Rampaging goats accused of Nigeria election sabotage

That's the Reuters headline. Let's savor it again for a moment:

Rampaging goats accused of Nigeria election sabotage

That's the sort of thing that gives a chronicler of bad animal behavior the will to go on posting.

It's hard for a story to live up to a headline like that one, but here it is:

A Nigerian opposition party accused its political rivals of sabotage on Tuesday after its vice presidential candidate was forced to make an emergency landing due to a runway invasion by rams and goats.

Fola Adeola, vice presidential candidate for the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and other party chieftains made the forced landing, damaging their plane, after airport staff in the northern city of Bauchi failed to control the beasts.

The Nigerian government denied the accusation of sabotage and even the description of the event in some sources as a "crash-landing." They say that the plane had already landed when the goats ran across the runway.

And there is some support for this downplaying of the incident in quotes by Adeola himself:

We never knew that our plane crash-landed until somebody told me. It was Ribadu who later told me that I had just escaped death.

Not much of a crash-landing if some of the passengers don't even notice, perhaps?

But even if the government is telling the truth that they weren't trying to sabotage anyone... A spokesman for the national air traffic agency said:

The report we have got from Bauchi is that up till three minutes before the aircraft landed, our men and the civil defence corps provided by the state had gone round the runway and certified it okay. It was just when the rear landing gear was touching the runway that some animals emerged from nowhere on the runway.

Human staff seems to have been doing their job. Did anyone think to ask what side the goats are on?


What happens when you let goats hang out with planes by Flickr user shaggyshoo.

Happy (?) National Pet Fire Safety Day

Despite feeling that animals should take responsibility for their bad behavior, I'm all for keeping my pets out of harm's way. But that's not our assignment here, so the press release for National Pet Fire Safety Day wasn't something I expected to be relevant to this blog.

Boy, was I wrong:

“National Pet Fire Safety Day”

Prevention Tips to Keep Pets from Starting Home Fires

- New Data Says Pets Start Nearly 1,000 Fires Each Year-

Of course, this isn't a complete surprise. Despite reports of dogs saving their owners from fires, we've also reported on dogs that start them. Cats are certainly not innocent of the same, and the fact that at least some of them then raise the alarm doesn't lessen the blame.

The AKC gives some advice on how to keep your pets from starting fires, but they seem to vastly underestimate the possibilities. Sure, it's a great idea not to have open flames around the house whether you have a pet or not. But removing or covering stove knobs wouldn't have helped the people whose goat knocked over a space heater or the ones whose alligator was suspected of doing the same

And don't think that just adding advice to be careful with those space heaters will eliminate the problem - ask the people whose fan outlet was blocked by a bird's nest. Nor will it do anything to prevent what can happen to people who are stupid about animals, like the man who set his house on fire while trying to kill a spider with a lighter.

So go ahead and cover those knobs, buy fake electric candles, and even be careful about giving your pets water in a glass bowl on a wooden deck.

But don't let those precautions give you a false sense of security, because - like the people whose dog started a fire by peeing on the vacuum cleaner - you never know what animals are going to come up with next.

Goats betray their fellows, then pay the price

On an island off South Australia, a population of feral goats, descended from animals brought by settlers for their meat and milk, is following the usual routine of invasive species the world over. They're eating their way through the native plants, including one that's the main food source for the endangered black cockatoo.

By itself, hardly unusual enough to be worthy of mention. But here's where the really bad animals come into the story: the eradication effort, which involves what's being called "Judas goats."

From the Australian Broadcasting Corp:

The unwitting traitors are shipped over from the mainland, sterilised, fitted with radio tracking collars and released.

Project officer Nick Markopoulos says the program exploits the animal's sociable nature.

"Generally the goat will have about a week's sulk and once it gets over its week of sitting down and just adjusting itself to the new environment it's been released into, it will go off ... and find friends," he said.

"The feral goats are quite happy to accept them into their mobs and they fit right in."

The radio collars allow officials to find the group of feral goats and then, let's just say, they don't gather them up and take them to a goat shelter and adopt them out.

But what the Judas goats don't know is that they're going to pay the price for their collusion:

Mr Markopoulos predicts the island's feral population will be eradicated in a year.

Once they have done their job, the judas animals will also be destroyed.

Bad animals and humans

The deluge of bad animal news continues, along with the usual humans who don't know what side they are on:

In Australia, a rampaging goat put three people in the hospital when it invaded the grounds of a nursing home:

The goat butted the gardener before attacking a second man, aged in his seventies, who rushed over to help. Both of the men suffered suspected spinal injuries during the incident and the gardener, aged 60, was also left with cuts to his head and elbow.

A woman who had witnessed the furore injured her ankle as she ran for help.

Of course, some made excuses:

Peter Balassone, who lives next door to the goat's owners, said he was surprised to hear of the drama.

"The goats have been fine, believe it or not. Not a problem at all," he told the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper.

Then this neighbor reveals what might be the reason why there have not been problems before: it's not the goats' good nature, it's technology:

"But he does have an electrified fence on his side (of our fence)."

Also in Australia, a water aerobics class had to be delayed when a freshwater crocodile was found in the pool.

And finally, in Florida, where that monkey is still on the loose, people not only have to be warned not to feed it, some have actually threatened the trapper who's trying to catch it:

"I've had two different phone calls so far (from people) telling me if I kill the monkey that they're going to kill me," Vernon Yates of Wildlife Rescue and Rehab told 10Connects.com.

Follow the continuing monkey coverage at TampaBay.com.


Bad goat painted by Flickr user i eated a cookie.

Animals behaving humanly, part 4

For the last of this series, the original plan was a well reasoned rant against scientists who go out of their way to try to prove that animals possess human skills, such as this newly reported study on mathematical abilities in monkeys.

But thanks to a story sent our way by our good friend Sir Pilkington-Smythe at Weirdimals, instead, we're going to wrap up with an animal behaving humanly in a manner that we (well, most of us, anyway) can feel superior to.

In California, a goat broke into a closed "gentleman's club". Caught on surveillance video, the goat, perhaps disappointed by the absence of ladies in a state of undress, demonstrated that he was not only lustful and disrespectful of other's property, but also vain: he spent half an hour staring into a mirror.

As a member of a more sophisticated species, I know you have better things to do than click on that link and watch the video for yourself.


Goat no doubt looking for trouble by Misterqueue.

Lessons for the New Year

To start the new year off right, a collection of stories demonstrating how to - and how not to - treat animals that are behaving badly.

YES:
- Man bites snake in India:

A gardener who was bitten by a snake gave as good as he got, or better. He bit the snake back, and kept chewing until he felt rather ill, vomited, and fainted, but came out on top in the end:

"I was angry when the snake bit me on my finger. I bit it back because that was my way of taking revenge," Ramesh told doctors after regaining consciousness.

His condition is stable. The snake is dead.

- A goat in Germany was jailed for disrupting traffic, and insulted as well:

The only remarks on the arrest papers were "smells very bad."

The goat is being fed bread and water and as is clear from the photo above, his accomodations are suitably spartan.

Traffic enforcement on animal violators seems to be taken more seriously in some places than others. We've seen a dog get away with crashing a car into a store in Australia and everybody making excuses for a crocodile in Turkey.

Let's resolve in the new year not to take those two cases as precedent and work harder to lock up goats and handcuff bulls and big birds who disrupt travel.

NO:
-On the other end of the spectrum from the police department's goat diet of bread and water, we have a report of a zoo hiring a children's chef to make a special Christmas meal for a fussy baby lemur:

Zoo keepers have tried to tempt the animal with a variety of treats, but so far the youngster has turned his nose up at almost everything on offer.

So Mrs Karmel was drafted in to ensure he eats his Christmas dinner.

"He's quite fussy, like most kids are," she said. "He doesn't like vegetables but he likes fruit. The trouble with him is that he is fickle - one day he likes something and the next day he won't eat it."

-Even worse, on the other end of spectrum from the snake-biting gardener, the past year saw victims of shark attacks, including a man who had his arm bitten off by a shark, lobbying for shark conservation.

Enough said. You know what to do.

Goat REALLY behaving badly

Goats start house fire

DES MOINES, Iowa, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Firefighters say a cat is the hero and a goat is the goat in a house fire that destroyed an Iowa home this week.

The blaze in Warren County was believed to have been started by a goat that knocked over a space heater in an attached shed Tuesday and it might have proved deadly had the family cat not awakened the sleeping residents.

"My cat woke me up and I saw smoke coming out of my fan," John

Hadley told KCCI-TV, Des Moines. I made sure I got her (Hadley's mother) out and then I know she loves her animals, so I rounded all her animals up, and by that point, flames and smoke were everywhere."

Hadley and the other two people in the house had to wait in freezing cold for firefighters to arrive from several miles away. Officials told KCCI there wasn't much they could do by the time they were on scene.

Local coverage and news video here.


(Goat with evil eyes from photo by Flickr user Mofute)

Goat behaving badly?

Goat detained in armed robbery

LAGOS (Reuters) - Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

Fuller coverage at the BBC.