Detroit Big Cat, Giant Savannah Breed Animal Named 'Chum', Shot And Killed: Reports

Reports of a giant cat stalking the streets of Detroit made national headlines for a few days.

But now an animal group says that the big cat of Detroit, who was rumored to be the size of a Doberman, has been shot and killed.

Paws for the Cause Feral Cat Rescue told WXYZ-TV that the cat met an untimely end. They had been trying for the last several days to rescue the animal.

The Detroit Free Press found out more about the cat. For starters, the feline had a name: Chum.

Laura Wilhelm-Bruzek, founder of Paws for the Cause, told the Free Press that the cat was three years old and weighed 25 pounds. It was a Savannah cat, a cross-breed between an African serval and a domestic house cat that was first introduced in the 1980s.

The cat also wasn't a stray. The owners, who lived in Eastpointe, which borders Detroit, said Chum had escaped through a bathroom window about a month ago. They hadn't micro-chipped their pet.

The animal's remains were found in a trash can on Detroit's east side Monday evening. WIlhelm-Bruzek said that a resident living just south of Eight Mile Road had shot and killed the feline days ago. Neighbors in the area had reportedly asked the Detroit Police and the Michigan Humane Society to investigate reports of the animal, but action wasn't taken quick enough to save Chum's life.

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Family discover missing pet tortoise in locked store room THIRTY YEARS after she vanished... and she's still alive

• Manuela disappeared from her home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1982
• Found when owners finally cleared out store room after father died
• Vet believes she survived by eating termites from the wooden floors

By MATT ROPER

PUBLISHED: 10:33, 25 January 2013 | UPDATED: 14:43, 25 January 2013

A family found their missing pet tortoise in a store room more than 30 years after they lost her, it was reported today.

Manuela disappeared from her home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1982 and despite a lengthy search was never seen again.

Her owners, the Almeida family, assumed she had run away after builders working on the house left the front door open.

It was only after their father Leonel died earlier this month that the Almeida children began clearing out a second-floor room which he had filled with broken electrical items and always kept locked.

Leonel's son, Leandro, said he was astonished to find Manuela alive inside a box containing an old record player.

He told Brazil's Globo G1 website said: 'I put the box on the pavement for the rubbish men to collect, and a neighbour said, "you're not throwing out the turtle as well are you?"

'I looked and saw her. At that moment, I turned white, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.'

Continued\:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268119/Family-discover-missing-pet-tortoise-locked-store-room-THIRTY-YEARS-vanished--shes-alive.html

The Story of Larry the Snake

In 2009, Taryn Hook brought Larry, a Dumerils boa constrictor, a species native to Madagascar, to see Chris Sanders at his veterinary hospital in Portola Valley, Calif.

Larry was ill. Again. And this time Hook feared the worst. The snake had been sickly since she first got him in the late 1990s, when he was the size of a pencil.

"He's a member of the family," Hook said. "He even sits on the couch with us. He watches American Idol." (Hook's husband is also named Larry, although snake Larry has been in her life longer than human Larry.)

Blood tests had been inconclusive, but they showed that Larry might have IBD, an affliction that affects pythons and boa constrictors. Biopsies from animals with the disease show their cells filled up with globules of proteins — inclusions — which cause a host of weird symptoms, from projectile vomiting to an eerie behavior called stargazing.

YouTube videos shot by worried pet owners, some tender, some bizarre, show snakes of all sizes raising their heads over and over, staring into thin air, and listing drunkenly from side to side. "They kind of go crazy," one scientist said.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/22343-snake-larry-ibd-virus.html