Pet hippo becomes a weighty problem

When a newborn baby hippo was washed up by a flood onto the lawn of his riverside home, the game ranger who found the dying animal lovingly nursed her back to health.

But what started out as a cute, tubby 35lbs baby is now a boisterous seven-year-old - equivalent to a human 'teenager' - weighing nearly three-quarters of a ton.

And like many modern teenagers, Jessica, as she has been named, finds family life too comfortable and just won't leave home.

She eats, sleeps, swims and plays with retired game warden Tonie Joubert and wife Shirley at their home in South Africa.

She wanders round the house, drinks coffee on the verandah, hangs out with the pet dogs and enjoys Shirley's soothing massages that help her relax at the end of a happy hippo day.

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July.

Rare white humpback whale spotted

Record numbers of humpback whales are on their annual migration up Australia's east coast, including the rare white whale Migaloo, scientists say.

Migaloo, whose Aboriginal name means "white fella", is believed to be the only completely white humpback whale in the world.

The 14-metre whale was spotted off Heron Island, on Queensland's central coast, by resort staff on a fishing trip.

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Plastic duck armada heading for Britain

A flotilla of plastic ducks is heading for Britain’s beaches, according to an American oceanographer.

For the past 15 years Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking nearly 30,000 plastic bath toys that were released into the Pacific Ocean when a container was washed off a cargo ship.

Some of the ducks, known as Friendly Floatees, are expected to reach Britain after a journey of nearly 17,000 miles, having crossed the Arctic Ocean frozen into pack ice, bobbed the length of Greenland and been carried down the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Ebbesmeyer said that those that had not been trapped in circulating currents in the North Pacific, crushed by icebergs or blown ashore in Japan are bobbing across the Atlantic on the Gulf Stream.

Any beachcomber who finds one of the ducks will be able to claim a $100 (£50) reward from the toys’ American distributor, First Years Inc.

More Pet Quotes

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~ Immanual Kant

"A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution." ~ Hazel Nicholson

"The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals" ~ Anonymous

"Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole." ~ Roger Caras

"A dog is the only thing on earth that will love you more than you love yourself." ~ Josh Billings

"Dogs have owners, cats have staff." ~ Anonymous

"If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans" ~ James Herriot

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face." ~ Ben Williams


"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'" ~ Dave Barry

"There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before." ~ Robert Lynd

"The Trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a Cat"~ Ogden Nash


Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Webloggin, Planck's Constant, The Amboy Times, The Random Yak, and Big Dog's Weblog, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Pet Quotes