Fla. woman finds 8-foot alligator in her kitchen

And some people get jittery about mice in the kitchen.

Authorities say 69-year-old central Florida woman found an 8-foot long alligator prowling in her kitchen late Monday night.

Sandra Frosti says the gator must have pushed through the back porch screen door and then went inside through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa. It then apparently strolled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen...

--USA Today

Awakened man wrestles leopard out of his bed

A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.

"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," said 49-year-old Arthur Du Mosch, a nature guide. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."

Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half dozen leopards have been spotted recently near Du Mosch's small community of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel, although they rarely threaten humans.

Shapira said it was probably food that lured the big cat. Leopards living near humans are usually too old to hunt in the wild and resort to chasing down domestic dogs and cats for food, he added...

--CNN

Sea lion joins California schoolchildren's walk-a-thon

He has flippers instead of feet — and certainly no sneakers or hiking boots. But that didn't stop a sea lion from joining schoolchildren on a walk-a-thon.

The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School next to the shores of the San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.

"He did a whole lap," said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and web communications at the private school.

It was the latest brush with humans for the 1-year-old sea lion, called Astro by staffers at the Marin Headlands-based Marine Mammal Center.

Astro's mother abandoned him at Ano Nuevo Island off the San Mateo coast in June, prompting biologists to bottle-feed the pup. They released the adolescent on April 25 with a radio tag...

--USA Today

Cat survives trip from China to N.C. in crate

After Eric Congdon opened a crate from China and discovered a cat inside, coming up with a name for the furry stowaway was easy.

China the cat had chewed through one of the boxes before it left Shanghai on April 3 and spent at least 35 days on a ship inside the container filled with motorcycle gear.

"I saw something in the container move," Congdon said. "I turned up the headlights on the fork lift to get a better look."

That was when he saw the cat cowering in a corner, weak but still alive. Congdon, owner of Olympia Moto Sports in Hendersonville, said he and a co-worker called the county's animal services when the cat would not let them near...

--USA Today

Snakes invade Nepal Maoist camps, rattle leader

Hundreds of snakes have invaded camps housing Nepal's former Maoist fighters, infuriating their top leader, the state-run RSS news agency said Wednesday.

Maoist chief Prachanda accused the government of ignoring the maintenance of the camps, set up under a peace deal in November that ended a decade-old civil war in which thousands of people died.

"More than 700 snakes have been killed in a cantonment," RSS quoted Prachanda as saying...

--Reuters

Illegally parked alligator snarls Texas traffic

All it takes is one illegally parked troublemaker to tie up freeway traffic — especially if it's an 8-foot alligator sprawled across the pavement.

"I don't remember any of this in the academy," police Officer Albert Silva said of the traffic jam early Sunday. "As far as I know, there's no procedure on this other than: 'Don't get bit."'

Police car sirens didn't persuade the big reptile to budge off Loop 410.

Police threw orange traffic cones at the gator, but it just snapped at the cones and flung them away.

The gator even assaulted a police car, biting a chunk out of its bumper...

--USA Today

Pregnant cow runs riot across German city

A pregnant cow being chased by police and firefighters caused 25,000 euros (US$33,900) of damage on a three-hour rampage through the German city of Hanover.

Uschi escaped from a farm late Monday and became increasingly violent as she encountered shocked drivers and pedestrians in the city.

Pursued by the farmer, television camera crews and 30 police and firefighters, the Charolais cow lashed out at cars, benches, garden fences and whatever else got in her way during the 5-kilometer chase, authorities said...

--MSNBC

Young whale found in New York harbor

NEW YORK - Marine biologists were standing watch on Tuesday over a young whale that lost its way in New York harbor and nearly wandered into a narrow waterway notorious for industrial pollution.

The animal, described as a juvenile minke whale about 15 feet long, was cruising around Gowanus Bay, the outlet from the mile-long Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. It appeared to be in good health and not distressed, said Kim Durham, rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation.

The foundation, based in Riverhead, N.Y., specializes in cases involving whales, dolphins, seals and sea turtles.

Durham and other experts were dispatched to the scene after the whale was spotted early Tuesday. A television news helicopter videotaped it leaping out of the water, a behavioral trait common to whales of the baleen species...

--Yahoo! News