A 4-year-old boy is in the hospital after being attacked by a pit bull at a relative's house this morning, San Bernardino police said.

The boy and his mother, residents of Taylor, Mich., were visiting family members in the 1500 block of West Windsor St, Lt. Jarrod Burguan wrote in a news release. The child was in the backyard when he picked up a toy and, without warning, the dog attacked, Burguan wrote.

The boy suffered severe bite injuries to his head, back, arms and hands. His mother, 35, and another resident, 72, also were bitten while separating the dog and child, police said. None of their names were released.

The dog is in custody of San Bernardino Animal Control, according to the release. No charges or arrests have been made.

via 4-year-old suffers severe bites in pit bull attack in San Bernardino – PE.com – Daily News Digest.

LAKELAND, Fla. – Tiger is taking it easy, spending the day in bed lying down. His owner Vivian Rovelo says this pit bull doesn't even have the energy to go outside.

“He didn't eat yesterday,” she said.

Vivian says normally the dog is very active.

“Yes. Running, playing, you can't imagine. He's a very excited dog.”

Tiger needs his rest a day after surviving an alligator attack at Lake Hunter just south of downtown Lakeland.

The dog was going for a walk around the lake, as he often does with Vivan's husband Oscar. With soaring temperatures, Tiger needed a water break.

“He was going to the lake, because it was hot. And the alligator attacked. The alligator wanted to take him,” said Rovelo.

Tiger fought back and got out of the alligator's grip. Then Vivian's husband pulled him to safety with the leash.

“He said, oh! Tiger, Tiger! And he pulled him out and the alligator was gone,” she said.

There are plenty battle scars, scrapes and scratches all over Tiger's body. But it appears he may have hurt the gator too. One of Tiger's teeth is cut in half.

And while there are alligator warning signs around the lake, Vivian says more are needed. “Let me tell you, you have to be careful in the lakes, everybody. Everybody walks over there, with dogs, with kids.”

Florida Fish and Wildlife officials do advise pets to swim, exercise, or drink near places alligators call home.

Vivan hopes Tiger is up and around and back to his old self soon. In the meantime, she's giving him love, and the run of a big comfy bed.

via Pit bull recovering from gator attack.

Two people and three dogs were rescued by firefighters after hundreds of bees started stinging them at an eastside Las Vegas neighborhood late Saturday morning.  None of the injuries appeared to be serious.  It took firefighters approximately two hours to bring the situation under control.

The first call was received by fire dispatchers at 10:36 a.m. Saturday that a person had been stung several times by bees at 1500 Pacific Street (Oakey/Eastern).  When fire paramedics arrived on scene a few minutes later, they observed a large tree in front of a 1-story wood frame house had fallen against the house and broke in three places at the trunk.  Inside the trunk of the tree, which was hollow, firefighters could see the tree was full of a large bee hive with several hundred bees flying around.  The people who called for assistance were told to stay inside the house and firefighters would bring them out.  Other fire units were dispatched to the scene to assist.  Within a few minutes the people told firefighters that bees had entered the home and was stinging them and the dogs inside.  As they retreated to rooms inside the house, firefighters decided to rescue the people using blankets to cover them and take them to a waiting ambulance down the street.  They were able to successfully get them to the ambulance.  The two people were taken to Sunrise hospital.  The three dogs remained in the house.

Firefighters then attacked the hive using foam from a fire engine on scene.  Other firefighters went back into the house with a shop type vacuum cleaner that was brought to the scene from a near-by fire station to trap the bees that were inside the home with the dogs.  Once those bees were brought under control, the three dogs were brought out by firefighters and an animal control officer in protective clothing provided by the fire department to an animal control vehicle and taken from the scene.  Only one of the dogs appeared to have been stung several times, a closer examination by a veterinarian will be needed.

The street was closed to traffic for approximately 90 minutes by Metro Police officers and firefighters went door to door and advised people to shelter in place during the incident.

Firefighters continued to spray foam on the tree and remove hive from the interior of the tree until a majority of the bees were exterminated and the scene was brought under control.  A private exterminator will be needed to remove the dead tree from the private property.  None of the firefighters were injured during the incident.

via Firefighters Rescue Two People & Three Dogs From Bee Attack.

NELSON – A recent bear attack on a four-year-old girl and her grandmother in their yard has prompted a call for diligence.

Conservation officer Len Butler killed the mature male black bear after it clawed Nine Mile resident Jane Tillotson and visiting granddaughter Megan Chapple.

The young girl required six to eight stitches on her leg following the Aug. 24 attack.

“I was babysitting my granddaughters, who are four and six, and we went out to work in my vegetable garden,” Tillotson said.

“We'd been there for maybe 15 or 20 minutes making lots of noise. My littlest granddaughter just yelled for me and I turned and looked at her and a big bear was right behind her.

“The bear swiped at her and cut the back of her calf so she fell. It looked like that bear was going to bite her.”

Tillotson said she scooped up Megan and slowly backed away from the bear with her other granddaughter right behind her.

The bear swiped at the child again, scratching Megan's belly and — though she didn't feel it at the time — Tillotson's thigh.

“I was just shrieking hysterically at the top of my lungs,” said Tillotson. “It was probably no more than a few seconds but it seemed like forever to me [before] it stopped and ambled out of the garden.”

Butler said he doesn't think the attack was predatory in nature.

“Basically the bear was there to get something to eat and these people were in the way,” he said. ” If the bear wanted to kill the little girl, [it] could have.”

When he arrived at the home, Butler said he found a “fairly large” black bear in the neighbour's compost. He had his dog chase the bear into a tree where it was shot.

Garth Mowat, the B.C. Environment Ministry's senior wildlife biologist for the Kootenay region, said it's rare for a black bear to attack and knew of only one other human-related attack by a bear in the past 18 months. “I've not heard of black bears attacking people over food very often,” he said. “There might have been something else going on.”

Mowat suggested the bear may have been afraid or it took the child for a dog that was bothering it.

A few days after the attack, Nelson police shot a black bear hunkered down in a residential area along a road frequented by school children.

Part of the problem, say wildlife experts, is people leaving garbage and compost accessible to bears.

Butler said conservation officers will be issuing more wildlife protection orders to clear garbage, compost and fallen fruit. People who don't comply could be fined $345.

via Public warned after bear attacks girl, woman.

What would you do if you suddenly spotted a growling mountain lion about eight feet away in the dark?

Andy Bell said he was only about 100 feet from his Walker home when that happened to him Sunday night while he was turning off his outdoor water supply, so he decided to bolt for his front door.

Unfortunately, his running triggered the catamount's predatory attack response.

“It was on my back and took me down to the ground,” Bell told The Daily Courier Wednesday while in Prescott for doctor visits and rabies shots.

With the lion on his back, Bell said he slid about six feet down his gravel driveway and ended up directly under the back of his truck.

Luckily, he barely cleared the truck hitch but the lion's head rammed into it, peeling the lion right off his back.

“If I would have hit that hitch, he would have had a free dinner,” Bell said.

The stunned lion ran off and Bell ran into his house. He came back out with a gun but the lion was gone.

He had just experienced the most terrifying moment of his life.

“I've had close calls before in car accidents, but this is a completely different game,” Bell said. “I have a whole new respect for nature and its power.”

Bell is a hunter and he knows he shouldn't run from lions, but when he heard that lion growl he felt like his best chance was to run for the house because it was so close and he was unarmed.

“Put yourself in those shoes and see what you would have done,” Bell said.

While Bell suffered only a scratch from the lion, the six-foot slide in the gravel injured him significantly.

He has large gouges in the palms of his hands and injured his left elbow and right knee. He's getting tests to determine the extent of the injuries. On Wednesday he had to get rabies shots.

He hasn't been able to do much work at his RMS Fleet Service diesel repair shop in Prescott.

Bell said his dog has gone into barking fits about the same time almost every night since Saturday, and the dog refused to go outside with him Sunday night when the cat attacked, even though the dog always wanted to join him in the past.

Then Tuesday night, his neighbor reported seeing the lion after it set off his outdoor motion-sensor light. The neighbor lives about 150 yards away in Walker, a small forested community a few miles southeast of Prescott.

Like Bell, the neighbor got his gun and went back outside, but the cougar was gone.

“I was up all night just knowing it was out there,” Bell said.

Bell and his girlfriend are staying armed when they go outdoors, and Bell would love to get a shot at the lion. But he knows it's not an easy job to track a cougar, especially when he's limping.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services trackers plan to try a second time today to track the lion, said Zen Mocarski of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Their dogs were unable to pick up a scent Tuesday. Wildlife officials have not been able to identify any lion tracks in the area, either.

Despite what he has been through, Bell still loves nature and worries that his experience will scare off visitors to Prescott. So he is urging people not to fear the forest because of what happened to him.

via Walker man details lion attack – The Prescott Daily Courier – Prescott, Arizona.

SAINT-HYACINTHE, Que. — A stunned teenage mother was charged with manslaughter Tuesday, one day after her three-week-old daughter was mauled to death by a dog.

On her way out of the Quebec courtroom, the distraught 17-year-old locked eyes with her boyfriend, the newborn baby's father, who was still in disbelief himself.

“I know that it's not really her fault,” the 19-year-old man told reporters before the young woman's youth court appearance.

“She's an excellent mother.”

Police say a dog turned on the newborn after she had been left unattended with two huskies at the couple's home in the village of St-Barnabe-Sud, about 65 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

The baby's father says the mother told him that everything happened quickly at the residence they share with another couple.

He says she went outside to join her mother — the baby's grandmother — for a smoke and she wasn't even a few metres from the girl. Within a matter of seconds, she heard something from inside the house.

“She (the baby) was in a little rocking chair and she was rocking gently,” he said.

“She (the mother) hadn't even closed the door when she heard (a) noise. She went back into the house. And the dog had jumped on the child.

“It was a moment of inattention.”

The huskies, a male and a female, belong to the couple's housemates, the newborn's father said. He described them as “super-affectionate,” obedient pets.

“We never thought this could happen,” he said.

Police also arrested the baby's 37-year-old grandmother Monday, but did not press charges against her.

Andre Williams, the lawyer for the 17-year-old girl, said the manslaughter charge laid by the Crown came as a surprise, especially so soon after the baby's death.

“She's destroyed,” Williams said of the mother, who shuffled into the courtroom wearing track pants and a grey T-shirt.

“She lost her child yesterday. She's 17 years old, so you can imagine how she is (right) now.”

Williams contends the charge of manslaughter, which carries no minimum or maximum sentence, will be very difficult to prove. He had expected a charge of criminal negligence causing death.

“I'm quite surprised that they've already laid charges against a young girl who is in fragile state, on top of which they also detained her (on Monday night),” he said at the St-Hyacinthe courthouse.

The teenager, who cannot be identified because she's a minor, returns to court on Aug. 31 after her release Tuesday.

As part of the conditions of the girl's release, Judge Viviane Primeau told her she is not allowed to look after children under the age of 12.

“We had the proof that we needed this morning, so that's the reason why we have made our decision,” prosecutor Caroline Fontaine said of the manslaughter charge.

One neighbour in the rural community of St-Barnabe-Sud, which has a population of about 900, said he's seen the two dogs running around wild, not appearing to obey orders from their master.

“I live in the country and I'm not comfortable with the idea of having dogs running around on my property without being supervised,” Guy Vaillancourt, himself a grandfather of a three-year-old girl, said in an interview.

Vaillancourt recalled that the animals once approached his own dog but appeared friendly.

“I didn't have any problems with them,” he said. “I petted them and they did not show any aggressiveness.”

The teenage father, wearing a faded, tattered AC/DC T-shirt, said he took anti-depressants to help cope with the shock of the previous 24 hours.

The man said he appreciated all the support he's received from family and friends, several of whom were in the courtroom Tuesday.

“I have a funeral for this child to take care of and right now I don't make any money, so it's going to be very difficult,” he said.

“I'm trying to sort things out however I can.”

via CTV Montreal – Mother charged with manslaughter – CTV News.

Something seems fishy about this story.

KINGMAN – Authorities have called off the search for a mountain lion suspected of attacking a Prescott man on Sunday night.

Arizona Game and Fish officials says partial tracks were found Monday, but tracking dogs were unable to pick up the mountain lion's scent.

The suspected attack occurred near the Snow Drift Mine area. Andy Bell says he was outside his home just after dark Sunday when he heard some rustling in the bushes. His flashlight revealed what he believed to be a mountain lion about eight feet away.

Bell says he ran for his home, but was pounced on from behind near his truck. He believes the mountain lion hit its head on the trailer hitch and fled as Bell rolled under the vehicle.

The 30-year-old Bell was treated by a doctor for a shoulder scratch that he says came from one of the lion's claws.

via Prescott man reportedly attacked by mountain lion.

LONDON (June — The red fox has long divided public opinion in Britain. Many country dwellers view the animals as livestock-murdering vermin and enjoy hunting them down with packs of dogs. But a large section of the population has a deep respect for these canny critters — who have learned to thrive in Britain's towns and cities — as reflected by Roald Dahl's charming children's book, “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

However, following an attack by one of the animals on 9-month-old twins in east London this weekend, foxes have lost many of their fans. According to Pauline Koupparis, the children's mother, a fox crept through an open door and into their house on Sunday evening. Koupparis, who had been watching TV with her husband, rushed upstairs when she heard the girls crying in the nursery.

“I went into the room and I saw some blood in Isabella's cot. I thought she'd had a nosebleed,” she told BBC radio. “I put on the light, I saw the fox and it wasn't even scared of me, it just looked me directly in the eye.” The siblings were rushed to hospital, where Isabella received treatment for injuries to her arm, and her sister Lola for facial wounds. A fox caught near the family home today was destroyed, although it's not known if it was the same animal that attacked the sisters.

Although the incident was highly unusual — fox attacks on humans are almost unknown in the U.K. — some media commentators have declared that authorities must now launch an all-out war on this red menace. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Clive Aslet — editor-at-large of the pro-hunting magazine Country Life — claimed that the number of urban foxes has rocketed in recent years, making a cull urgently needed. Experts at the University of Bristol's Mammal Group disagree, saying that urban fox numbers are relatively stable at about 33,000. They argue that the foxes have simply become more visible and confident over the past decade, as the amount of tasty waste scraps left lying around city streets has increased.

Aslet went on to argue that animal control specialists wielding dart guns should be ordered to patrol “railway embankments” where foxes are known to lurk. He added that “Fantastic Mr. Fox” should also be banned in schools, as it gives children the wrong idea about these troublesome beasts.

The tabloid Daily Mail also berated “urban dwellers” who “adopt a soft-hearted attitude to these predators, who are foolishly seen as cute, cuddly and clever.” It cited pest controllers who claimed that foxes had been known to gobble up “cats, gerbils [and] chinchillas.”

Other animal experts, though, have called on the British public to get the recent, admittedly tragic, attack into perspective. In England alone, some 225,000 people a year receive medical treatment for dog bites. “But people aren't calling for all dogs in cities to be culled,” John Bryant told AOL News. Bryant runs the British Humane Wildlife Deterrence Association, which removes foxes and other critters from homes and businesses without killing them.

“I've never heard of an attack like this before in my 40 years of working with foxes,” says Bryant, who speculates that the attack on the girls was carried out by a confused 3- to 4-month-old cub. He thinks it might have been lured to the nursery by the smell of diapers, which urban foxes have learned to associate with food, as they're often found alongside edibles in household trash. “It was simply an unfortunate freak occurrence.”

Bryant now worries that pest control companies are using the incident to whip up fears over urban fox numbers and win new business. He also suspects that foxhunting supporters like Aslet are trying to capitalize on the attack, which is useful fuel for their campaign to reverse Parliament's 2004 ban on hunting with hounds.

The fox expert says that if Brits really want their animal neighbors to leave town, they need to do one thing: clean up their dirty habits. “We throw food out in the streets and leave it lying around in unprotected black sacks,” Bryant says. “Our waste disposal standards are so appalling, it's no wonder that we're surrounded by scavengers like foxes.”

via Fox Attack on British Babies Sparks Debate Over Fox Hunting, Pest Control – AOL News.

A 17-year-old mother and a 37-year-old grandmother have been arrested and will be charged with criminal negligence causing death, after a three-week-old baby girl was mauled to death by a husky dog.

Quebec provincial police were called to a home in Saint-Barnabe-Sud, about 65 kilometres northeast of Montreal, Monday afternoon.

They found the lifeless child, the two women, and the two husky dogs at the scene.

According to Surete du Quebec Sgt. Ronald McInnis, the baby was left in a car seat on the floor while the mother and grandmother went outside.

While they stepped out of the house, one of the dogs attacked and killed the infant.

The mother and grandmother were taken to hospital to be treated for shock, and both were arrested after they were released.

The 37-year-old woman is scheduled to be arraigned at the St. Hyacinthe courthouse Tuesday afternoon, and her daughter will make an appearance in youth court.

via CTV Montreal – Mother, grandmother arrested after fatal dog attack on infant – CTV News.

Link

A young Vernon girl is recovering after being attacked by a coyote Monday afternoon.

The girl suffered minor puncture wounds when the animal attacked as the family walked their small dog in a greenbelt area near Alexis Park Drive and 35th Avenue at 5pm.

Conservation Officer Josh Lockwood says coyote attacks in BC are rare, with only four attacks on humans in the last 15 years.

“In this incident, the people walking had a small dog which probably attracted the coyote’s attention to them,” says Lockwood.

The animal was not found following a search by a special response team.

The public is being cautioned against feeding the animal. Lockwood says it’s denning season for coyotes, prompting the animals to search for more food.

Residents are urged to contact Conservation if a coyote is spotted where it shouldn’t be roaming. The contact number is 1-877-952-7277.