In other news

Baby mountain lion in the Santa Monica Mountains. Photo by the good folks of the National Park Service.

Three words: Radioactive. wild. boars.

"When I write to tell you to go outside and experience nature, I am writing inside and you are reading inside and neither of us is outside experiencing nature." True dat.

Mountain lions of the Santa Monica Mountains. Great overview by Gary Valle [H/T CougarMagic]. On second thought, maybe I'll stay inside. [Near midnight here in the San Bernardino National Forest. Plus: radioactive wild boars.] The cuteness! [And oh, the humanity.]

Oklahoma Pre-wash Cycle. Awww.

And finally: Goodbye, Snaffles. Splendid and deeply moving eulogy for a wise, wonderful horse.

Blog love: Worms & Germs

How can you not love a blog with posts like Stupid things done with bats and Woman pecked by magpie loses leg and Cleaning up raccoon latrines? Worms & Germs is one creepy fascinating website. Smart, too: it's brought to us by the Ontario Veterinary College's Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses and the City of Hamilton Public Health Department, and the focus of the blog is zoonotic diseases. [Check out their Resources page.]

Today the W&G post is about dog bites. Excerpt:

A study was recently published in the Veterinary Record (O'Sullivan et al, 2008, volume 163) describing 234 dog bites in people in Ireland. Dog owners and victims of dog bites were interviewed to characterize the incidents. Bites were divided into 2 categories: bites to the dogs' owner(s) and bites to someone who didn't own the dog. Here are some parts of the study that I found interesting:

*A large number of dog breeds were involved. The breeds most commonly involved in bites were also the most common breeds in the country, indicating that higher bite numbers for certain breeds were a reflection of the breed popularity, not a breed-associated propensity to bite.

Read the rest of the post here. Weird trivia: "24% of owners and 22% of non-owners were bitten on a Wednesday." Unreal. Forget BSL -- Ireland needs to ban Hump Day.

W&G now has a sibling-blog devoted to horses: EquID Blog. Thanks to Drs. Scott Weese and Maureen Anderson for coordinating these often cringe-inducing and always informative websites.

"The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials"

The photo I'm using as a temporary backdrop, like the one above, is from The Big Picture's collection of photographs from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. You can see the others here. They're terrific and beautiful and astonishing, and what a contrast between the tessellations of the opening ceremonies and the faces of the children in The Big Picture's last photo. Full of hope, bless them — may they go from strength to strength.

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Olympic equestrian events trivia, from the 2007 General Regulations of the FEI [governing body for international equestrian sports]:

CHAPTER VI
HORSES
Article 138 - AGE OF HORSES
1. Horses entered for Olympic Games and FEI World Championships in the Olympic Disciplines for Dressage and Eventing must be at least eight years of age and for Jumping they must be at least 9 years years of age.

2. Horses entered in FEI World Championships in non-Olympic Disciplines, FEI Regional Games, FEI Continental Championships, FEI World Cups, CIOs and CIs must be at least 6 years of age unless otherwise stated in the Sport Rules.

I think of this whenever the subject of thoroughbred racing comes up.