The Return of the Ring

I have the best story I've ever had the joy to tell. You know sometimes how you hear of how a gentleman was fishing and he loses his wedding ring and a giant fish eats it and then 20 years later his son catches it, fillets the thing and finds the ring and gives it back to his father? Mine's just as cool.

I got married a year ago to Jenae. Loyal readers might recall the details of how I lost the wedding ring, but I must recap for now.

You see I hid Jenae's wedding ring in the couch or lounge chairs before we went on Christmas holiday for safe keeping. I know, who does that right? In the New Year we got a new leather couch as a wedding present from my mother shortly before the wedding. Hi mum! So naturally we got rid of the old couch and chairs by way of donation to the Salvation Army in Wellington. Onwards Christian Soldier!

A couple of weeks pass and Jenae suddenly asks one night a week before the wedding to look at her ring. Neurons fire off faster than that machine they built that was supposed to kill us all and I recalled my actions. I realised I have done the dumbest thing I have ever done. Ring is gone and the people who bought the couch and chairs seemed to have paid cash and cannot be found. Cue much mirth and harassment during the actual wedding day speeches.

The replacement ring going on!

That was about 14 months ago. Tonight, one month or so after our wedding anniversary, Jenae walks into town to get some ink for the printer and passed the Salvation Army store to which the couch had been sent originally. She sadly thinks of the time her dumb husband lost her wedding band and looks in the window. And there they were, the two chairs that we donated over 14 months ago were back in the Sallies, sans couch.

Jenae's heart raced and she whipped in. After a breathless garbled message to the store clerk, who appeared to think she was insane, Jenae rummaged around in the closest chair... and from it's depths pulled out the lost ring! The two clerks could not be believe it and jumped for joy with Jenae. What goes around, comes around eh?

We had missed that ring more than Gollum missed his! The story even made it on Polly and Grant's ZM radio breakfast show it was that tragic! We were pretty stoked to have got it back!

The irony is (is it? Ed.) that I bought Jenae another identical band to go on the other side of her engagement ring for our anniversary some 5 weeks ago - so she now had four rings! We had claimed insurance and they paid out in three days and we got a new wedding band in no time - we rang the insurer who offered us the chance to  keep the ring and give the money back or vice versa. Given J doesn't need four rings, we gave it back. Some might say we should have keep quiet, but that's not how we roll.

Given my father died two weeks ago, this sure has bought some cheer to the family, and the conspiracy theorists and theists reckon he might have had a word with the big guy about it! How Johnny would have loved to tell this story.

Anyways, I'm now only slightly more forgiven for losing the ring in the first place, and I have a great story to tell the kids one day!

Angry like the Tiger

Check out this former zoo tiger from Germany as it arrived at the Dutch shelter for predators in Nijeberkoop. The tigers come from the defunct Tierpark Kalletal zoo, which closed earlier this year (2010).

Yes, technically this post is not of a tiger eating another animal but look at this tiger, it's pissed off it's been in a cage all day and that snarl just says, "I'm gonna eat you if you let me out!"

Image Credit: Daily Telegraph

Shere Kahn and other Tigers I have known...

Tigers are like the 'other' King of the Jungle. Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book made the tiger, Shere Kahn,  into a dangerous bastard who was not to be trusted. This was based on the real behavior of Tigers as they are great hunters and will stealthily glide through the jungle to catch their lunch. 

The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore. This means that  Shere Kahn will fuck you up, man.

Tigers can reach up to 3.3 metres (11 ft) in  length and weigh up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds).  The most numerous tiger subspecies is the Bengal tiger while the largest subspecies is the Siberian tiger.

They are beautiful animals and as such their skins were much sought after and as a result, the numbers of tigers are dangerously low. World Wild Fund has some views on the issue.

Tiger with its kill of a Sambar Deer, Madhya Pradesh, India

This calf is having a bad day. Clearly, it's not a natural setting.

Love them bones!

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Meat on ice, to keep it Tiger Fresh!

Like most cats, Tigers some times need to eat grass to assist with their digestion. This is especially so after eating an impala..

Snooze, you loose, Blesbuck as the South China Tigers are fucking fast.

Tiger on the prowl...

Tiger facts from WWF:

• Tigers are found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia (Sumatra), Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Russia (Far East), Thailand and Vietnam.
• The 6 living subspecies of tigers are: Amur, Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan, South China and Sumatran.
• The Bali, Caspian and Javan tiger subspecies have all become extinct.
• Wild tiger numbers have fallen by about 95% over the past 100 years.
• Tigers survive in 40% less area than they occupied a decade ago.

Python eating a Kangaroo

Nothing much to say other than here's a bunch of photos of a Australian Python eating a kangaroo...


























Image Source

Vet with dart gun v Crocodile: Guess who wins?

So apparently this photo is the result of a veterinarian seeking to examine a crocodile. Having drugged the living fossil, the vet assumed it was safe to put one's arm down the croc's throat to retrieve the tranquilizer dart  he used to drug the animal.

A smirking crocodile

Is it me or is the crocodile actually smirking? I think he's displaying the arm as a trophy and so he should, he totally faked out the vet!

Check out the to darts at the left of the picture. Lesson? You need four darts!

The good news is the arm was able to re attached to one Chang Po-yu's' body. This all happened in 2007 at Shaoshan Zoo in the southern city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

No smirking in this photo as Chang Po-yu's holds up four fingers to show how many darts he should use next time

Now, the title of this post asked, "guess who wins?" And I bet you thought the crocodile won, after he got the guys arm right? No. To get the arm back the crocodile had to be shot twice. Sad Face.

But wait! The bullets missed and the smirking crocodile was not shot! It's a win for the crocodile and the crowd goes wild!

True story, you can't make this kind off stuff up.

Python rests his weary bones under and electric fence?

As James Bond would say if this was a Goldfinger movie, shocking!

This python had eaten an impala ewe and was trying to go through the electric fence when it was killed by the electric fence. The poor beast would have not known what the heck was going on and appears to have resorted to biting the very thing killing him, further adding to it's demise. Humans -  fucking up nature since we began eh?

The pictures were taken on Silent Valley Ranch in the Waterberg mountains of South Africa. 

Check out the  impala that was found in the Rock python's stomach:

Snopes proves these photos are legitimate. Other images 

Polar bears suck at camping

Warning, this is a grisly post and is possibly NSFW

The definition of animal includes human beings so I am totally justified in bringing you these pictures of a hungry polar bears efforts at trying to make a meal of an Innuit hunter called Kootoo Shawwho amazingly survived this attack near the Arctic village of Kimmirut in Nunavut, the northernmost territory of Canada.

Long story short, hunters were camping when attacked by a polar bear who wanted to eat them.

Here's the end result:

And here's the end result for the bear. Sad face.

Source: Urban Legends (which reckon this story was true)

Those Polar bears are turning about to be some pretty scary animals!

Polar Bears are cannibals? Who knew?

I'm not sure the victim in this picture knew any way.

Check it out, the polar bear has totally made a McHappy Meal of this baby polar bear.
What used to be cute, well... it's lunch now.

This Reuters photo shows what happened on a snowy day north of the Canadian town of Churchill.

Check out that tooth!

As usual, some Al Gore loving hippy claimed that this behaviour was the result of climate change and lack of food etc as a result however a level headed Innuit noted that a male polar bear eating a cub is a normal occurrence.

Cool.

Indeed a retired Environment Canada biologist Ian Stirling says evidence suggests cubs are being killed for food, not just so the male can mate with the mother.

Okay kids one more cannibal polar bear picture for luck:

Mean while, in one particular Zoo, polar bears get to eat horse.