine.

Geoff added: 'They are inseparable at the moment, Bramble walks between her legs and they keep kissing each other.

'But she is like that with all of our animals, even the rabbits which greyhounds usually chase down the track.

'She has done the same with the fox and badger cubs, she licks the rabbits and guinea pigs and even lets the birds perch on the bridge of her nose.

'It's very touching. Her maternal instincts take over all the time.'

S'cuse me -- is this one of those same greyhounds I see tearin' along at Warp 5 after anything that moves? Including (shudder) me? They come flyin' along at the dog park like those Ringwraiths in the Lord of the Rings, and I'm on the ground wif my paws over my eyes, screamin' "MOMMY!", and expectin' to be torn stem to stern between 'em. Fortunately, they usually take a good sniff and identify me as "dog," and lope off, after some poor dachshund or Yorkie. These guys are obsessed wif findin' somethin' to run down and rip up. Preferably of the wabbit variety.

And then, along comes Jasmine. The Florence Nightingale of the canine world. And -- a greyhound.



Go figure. I'm scratchin' my wrinkles out over this one.

Keep up the good work, sweet thing.

Breedist humor from I Has a Hot Dog.Com...


see more dog and puppy pictures

Meet Bo, the First Dog

The Obamas welcome Bo, a six-month old Portuguese water dog and a gift from Senator and Mrs. Kennedy to Sasha and Malia, recently at the White House.

White House photos by Pete Souza.

The wait is over! Finally, the Obama girls have their dog, and I have to admit, he is a cutie. Not "Pug cute," but cute, nonetheless.

The girls call him "Bo," and Barack and Michelle call him "Diddley" -- heh -- partly because Michelle's dad's nickname was "Diddley," after the famous blues singer "Bo Diddley."

The two white front paws are what do it for me. And the riot of curls, of course. I never could resist a man with dark, curly hair.

I hear he has webbed feet -- for swimming in the water. No doubt he'll be a spy dog for the White House, swimming over from Sarah Palin's house to Russia. Since it's such a short distance, ya know.

Photo credit: www.djsphotography.co.uk

In Berlin's Boar War some side with the hogs The Wall Street Journal.com

City Appoints Urban Hunters to Track Streetwise Swine; Three Pigs in Day Care

BERLIN -- Gabriele Klose simply couldn't let the hunter kill the wild boar running around her flower store. Not after it looked up at her with big, innocent eyes.

The hairy beast was one of thousands of wild boars that have discovered the charms of urban living in Germany's leafy capital city. When the creature trotted out of rush-hour traffic one morning last month to root around the flower store, Ms. Klose's first thought was: "That is one ugly dog."

Hey! That is a speciesist remark, and I represent it! (...or something to that effect....)

After a second glance, Ms. Klose phoned the police for safety -- and a local tabloid for publicity. The police called in Matthias Eggert, one of a crack band of hunters with license to kill hogs in urban areas. But Mr. Eggert's plan to dispatch the boar appalled Ms. Klose. The hunter says the tabloid reporter brandished a camera and warned him he'd have the whole of Berlin on his case if he pulled the trigger. Mr. Eggert sensed a PR debacle, so he phoned around until he found an animal sanctuary 40 miles from Berlin that granted the boar asylum and named the swine "Amanda."

Bullets, or "Boar Bed and Breakfast"? I think he made the right choice -- don't you?

Mr. Eggert, a 55-year-old forestry official, fumes at Berlin's "vegans and whatnot" who are, he thinks, too sentimental about the city's pesky boars. "If we don't get brutally pragmatic, the problem is going to get totally out of hand," he says. Berlin's wooded parks, suburbs and increasingly mild winters make it Europe's capital city for sus scrofa, the wild, tusked ancestor of the domestic pig. The booming population of porkers has Germans on the run, reversing the natural order of things.

The swine are an obstacle on Berlin's streets, where 211 have died in traffic accidents in the past eight months. But despite the porcine problem, part of Berlin's human population is siding with the boars against those who shoot them. Urban hunters have been beaten with sticks, called "murderers" and had their tires slashed. Mr. Eggert once had to call for police protection when a crowd of young partygoers, enraged after he shot a boar that had been wounded by a car, threatened to beat him up.

"Peace for Porkers"? "Save the Swine"? "Bash the Boar Blasters"?

"Boars are extremely smart," says Mr. Ehlert, a trained biologist. "If they weren't so smart, they wouldn't be so successful."

Hunters have shot over 500 boars in urban areas since April, but boar numbers keep rising. Up to 7,000 now live in the city, Mr. Ehlert estimates. "There is no way that hunting can get rid of them all," he says. "Ultimately we must learn to share the city with the swine." The key to peaceful coexistence is no fraternizing, says Mr. Ehlert.

On a recent snowy evening, Mr. Ehlert stopped his van near a derelict U.S. listening station on a hilltop in former West Berlin. During the Cold War, the U.S.'s National Security Agency eavesdropped on the Soviet bloc from here. Now the hill is crawling with boars. One by one, they emerged from the trees, grunting in expectation, until 15 plump hogs surrounded the van. "Someone is clearly feeding them," says Mr. Ehlert. That's illegal, because it leads to inappropriate boar-human mingling.

Mr. Gericke says he has been feeding boars here every night for 12 years, making him the doyen of Berlin's boar-loving underground. Every two weeks he spends €15, or about $20, of his jobless benefits on a 110-pound sack of corn. "Feeding them corn diversifies their diet," he says.

Only a handful of people have come out to feed the foragers on this December night. In summertime, says Mr. Gericke, hundreds of Berliners show up.

Wow, this is a tough issue. The hoomans love the boars and want to make pets of them, but the boars are wild, and can't get too used to hoomans, or bad things happen. Some people have been gored by frightened boars, and the boars have been rooting up cemeteries and parks and lawns, and even went into a hooman daycare center. This is another one of those cases where hoomans took up the land where the animals used to live, and the animals didn't have enough space to make it in the wild, and have spilled over into the hooman habitation.

Now, the hoomans claim that the wild animals are "overpopulated." *Sigh*. That's just hoomanspeak for saying that there's not enough room for all the hoomans to live, and have habitat left over for wild animals, too. I'm afraid it's not the animals that are overpopulated, hoomans. But thanks for wanting the wild boars to have food and freedom in Berlin, even if it might not be in everyones' best interest....

Purrfect Vision: Almost blind moggie Ernest has his life transformed by wearing contact lens Daily Mail Online (UK)

Most contact lens wearers have had trouble putting them in their eyes at some point - so the idea of putting them on a cat might seem ridiculous.

But that is exactly what the owners of Ernest - a 15-year-old black and white cat -
have found themselves doing.

And from these pictures the elderly moggie looks like he has plenty to purr about after the lens have transformed him from a squinting cat unable to see where he was going.

The contact lens, fitted by a vet, have saved Ernest from a life-threatening operation.

He has lived at the RSPCA rescue centre in Godshill, Isle of Wight, for 13 years after he was injured in a car accident.

Centre manager Paula Sadler, 56, said: 'Before Ernest was given the contact lenses he was quite squinty and had trouble seeing where he was going.

'Given his old age it would have been very risky giving him an operation because there is no telling how he would have reacted to the anaesthetic.

'The lenses have worked wonders.'

Hoomans have been enjoying the benefits of contact lens for many years -- I'm glad they are passing 'em along to us critters! Even better than those "Doggles" ™ sunglasses! Daddy says he bets that Ernest will enjoy his better eyesight for four or five more years -- but Ernest's mom will bear the scars from putting those contact lenses in a cat's eyes for fifteen years or more!

'Viking mouse' invasion tracked
BBC News

Scientists say that studying the genes of mice will reveal new information about patterns of human migration.

They say the rodents have often been fellow travellers when populations set off in search of new places to live - and the details can be recovered.

A paper published in a Royal Society journal analyses the genetic make-up of house mice from more than 100 locations across the UK.

It shows that one distinct strain most probably arrived with the Vikings.

Rodents from Orkney are among those helping the scientists. It has been shown that mice from the islands have a DNA signature similar to their Scandinavian relations.

But these house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) were also found in areas around the Atlantic coast of Europe reached by the Norse explorers, said Professor Jeremy Searle, from York University.

"If we look at the genetic patterning of the mice, we find they have patterning that very much relates to human history; and so we get a particular genetic type of mouse that is found in the region where the Norwegian Vikings operated," he told BBC News.

Those must have been tough mice, I tell you! Those Vikings were rough characters -- wore animal skins and horned helmets, picked their teeth with the bones of their enemies, burned and looted wherever they went -- pretty scary folks! I don't get how they call the mice who hung out with these guys "house mice" or "Mus musculus domesticus." More like "pillage mice" and "Mus musculus ripoffyerarmicus."

On the thankfully rare occasion when I next see one of those little gray guys tiptoein' 'round our refrigerator, I'll think twice before I give him a sniff. He might just grab my whiskers and sling me over the dining room table, through the window and into the back yard. While I'm pickin' glass outta my teef, I'll be rememberin' days of yore, when Leif Erikson visited our American shores, and wonderin' how the heck I'm gonna get back into the house.