Cheetah gets loose on Delta flight

A Delta baggage worker got a bit of a fright when she opened a jetliner's cargo door and found a cheetah running loose amid the luggage.

Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said Friday that two cheetahs were being flown in the cargo area of a passenger flight from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta a day earlier when one escaped from its cage.

Talton said the airline summoned help from an Atlanta zoo. Experts rushed to a closed airport hangar and tranquilized both animals and took them back to the zoo...

--MSNBC

School's pet bat tests positive for rabies

Catching a bat in a school basement and keeping it as a classroom pet is a great way to learn — about rabies.

Two staff members at Trinity Lutheran School are getting a weekslong series of rabies shots after a bat kept in a locked terrarium tested positive for the disease.

On May 9, seventh- and eighth-grade teacher Steve Coniglio used a stick and a bucket to capture the bat, which died two days later.

The bat had been displayed in classrooms and students gave it crickets, but Susan Tucker, head teacher at the central Wyoming school, said Coniglio made sure students did not handle the animal.

State and county health officials on Tuesday interviewed all 95 staff members and students at the school and decided that Coniglio and a teaching assistant who cleaned the cage after the bat died needed to be treated as a precaution, said Marty Stensaas, manager for Fremont County Public Health Nursing...

--USA Today

Lost dog found four years later, 1,100 miles from home

A Boston terrier named Mickey who disappeared four years ago from his suburban Kansas City backyard was found in Montana and reunited with his owners this week.

Cher Jarosz and her daughter Kari Mitchell thought they had lost Mickey forever -- until they received a call from an animal shelter last week 1,100 miles away in Billings, Montana.

A microchip on Mickey helped the Billings Animal Shelter return him...

--CNN

Owners reclaim snake left in rental car

Sammy the boa survives two weeks chilling in chill in Dodge Charger

MILWAUKEE - A snake and his owners were reunited this week after the missing reptile was found in the glove compartment of a rented car.

Sammy, a 4-foot red-tailed boa constrictor, disappeared two weeks ago after his owners left him in the car while they went into an east side video rental store.

Richard Houston and Rosanne Burks were puzzled — their CDs and other items were still in the car. They searched the vehicle, looking under the seats and in the trunk. Finally, puzzled, they concluded Sammy had been stolen...

MSNBC