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Inner-city kids get a chance to ride and care for horses. Our photo gallery, with audio of the children, is here.
 It's those damned mockingbirds! While roosters might crow only at sunrise, your neighborhood mockingbird can sing all night long during the summer, as KPCC reporter Steven Cuevas can attest to:
"Sometimes I'd roust him from the tree with a wet blast from the garden hose. He'd flutter to the top of a telephone pole and resume his song. On those nights, I yearned to take him on a 'long walk on a short branch,' if you know what I mean."
All that nocturnal "fweeping" is probably coming from an unmated male seeking a mate. Unless you consider clear-cutting every tree in your neighborhood, you are probably stuck listening to your resident mockingbird rehearsing its favorite pick-up lines until August, even September. Isn't there a match.com for mockingbirds?
-- Jesus Sanchez
Photo: Audubon Society
Just days after we ran a story about a NorCal town banning fireworks to save wildlife, young birds here in SoCal were scared right out of the trees during the annual fireworks extravaganzas that rim the Santa Monica Bay. Local marine animal rescue groups report finding numerous birds after this year's displays, some dead or injured, others alive but helpless.
In the photo is one of several young great blue herons knocked from their nests by the blasts in Marina del Rey. This heron, too young to fly, was snapped in an apartment courtyard just moments before a rescue group arrived. The bird will be fostered and, if it survives, released.
What do you think - is this a serious issue, or much ado about nothing? Are fireworks worth the risk?
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Peter Wallerstein / Marine Animal Rescue
Sure, you could pay thousands for a fancy dog house complete with a woof roof garden for Rover. Or you could get the same green and gracious space with a bit of sweat equity:
Green roofs are good. They clean the air, cool the house below, provide
rest stops for birds and butterflies. If you work well with wood and
want to try a green roof, why not start by building one for your dog?
Landscape architect Stephanie Rubin and her partner, sculptor Chris
Isner, sell doghouses with rooftop gardens for $1,000 to $4,000. Your
homemade version will cost a lot less -- and the dog in residence will
appreciate a plant-topped refuge that is cooler, in every sense of the
word, than anything else around.
To start, Rubin and Isner suggest that you come up with your own general design or scan for ideas on their website, www.sustainablepet.com. They won't mind if you filch. For a closer look at their doghouses, visit City Bakery in Brentwood.
Read the rest in the full story here.
Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times
Many Southern California dog and pet owners are preparing to protect their animals from all the noise and smell of Independence Day fireworks. There is some great advice on L.A. Unleashed to help keep your pet from freaking out on the Fourth.
-- Jesus Sanchez
Photo: A dog trainer in Portland, Oregon tries to desensitize a dog to fireworks. Source: AP
 Want to read another story about the travails of Moe, the celebrity chimp of West Covina who is now lost somewhere in the wilds of the San Bernardino Mountains? If the answer is "no," then you apparently have a lot of company, reports the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
"I'm sick of hearing about it, about the people who owned him and all of that," said Larry Wickersham at Westfield West Covina Monday. "If I never hear about him again, it will be too soon."
Read more about others suffering from Moe Fatigue Syndrome.
-- Jesus Sanchez
Photo: Moe with owners in happier days during the early 1970s. Credit: Courtesy of the Davis family.
 Remember the young great white shark caught by local fishermen and put into the floating pen last week outside Paradise Cove in Malibu? Biologists released him Sunday after deciding he wouldn't be a good candidate to live for a few months in the Outer Bay exhibit of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Meanwhile, a number of readers asked for stats about the sharks that have been captured for study. Here's the info from Ken Peterson, who works with the aquarium: Since 2002, we and our university research colleagues have handled 30 young white sharks in Southern California waters. Of those, 29 were caught accidentally in gear used by commercial fishermen as they were fishing for sea bass or halibut. The 30th was caught hook-and-line by our staff, and was one of three young sharks brought to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Of the 29 caught in commercial gear, five died. Some of those deaths undoubtedly were the result of injuries the sharks sustained in fishing nets before we received them. (There's no definitive way to say in how many cases that was a factor.)
We do know that, because fishermen are willing to alert us when they accidentally catch a young white shark, we've been able to tag and track more than a dozen animals and learn more than has ever been known about their movements in waters off Southern California and Baja. You can find the published data from the initial tagging work here.
As for the shark released Sunday, Peterson says it promptly swam away -- far away, as the sharks collected by the aquarium are too young to show territorial behavior. Biologists say the juveniles, which are fish-eaters, swim throughout SoCal waters, as well as south to Baja, Mexico.
All three sharks that did a stint in the aquarium exhibit were released in the Monterey Bay. The first went to Santa Barbara within the month. The second wound up in Cabo San Lucas in 90 days, and last year's shark -- that's the one in the photo -- took 44 days to get to Cabo and, five months later, was in the Sea of Cortez.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo credit: courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium
 Here's Ken Peterson, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, with a few words about the shark:
All of the white sharks are returned to the wild, carrying tracking tags to help fill the considerable gaps in our understanding of where these threatened animals spend their time (and therefore, where they may be in need of additional protection).
We and our research partners have placed tracking tags on 15 young white sharks since 2002, plus tagging the three animals that have been on exhibit at the aquarium for up to six months. The tag on the most recent animal just popped free halfway up the Sea of Cortez, adding significantly to our knowledge of their range.
More than a million people have seen a white shark in person at the aquarium, and we have contributed more than $1.2 million to field studies of juvenile and adult white sharks since our research program began in 2002. We've also found, in surveying visitors, that people who see a white shark in person come away with stronger attitudes supporting shark conservation.
The only money fishermen receive is to compensate them for the fishing time they lose so they can check their gear more frequently, hold a shark until our university research partners can get measurements, take blood samples and fit the sharks with tracking tags, and the time and fuel it takes if we ask them to bring a shark to the holding pen in Malibu.
Read the details of the program here. (The photo is last year's shark being moved to its transport tank.) For details on what the shark did after it was released from the aquarium this year, click here.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation / Ken Peterson
 A great white shark has been swimming in the floating pen outside Paradise Cove in Malibu since Tuesday, caught accidentally by a commercial fisherman and turned over to marine biologists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's a young male, 4 feet 9 inches long, no estimates on weight yet.
The shark stays under observation in the 4 million-gallon mesh offshore holding pen until the biologists decide whether to tag and release it, or send it to Monterey for a star turn in the wildly popular Outer Bay exhibit, the aquarium's largest. If the new great white makes the cut, it will travel to Monterey via the "Finnebago," a 3,000-gallon oblong holding tank filled with water kept at 68 degrees. Sharks are kept in the exhibit for a few weeks to a few months, then are released into the ocean with tracking devices, which transmit back a wealth of information.
 The aquarium typically looks for "young of the year," or sharks younger than 1, who eat bait fish but won't hunt larger prey such as seals and sea lions. (A photo of last year's shark, at left, swimming in the exhibit. For an update on the aquarium's previous tenant, check our recreation blog, Outposts.)
Opinions about keeping a shark in captivity are -- surprise! -- sharply divided. Some object on moral grounds, others say learning as much as possible about the predators will help protect them.
Meanwhile, the newest candidate is swimming in circles in Malibu. We'll keep you posted.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo of shark: Randy Wilder / Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation
We've been following the thread on Curbed LA about the disappearance of the Silver Lake herons. Local bird lover (and LAT editor) Steve Padilla sends this dispatch: "...last night one of the Silver Lake great blue herons flew right over my house. Funny how you 'feel' them before you see them."
Next step -- a photo. Send 'em if you've got 'em.
--Veronique de Turenne
 Thank you, L.A. Unleashed, for that vital bit of info. It would have been just another hot and doggone (sorry) boring Friday without this funny post by our own Alice Short:
"We tend to be a little suspicious of proclamations such as "Friday, June 20, is Take Your Dog to Work Day." (Doesn't it sound a bit like a Hallmark conspiracy?) And yet, our dog is so ab-fab that we're tempted to ignore the voices in our head that say 'Perhaps the L.A. Times newsroom is not a great place to bring your terrier-mix for the day,' and sneak the little guy past security, past the boss' office and into the tiny space under the work station that passes for leg room.
Biscuit the terrier-mix may not have made it to the newsroom, but Maisie the Teacup Lab (she's typing: drt bone wwwwwalk erjrq ballballlballlballball#) is on the job and in the photo. (She's setting an excellent example by telecommuting.)
Lots more great animal info --- how to keep your pets cool and safe in all this heat, how New Yorkers are paying $180 for a bird-poop facial, a reverse vasectomy for a race horse -- in our fine animals blog, right here.
--Veronique de Turenne
 The creation of a 150-acre reef to anchor a forest of giant kelp is taking shape in San Clemente.
An interview with "Weeds" creator Jenji Kohan in LAist.
Those reservoir balls the DWP dumped in Silver Lake might not be so safe after all, says Donna Barstow.
Dinner parties gone very, very wrong. Jacket Copy
MTA ridership just keeps going up. Bottleneck Blog
The Olsen twins incur the wrath of PETA. LA Unleashed
Kid fails driving test five times in one day -- video! YouTube via Fishbowl LA
Ride your bike to work in LA -- a how-to guide from LA MetBlogs.
Start planning for the L.A. Film Festival next week.
Compton will get a new skateboard park in September. Curbed LA
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Los Angeles Times
 The charreada, or Mexican-style rodeo, is a home-grown event that gives Mexican Americans a flavor of home. With with events like bull tail-pulling and tripping up horses by roping their front feet (as shown at a Sacramento rodeo in the photo at right) more states are banning the amateur sport, according to a story in today's New York Times:
It always begins at noon in a dusty arena, with brisk salutes on the brims of glittering sombreros and mustachioed horsemen in three-piece suits.
Let others have their golf and their swimming holes. Here in the Central Valley of California, and in Winnemucca, Nev., and Joliet, Ill., a growing number of middle-class Mexican Americans spend lazy summer afternoons at the charreada — part rodeo, part fiesta and one of Mexico’s most revered sporting events, dating to the 17th century.
“We don’t live and then go to the charreada,” said Marcos Franco, a 51-year-old flooring contractor from Tracy, Calif., who is the United States representative for the Federación Mexicana de Charrería. “We live for the charreada.”
(Skip)
But now the charreada, which is strictly amateur, is facing its biggest challenge. After criticism from animal rights and anti-rodeo activists, eight states over the last decade have cracked down on several events, most notably horse tripping, a centuries-old tradition that involves roping and snaring the front legs of a running mare and that can cause serious injury. As a result, no charros in the federation practice horse tripping.
You can read the full story here.
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Karen Tapia-Andsersen / Los Angeles Times
 A 22-year-old man who apparently had been drinking picked up a rattlesnake in Inglewood and it bit him. KTLA has the rest of the details:
The man picked up the snake at Edward Vincent Park, at 700 Warren Lane, late Tuesday night, following an apparent bout of drinking and was bitten on the hand, authorities said.
The victim then placed the reptile in a bucket, the bucket in a bag, and the bag in the trunk of his car.
Authorities say he also tried to drive himself to a hospital but pulled over on the side of the road and called 911.
Los Angeles County Fire paramedics and Inglewood police reached him at 161 N. La Brea Ave. around 10:20 p.m. Tuesday, a Los Angeles County Fire Department dispatch supervisor said.
The man was placed on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance and initially appeared to be doing well. But less than five minutes later, he became visibly ill and nauseated and could be seen shaking, gagging, shedding tears and kissing a cross hanging from his neck.
Paramedics took him to Centinela Hospital Medical Center where he was listed in fair condition.
Then police pinned the snake to the ground with a crowbar and cut off its head. Discuss.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Associated Press
More proof that pets rule the world and we just live in it: Beverly Hills homeowners use wire fencing and a staple gun to build a wide-ranging passageway around their home to let their indoor cats have the run of the place. Bettijane Levine has the details in her full story from our Home section.
 Not our usual territory, but when it's the first horse (a girl, which makes her a filly) born on Catalina Island in 17 years, we'll make an exception.
Here she is, at right, the island's newest attraction. (And may I decimate all sense of neutrality and say, awwww.) -- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: SoCal So Cool
Turns out Diesel, the dog whom San Bernardino firefighters use to sniff out clues at suspected arson scenes, may be about to lose his job because of budget cuts, the San Bernardino Sun reports. A $20 million deficit is forcing all city departments to make cuts; in the Fire Department's case, Fire Chief Michael Conrad said there's not enough money available to keep Diesel in the department.
"That was one of the programs we had to look at because there are arson dogs available to us from other locations," Conrad said.
Does the work get outsourced to a cat in India?
-- Veronique de Turenne & Jesus Sanchez
 Yeah, the photo's a little flat and everything's far away, but that dark line on the water just to the left of the trawler, that's the portable shark tank. The Monterey Bay Aquarium shark researchers returned this weekend and the tank -- they're still setting it up -- appeared this morning.
Which means a young great white shark, swimming out there somewhere right now, will soon find itself on display.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: flickr
As much as you're willing to pay, when a biotech company in Mill Valley auctions off the chance for you to clone your dog.
BioArts chief executive Lou Hawthorne formerly ran Genetic Savings
& Clone, a company that offered to clone pet cats for $50,000 and
folded in 2006.
Several groups that monitor advances in genetic technology worry that the dog-cloning project could lead to human cloning.
The cloning project is in partnership with a South Korean research team
that includes Hwang Woo-Suk, who scandalized the international
scientific community in 2005 when his breakthrough human cloning
research was found to have been faked.
Opening bid: $10,000. Full story in the NYT.
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Los Angeles Times
Drought, coyotes and even the humans trying to protect the endangered reptiles are causing their deaths. Louis Sahagun has a very sad story.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Video: John Vander Wege / Los Angeles Times
 It was the barking dogs that woke the neighbors on Beaver Way in La Verne on Tuesday morning. But instead of a stray cat or errant raccoon, they found a young male mountain lion lying quietly on the wall that shields their yards from the 210 Freeway.
"He was big," said Ed Dominguez, who got close enough to snap this photo. "He seemed intrigued by us, just lying there and watching. The dogs got close and he didn't do anything, didn't move."
Dominguez thinks the big cat, which authorities say was 9 to 14 months old, walked down a wash that leads from the hills to a nearby elementary school. After that, it was just a short climb up a tree, then a hop onto the sound wall.
A neighbor called police, who then called the Department of Fish and Game. The animal, which was shot with a tranquilizer dart, died as it was being transported back into the hills.
"Everyone did their best," Dominguez said. "They really tried to save him."
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Ed Dominguez
The cougar was found sitting on a wall near the 210 Freeway in La Verne, says the SGV Trib. Though authorities managed to tranquilize the big cat, he died on the way to being released in the wilderness. More from the story:
Authorities said a La Verne resident in the
1400 block of Beaver Way called about 12:30 a.m., saying the animal was
sitting on a wall next to the 210 Freeway. Police contacted the
California Department of Fish and Game officials, who later attempted
to tranquilize the animal to transport and release him into the
wilderness.
But the big cat, a young male between 9 and 14 months old, did not survive the ordeal, officials said.
"The
lion died in the darting and transporting process," said Fish and Game
spokesman Harry Morse. "There is a loss factor. In this case the
mountain lion did not make it through the capture."
Officials said young male mountain lions this time of year
wander from their clans after reaching adulthood to avoid being killed
by the larger males.
"They'll stay for about a year with their mothers, then
they have to go out and establish their own territories," Morse said.
"Believe it or not, probably one of the biggest hazards is the dominant
male lion, because they kill the younger ones."
Here's the full story about the mountain lion.
--Veronique de Turenne
File photo: Los Angeles Times
 Lots of things are vanishing in the current budget crunch -- teachers, services, salaries, to name just a few. But someone's getting good news as a result of that same squeeze: the backyard rooster. Jessica Garrison explains:
The birds will be spared new res
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